Spotify no longer allows artists to upload music on their own

In September of last year, Spotify started beta testing a feature that allowed independent musicians to upload their music without the help of a label or distribution service. Now, the company is moving away from that model and pushing musicians to use services like DistroKid.

In a recent blog post, Spotify shared that it’s shutting down the platform. Artists will need to ask a third-party distributor to post their music to the streaming service before July 30th.

This means that Spotify is removing any content that users uploaded through the beta program as July comes to a close.

The streaming giant’s blog post says that artists that have uploaded their music through the beta will receive an email with more details about the switch from being an independent uploader to working with a music distribution service and discount codes, since distributors aren’t free.

Spotify made waves last year when it announced the service since it seemed beneficial to both artists and Spotify.

Both parties stood to make more money off of independently uploaded streams since no labels were also entitled to a cut of the royalties.

While artists can keep their royalties when they use a distribution service, they still need to pay a fee to use the service.

You can find out more about the tool’s foreclosure by reading Spotify’s blog post and by checking out this FAQ. 

Source: Spotify