Tag: st. vincent

Spotify Reveals More Opportunities and Features for Creators During Stream On

March 8, 2023

Artists, songwriters, video and content creators, podcasters, and fans from all over the world joined Spotify for our second Stream On event today in Los Angeles. Alex Cooper, Bill Simmons, Ed Sheeran, Emma Chamberlain, Jennifer Lopez, GloRilla, Halsey, Joe Rogan, The Jonas Brothers, Karol G, Luke Combs, St. Vincent, Tash Sultana, and other luminaries mixed with Spotify team members to share announcements and inspiring stories, and take part in hands-on demos of new artists tools and creator resources coming to the platform. 

“Stream On is about all the ways we are bringing Spotify to life and letting creators at all stages of their careers know that we are open for business,” Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek said. “We are focused on building the best home for them—a place where they can establish a career, thrive, and grow, and where the world can be inspired by their creativity. And that’s what we’ve been doing for almost 17 years: building, improving, and reimagining this home to better meet creator needs and help them chart new pathways to success.”

From new app functionality to a holistic one-stop shop for podcasting to more opportunities for artists to engage with their fans, Stream On further cements our commitment to the creative community.    

“As we look to the future, we are excited to expand that ambition to even more creators across new formats. We’re enabling more creativity, discovery, and personalization than ever before by providing the best resources, support, and interactivity,” Daniel said.

Helping fans discover creators and artists

We’ve unveiled one of the biggest evolutions since Spotify’s inception: a new, dynamic interface on mobile built for deeper discovery and more meaningful connections between artists and fans. 

With this new experience, we’re giving fans an even more active role in the audio discovery process, and giving creators even more space to share their work. Powered by advanced recommendations, new visual canvases, and a completely new and interactive design, the new interface is making discovering new audio easier than ever before and helping introduce users to their next favorite artist, podcast, or book. It’s all about closing the distance between creators and fans—and setting the stage for long-term, lasting connections that reach beyond viral success. 

The new Spotify will roll out in waves to our 500 million+ monthly active users beginning today. Here’s what to expect:

  • Music, podcast, and audiobook previews across Music, Podcasts & Shows, and Audiobooks feeds for listeners to sample before they play or save. We’re also bringing “shortcuts” to the top of listeners’ feeds—giving users easy access to some of their recent and favorite listens. 
  • New feeds for discovery on Search that will allow users to quickly and easily explore personalized, short Canvas clips from tracks across some of your favorite genres. Users can easily save the song to a playlist, follow the artist, or share it with friends, all from one place. Looking for something else? Explore related genres using the hashtag within the feed, all with the goal of making discovery even easier. 
    • We’re also bringing this feature to popular playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, New Music Friday, and RapCaviar, inviting users to preview tracks on a playlist before diving in. 
  • Just like with music, we’re now serving Autoplay for Podcasts—when a podcast ends, another episode that fits the user’s tastes and is relevant will automatically start playing. 
  • More to love with our personalized AI DJ that transforms how listeners hear and discover the music they love. 
  • Smart Shuffle, the easiest way to breathe new life into custom curated playlists with just the tap of a button.

“Spotify recommendations drive close to half of all users’ streams. And when listeners decide to follow a creator, they listen to, on average, five times more of their music,” said Gustav Söderström, Spotify Co-President and Chief Product & Technology Officer. “That’s why discoveries on Spotify—unlike many other platforms—give creators so much more than just a fleeting moment of viral fame. Those meaningful, long-term connections are a key part of what makes Spotify a platform for professional and aspiring artists.”

Supporting artist success through streaming

We also unveiled our annual music royalties report, Loud & Clear. The 2023 update demonstrates that more and more artists are finding success than ever before: The number of artists generating $1M+, as well as those generating $10,000+, has more than doubled over the past five years. Additionally, we estimate that the 50,000th highest-earning artist on Spotify generated more than $50,000 across all recorded revenue sources. 

Loud & Clear also details how Spotify pays the vast majority of every dollar it generates for music—nearly 70%—back to the industry, and all-time Spotify payouts to music rights holders are approaching $40 billion.  

Enabling audience development for artists through new and enhanced tools

We’re always building up our suite of tools to help artists find the fans who’ll love their music most. Here are a few of the new features they will soon find in the Campaigns section of Spotify for Artists:

  • Marquee is a full-screen, sponsored recommendation of a new release that’s focused on reaching listeners who have shown interest in an artist’s music. On average, Marquee is 10 times more cost-effective at getting listeners to stream music on Spotify than ads are on the most popular social media platforms. 
  • Discovery Mode is a tool through which artists and their teams identify priority songs, and Spotify will add that signal to the algorithms that shape personalized listening sessions. Today, Discovery Mode is directly available within Spotify for Artists, and is accessible to a wider range of artists and their teams, including thousands of independently distributed artists and labels.
  • Showcase is a mobile card on our brand-new home feed that will introduce an artist’s music—whether a new release or catalog—to likely listeners. We’re just starting to test Showcase with artists and labels, and will make it more widely available in the near future.

We also shared more details on the next revenue line we’ll enable to help artists grow: merchandise and live events.

  • New Concert and Merch Discovery tools will help make sure concertgoers never miss another show. Listeners will begin to see merch offers and concert listings in far more places across the app. If a show catches a fan’s eye, they can tap a new “interested” button to save the listing to their own calendar in the Live Events Feed. Users can adjust their location and browse concerts worldwide, all personalized to their taste. 
  • Spotify is also expanding its Fans First program to include more artists, ensuring top listeners receive emails and notifications that give them special access to concert pre-sales and merch exclusives.

And we unveiled new features and product expansions that allow more artists to express themselves in new ways and build buzz among fans. These include:

  • Spotify Clips, which lets artists add 30-second videos to their artist profiles and album pages so fans can go deeper into their stories while they’re listening; and
  • Countdown Pages, which provide dedicated space on an artist’s profile and Spotify’s Home feed for fans to pre-save albums, see exclusive videos, pre-order merch, preview tracklists, and watch the timer count down to a new release. 

Reintroducing Spotify for Podcasters as our one-stop shop for creators

Podcast creators joined our executives onstage to showcase the reimagined Spotify for Podcasters. The site now brings together the best of Spotify’s podcast creator tools into a one-stop shop to create, manage, grow, and monetize podcast content, including: 

  • Broader availability of Spotify-unique features like video podcasting, interactive episodes using Q&A and Polls, subscriptions, and robust analytics
  • Podcast previews, Podcast Chapters, Spotify Labs, and a new space for educational podcasting content
  • Megaphone, Spotify’s hosting solution for enterprise publishers, will be integrated into Spotify for Podcasters in the future. Netflix and Australia’s Schwartz Media were just signed on as two of the latest publishers.

We also looked back at the growth of the Spotify Audience Network (SPAN), our audio-first marketplace that connects podcast publishers and independent creators with advertisers, including monthly payouts to opted-in publishers. 

  • Since we launched SPAN in 2021, it has grown by nearly 50%. Advertiser participation has since increased by 500%.  
  • The number of independent and enterprise podcasters taking part in SPAN has grown eightfold in the last two years, with NPR being the latest publisher to join the network.
  • We’re partnering with Patreon, which will enable creators to expand their creative business through direct payments from fans, and allow fans to listen to their Patreon content on Spotify.

Announcing new and expanded Spotify Originals and exclusives

Spotify Original and exclusive podcasts saw much success in 2022, with Case 63, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Call Her Daddy taking the top spots of the Wrapped top global podcasts. And now that Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain is exclusively on our platform, Spotify has four of the top five biggest hits worldwide. 

We’re expanding our catalog with new shows, including The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark. This latest title follows the Batman Unburied series and its characters in a brand-new story led by Phantom 4 and filmmaker, novelist, and comic book writer David S. Goyer. 

We’re also introducing more video podcasts, with Forbidden Fruits with Julia Fox and Niki Takesh returning for a second season and an exclusive video podcast edition of the show. Drew Afualo’s podcast, The Comment Section, is also coming to Spotify exclusively starting April 5. 

We’ve also entered into an exclusive video partnership with Markiplier to produce exclusive video episodes of Distractible and Go! My Favorite Sports Team for Spotify beginning today. And with innovative partnerships on the way from Collab, Creative Juice, Get Engaged Media, Golden Child, and Karat to bring their creators’ videos to Spotify, as well as limited video series exclusively available on Spotify from Mindset Mentor, we’re looking forward to introducing millions of new listeners to video podcasts. 

Welcoming creators and artists “home” to Spotify

Immediately following the presentation, we opened the doors of our campus in Los Angeles’ Arts District to creators for our “Play On” event to demo new products, hold workshops with top industry creators, and share insider knowledge on how best to use Spotify from the people who helped develop the tools at the company. To close out the activities, we’ll be hosting an all-female showcase to celebrate International Women’s Day. 

“Today, there are more than 10 million creators on Spotify, with over half a billion listeners across 184 countries and markets,” Daniel noted. “Think about the massive potential that represents for creators. No matter where you are on your own creative journey within music, podcasts, or audiobooks. The potential to reach half a billion people. And that reach is about to become more powerful with what we’ve introduced today.”

Watch the 10-minute recap of the entire event below.

 

Forward-Looking Statements

The discussion above contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking. For example, the words “will,” “expect,” “potential,” and similar words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and management’s belief about future events and trends, and are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which may adversely affect our business and results of operations, including, but not limited to, our ability to attract and retain users and monetize our products and services; competition; risks associated with our international operations and growth; risks associated with our new products or services and our emphasis on long-term over short-term results; our ability to predict, recommend, and play content that our users enjoy; our ability to maintain the integrity of our technology structure and systems or the security of confidential information; and other risks as set forth in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Spotify Debuts GLOW, an Equity Program for LGBTQIA+ Creators

January 24, 2023

Glow header

The LGBTQIA+ community has greatly influenced music, and both music and culture have long been moved by the community in return. As more and more artists feel empowered to share their authentic selves onstage and off, the power and influence of queer creators grow as guiding forces across culture.

Today, Spotify introduces GLOW, a new global music program celebrating and amplifying LGBTQIA+ artists and creators. It’s our latest initiative to support people of this historically marginalized community of voices and reassert our commitment to equity in audio. It ensures that queer creators, and their contributions to music and culture, are heard and honored year-round.  

Putting LGBTQIA+ artists front and center

GLOW is supported by an on- and off-platform ecosystem where LGBTQIA+ artists and users are authentically represented and meaningfully included. 

All in, GLOW will streamline and heighten the support Spotify has provided through our annual global Pride activations. It will be available in 50+ markets across Europe, India, Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, the Nordics, and Southeast Asia. 

To launch, we’re hosting LGBTQIA+ artists and songwriters at the Spotify At Mateo office in LA, including jesse saint john, who has written for Britney Spears, Lizzo, and Kim Petras; JHart, who has written for Troye Sivan, 5SOS, and Little Mix; Ilsey, who has written for Panic! at the Disco, Miley Cyrus, Mark Ronson, and Harry Styles); and INK, who has written for Beyoncé, Leon Bridges, and Lil Nas X. The attendees will participate in three days of writing sessions aimed at celebrating and inspiring collaboration among creators in the LGBTQIA+ community. 

We recognize the power of our platform to elevate, uplift, and spotlight voices that have been historically marginalized, and we’re committed to using it to drive cultural change. GLOW is supported by Spotify’s Creator Equity Fund as the latest part of our ongoing commitment to fostering equity in the audio space. By providing equitable resources to queer artists on a global level, GLOW is another way we’re working to create greater equity, empathy, and representation for the LGBTQIA+ community. We work closely with our partners at GLAAD and others to ensure GLOW best represents LGBTQIA+ artists and listeners in authentic and meaningful ways.

Meet the team behind GLOW

The backbone of GLOW is Spotify employees who are passionate about music, artist empowerment, and above all else, their queer community. 

Lisa Ritchey, she/her, Manager, Artist Partnership Team

Lisa Ritchey

What is your role in bringing GLOW to life?

I am a manager on our newly formed Artist Partnerships Team, but I’ve been in this type of role for the past three years. I currently work across pop, dance, and indie, finding ways that we can bring Spotify into the entirety of an artist’s career outside of a record cycle—touring, festivals, merchandise, integrating artists into campaigns within those genres and our playlists—finding new and creative ways to partner together with artists. 

I’ve worked on Spotify’s Pride campaign for the past three years. I came in and was very, very passionate about LGBTQIA+ artists and how we can better serve that community and the fan base. After working on Pride, I started working on what would be an evergreen program very similar to Frequency or EQUAL with a colleague (the Head of Rock on our Editorial Team, Laura Ohls). We started working on this probably two years ago and in that time, the team has grown exponentially, become more robust, and received a lot of support company-wide.

Why is GLOW important to you?

I, along with the majority of the community, am very weary and skeptical of corporatized Pride. If a company is going to show up in June, they have to show up throughout the year. Where this program is amazing is that its sole purpose is to support the community on- and off-platform year-round. The way that we are showing up in this program also feels different—we’re supporting these artists because of who they are holistically. These are artists who are doing incredible things and they just so happen to be queer.

Who are some queer artists or cultural icons who have inspired you?

In the ’90s it was hard to find robust queer representation, and you had icons like Elton John and George Michael, so when The xx showed up and I found out that Romy and Oliver from The xx were both queer, it kinda blew my mind and it was the first time that I felt seen. St. Vincent was pretty huge for me and really made me understand myself more in college. Frank Ocean—truly, his tumblr coming-out letter, I want to get it framed and put it up in my house because that was so huge not only to me, but to music and culture in general—I think that was around the time that I was truly figuring myself out, so it meant a lot.

And the beautiful thing that we’re seeing now is just, more. The floodgates have opened and we have so many artists to choose from. 

 

Cahleb Derry, he/him, Associate Manager, Music Marketing

Cahleb Derry

What would you say is the ethos of GLOW?

We always go back to this commitment to amplify LGBTQIA+ artists. So while there’s a lot of other flashy aspects of GLOW, and there’s billboards and there’s editorial support, behind all of that, the question we go back to is, ‘How do we tangibly influence the resources that LGBTQIA+ artists have?’ We know in the industry that there are hurdles that marginalized artists face in creating and putting out music that other artists don’t face. 

We know that a lot of artists only get hit up in June during Pride to do campaigns. And then July 1 hits and there’s no work to be found again. Performative support wittles down an artist to their identity. If you only ask artists to activate during Pride, you ask them to give this boxed-in, performative version of themselves. For some artists, their identity is crucial to their work, right? It drives their writing, their artistry. For other artists, they’re just artists who happen to be LGBTQIA+ and they still should receive the support that LGBTQIA+ artists need. And we know that we, at Spotify, have a responsibility as the largest music audio platform in the world to fill in these gaps.

Why is GLOW important to you?

I am gay, so as someone who’s in the community, this program means so much to me. For example, Sam Smith, one of our 11 launch artists, their sophomore album, The Thrill Of It All, was my coming-out album and it saved my life in so many ways. I know firsthand how important LGBTQIA+ artists are for representation, but also for validation, and it just means a lot to see a company like Spotify really doing the amplification work. And to be helping lead the charge? I kind of have to pinch myself a lot and realize like, yeah, this isn’t just a campaign.

LGBTQIA+ culture is the culture. LGBTQIA+ artists, since the beginning of time, have shaped  some of the biggest genres that we have—from disco to jazz to pop—and unfortunately, with the way our industry functions, artists aren’t given the proper tribute, support, or platform that matches the effect and impact of LGBTQIA+ artists’ contributions. 

How does music empower queer communities? 

To me, it’s survival. Literally, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor being a gay anthem is an example, but it’s about connecting people, and it’s about safe space. We know that in New York and Chicago and Detroit and LA, the ballroom space was where Black and Latine queer folks who were shunned were able to go and shine. And music was the soundtrack to this. Even when queer culture and queer people were relegated to basements, to spaces deemed “unused” or in “disarray,” music kept those spaces alive.

Music is how I made sense of my emotions growing up. It gave me language to describe how I felt and gave me validation to feel confident in those emotions. Music is the soundtrack to our lives and to our survival, and it’s the soundtrack to our joy. Music is this creative playground where you’re allowed to imagine anything. Music is the most tangible thing we have to imagine queer futures that are happier and brighter and better and freer. 

Bel Aztiria, she/her, Equity Global Music Programs Lead

Bel A

What is your role in bringing GLOW to life?

I lead our Equity Global Music Programs, such as GLOW and EQUAL. I am in charge of bringing our equity principles to life within Spotify’s 360 programs, which elevate and celebrate artists for who they are, around the world. I lead the go-to-market strategy through ideation, launch, and adoption. My role is focused on the vision of contributing to a music industry where everyone is fairly represented and included for who they are, and wherever they are from. 

Within GLOW, my role is to take the program from ideation to launch and beyond, setting the overall strategy towards the mission of celebrating and elevating LGBTQIA+ creators and serving users all year round and beyond cultural moments. By bringing together my expertise in equity programs and in international strategy and in music, I have the privilege of being the connector of experts in over 20 different company functions and music representatives for the 50+ countries where GLOW is live, to ensure that this program utilizes Spotify’s resources as best as possible to serve the community and honor its immense contribution to music and culture. 

Why is GLOW important to you?

I grew up in a small town in rural Argentina, where I didn’t have any positive examples of people being accepted, included, and celebrated for who they were. I migrated at a young age, which exposed me to more expansive experiences around sexual orientation and identity, but also to a new way of feeling different, of living within another culture. When I started working in music, which was always my passion, I had more positive experiences of inclusion through seeing colleagues from the community thrive and be inspired by the music itself, and I made it my mission to contribute to a world where we can all feel included and valued for who we are.

Today, I feel safe to be who I am in most places I inhabit, and I have the chance to put my experience, resources, and skills back in service, for more people to hopefully feel included and represented, too. To me, GLOW represents the opportunity and privilege to work within a company that is well positioned to drive social change, where people are passionate about equity and gather to take steps in that direction.

What do you see as the future of the program?

I know we live in a world that is far away from equity for all of us, that the issue is bigger than music, and that we can’t do it alone. But I also believe in the power of music, and I hope that GLOW can inspire and uplift more of our voices to the narrative, contributing to a future world where people are free to be.

Tune into GLOW to hear the latest, hottest songs coming from LGBTQIA+ artists around the world.