Promoting Your Art: Do You Spotify?

What is Spotify?

Spotify is a music streaming service/program that has a social twist. Much like Pandora, Spotify users have accounts and can stream music for free. Spotify, however, has made sure to integrate social media platforms like Facebook to ensure that users can easily send and receive music tracks and albums from friends. I say 'receive', but really, since Spotify is a streaming service, users are actually just sending an automatically-opening link to their friends' inboxes. Users create playlists, and then can follow each others' accounts to see what their friends are listening to.

Spotify does have a mobile program that works well on both Android and Iphone. It also asks musicians to create playlists that their fans can follow.

One difference between Spotify and a typical streaming service (like Pandora) is that the free users have to listen to commercials, but can build unlimited playlists and skip songs as often as they like.

Additionally, there is an option to pay for a monthly Spotify subscription called Spotify Premium. Spotify Premium removes commercials from your account and allows you to 'download' tracks to your laptop or other mobile device by storing spliced sections of the music files to your device. The Spotify program then re-assembles the song when you click to play it.

Although this sounds complicated, it is Spotify's way of assuring that users cannot simply download the actual song file in, say, mp3 format, and then sell or share it with whomever they like for free. This is part of the method that Spotify uses to continue operating legally with artists' licensed work.



Spotify and Musicians

Spotify obviously cannot list any songs in its library for which they do not have license rights. Some artists' work, like the Beatles, are not on Spotify for this reason.

If you are doing well as a popular artist, Spotify may contact you to ask if you would be interesting in being listed in their library. If you are less known, you can send in music to Spotify and ask to have you tracks added to the library (for exposure). Spotify will then consider your work and go through a paperwork process if the track is approved.


While Spotify is completely legal, there is some debate as to whether it is 'good' for rising artists, budding artists, or established artists to allow Spotify to stream their music.