How are Independent Artists performing on Spotify?

Spotify and digital streaming platforms, also known as DSP’s, changed the narrative of the music industry when they started dominating global music consumption some years ago. 

In the pre-streaming era it was extremely hard for independent artists to be exposed to a massive and global audience without the support of a major player, especially in the field of distribution: CDs, Vinyls and Cassettes needed to be produced, shipped, distributed and be placed in the local stores. Today, all of this happens nearly on a single platform - the distribution is still outside of the point of sale. Streaming has made it extremely easy for indie and DIY artists to release their music and - potentially - gain exposure to a worldwide audience.

It is pretty evident that Spotify and the DSP’s have changed accessibility forever and enabled artists to share their music to the world within a couple of clicks. But how has it impacted the revenue indies are generating?

⁠In the latest annual report from Spotify, they state that 50% of the money that was paid to the music industry in 2023, went to independent artists and labels. That's about 4.5 billion dollars! This is groundbreaking, as this amount of money paid to independent artists is 4x what they generated on its service in 2017.

Another really interesting insight is that independent artists (artists outside majors and Merlin, which is the association of independent labels) account for 26% of all revenue generated in 2023. This is 10% more compared to what they generated in 2018. 

In words of Spotify itself, they ‘leveled the playing field’ by enabling independent artists to ‘access the same global audience and tools as the superstars’.

This is great news, however it is vital to see (over the numbers) that it is affecting not only accessibility but the business end for indie artists as well. 

Viberate published a study on how music industry professionals use streaming services to discover music. Spotify, as you might have anticipated, appeared as the number one platform for music discovery. It is important to mention that the music industry professionals that were interviewed for the research, are in their majority label managers and label A&Rs from all over the world (77%).  The rest is a mixture of artist managers, booking agents, digital marketers and distributors.

This underlines the notion that indie artists must be present and relevant in Spotify - to generate revenues for themselves but also to be potentially discovered and signed by bigger players.

How can you improve your positioning as an artist on Spotify? In this article you can learn some simple tips to optimize your Spotify performance. However, we highly recommend pitching to independent curators to get your music placed in Spotify playlists.

Being placed in Spotify playlists opens the door for connecting with music communities and being discovered. Besides that, a good playlisting strategy will also boost your algorithmic recommendations as your music is being streamed and connecting with niche audiences of your interest. 

About the algorithmic programming on Spotify: a research by startup Your Music Marketing (Y2M) discovered that emerging artists represent 60% of programmed listens in the platform - these streams come mainly from algorithmic user playlists. 

So now it is even clearer that having a strategy for optimizing your performance on Spotify is key. We encourage you to keep promoting your music and start submitting your songs to independent Spotify playlists. You can start submitting for free here at DailyPlaylists!

⁠SUBMIT MY MUSIC