The popular Spotify music service solved a major problem Wednesday by providing a mechanism for bands unaffiliated with larger aggregators to submit music. In a partnership with TuneCore, Spotify will now allow any recording artist to add their tunes to the service for a low, flat fee.
When we asked Spotify CEO Daniel Ek about the lack of this mechanism last year, he told us Spotify didn't want to be mired in creating one-to-one relationships with tiny bands, when it's so much easier to ink deals with large aggregators. That stance appears to have changed today.
Spotify has partnered with TuneCore, a digital music distributor that allows anyone to sell music through iTunes and other stores for a low flat fee ($10 a song per year to distribute through all participating music services), collecting more than $30 million last year on behalf of its artists.
This deal will fill holes in Spotify's catalog and give smaller artists access to the service's growing audience, which could soon include U.S. users.
Recording artists need every distribution outlet they can get these days, and Spotify continues to grow at about 10,000 users a week according to one estimate, recently doubling the rate at which its mostly non-paying users are paying for the service. So this is not just about discovery and "raising awareness" about bands -- it's also about cold, hard cash.
Update: Artists can also submit their music to Spotify through CD Baby, in addition to using TuneCore.
See Also:
- Inch-by-Inch: Spotify Now Buying Server Space in United States
- Spotify Takes Aim at iTunes, Befriends Facebook
- Spotify Adds U.S.-Friendly Service Plans
- Spotify Set to Take America by Storm
- TuneCore, Amazon Set to Unveil On-Demand CD Sales
- TuneCore Lets Bands Pick Brands to Shill For
- It Just Got Cheaper To Sell a Song on iTunes
- ReverbNation Takes On TuneCore With Cheap Music Distribution
