Spotify: Artists Can No Longer Upload Directly To Streaming Service

Giant streaming service, Spotify, is set to shut down its direct upload program. The program, which allowed artists to upload music directly on the platform without the need for any third party was launched in September 2018 with a beta phase.

Spotify announced this decision on Monday (July 1), stating that it will close the program and stop accepting direct uploads by month’s end.

“The most impactful way we can improve the experience of delivering music to Spotify for as many artists and labels as possible is to lean into the great work our distribution partners are already doing to serve the artist community,” Spotify said in a statement on its blog. “Over the past year, we’ve vastly improved our work with distribution partners to ensure metadata quality, protect artists from infringement, provide their users with instant access to Spotify for Artists, and more.”

It added, “The best way for us to serve artists and labels is to focus our resources on developing tools in areas where Spotify can uniquely benefit them — like Spotify for Artists (which more than 300,000 creators use to gain new insight into their audience) and our playlist submission tool(which more than 36,000 artists have used to get playlisted for the very first time since it launched a year ago). We have a lot more planned here in the coming months.”

With the shutdown, artists will have to resume using services like FreeMe Digital if they want to get their songs on Spotify as well as other platforms.