Spotify has unveiled features to promote artists’ careers

Audio streaming service provider Spotify has introduced features and tools to help more artists, podcasters and creators build profitable careers and grow to more than 500 million monthly active users.

The features were recently unveiled at Spotify’s second Stream On event, amid praise from music stars, songwriters, video, content creators and podcasters from around the world who joined the service for a day of announcements, inspirational stories and hands-on demos. New tools and resources arrive on the global creator platform.

Spotify is doubling down on discovery launched by Stream On, revealing an imagined new interface that leverages new visuals and an all-new, interactive design for deeper, more lasting connections between creator and listener.

With Smart Shuffle, the platform introduced a new way to inject new music that seamlessly complements an existing playlist with the push of a button.

Building on the success of podcast previews, creators can choose to have Spotify automatically generate previews of their music and podcasts for users to test before playing or saving.

As with music, Spotify will now offer AutoPlay for Podcasts, when a podcast ends, it will automatically start playing another episode that suits the user’s tastes and is relevant.

New Concert and Merch Discovery tools will help concertgoers never miss another show. Listeners will begin to see Merchandise offers and concert listings in many more places in the app.

Spotify is also expanding its Fans First program to include more artists, ensuring core listeners receive emails and notifications that give them exclusive access to concert pre-sales and exclusive merchandise.

It also announced the rollout of additional podcast features, with Spotify for Podcasters, which now brings together Spotify’s best podcasting tools in a one-stop shop to create, manage, grow and monetize podcast content.

Previously, Spotify’s most innovative features were limited to Anchor users only. But the company is building the new Spotify for Podcasters in a way that offers more open access to innovation. As a result, all Spotify for Podcasters users, including those who do not host their content on Spotify, will find access to Q&A and Poll functionality in their dashboards.

This year’s update shows that more artists than ever are finding success: the number of artists making more than $1 million, as well as those making more than $10,000, has doubled over the past five years.

Additionally, Spotify estimates that the top 50,000 artists on the platform generated more than $50,000 across all recorded revenue streams.

Spotify founder, Daniel Ek said: “Stream On is about all the ways we bring Spotify to life and let creators at every stage of their careers know we’re open for business. We’re focused on building the best home for them to build a career, thrive and grow to be and a place where the world can be inspired by their creativity.”

E, CEO of Spotify, added: “That’s what we’ve been doing for nearly 17 years: building, improving and reimagining this house to better meet the needs of creators and help chart new paths to success. As we look to the future, we are excited to extend this ambition to even more creators in new formats. We’re enabling more creativity, discovery and customization than ever before by offering the best resources, support and interactivity.”