Spotify for Artists allows artists, labels and distributors to get the most out of Spotify by understanding their audiences, personalising their artist profiles, and taking action to build their fanbases.
Every client of The Source with music live on Spotify can use it, and we strongly recommend that you do: almost everything Spotify offers for promotion, from playlist pitching to Canvas, runs through this one dashboard.
What you get
- Audience and performance data. Streams, listeners, saves, sources of streams, playlist adds, and where in the world people are listening. Data is available per release and per track, with custom date ranges.
- Profile control. Artist image and header, biography, Artist Pick, Spotify Canvas, music videos, artist playlists and merch.
- Playlist pitching. Pitch one unreleased track per release to the editorial team. This is also the signal that puts your release in front of Release Radar for your followers.
- Campaign Kit. Countdown Pages, Marquee, Showcase and Discovery Mode, subject to Spotify's own eligibility thresholds.
- Teams. Several people can have access, each with their own login, and the Activity Page shows which team member made which change.
How to claim access as an artist
- Go to artists.spotify.com/claim and log in with a Spotify account. Use an account that belongs to the artist or the team, not a private account you may lose access to.
- Search for the artist profile and request access.
- Spotify checks the request. If your profile already has a manager or label attached, the request goes to that admin instead of to Spotify.
Has your music not been delivered yet? Then there is no artist page to claim. Deliver your first release through The Source, wait until it is live, and claim the profile after that.
How to claim access as a label
If you run a label with music on Spotify, you can use Spotify for Artists at label level. That gives you album-level data across your entire catalogue, including custom date ranges, playlist pitching and the other Campaign Kit tools, Music Video and Canvas uploads, and more. Labels can add several people to their team and follow every action taken by that team on the Activity Page. Artist teams and label teams can both edit an artist profile, whether that is updating a bio or sharing a playlist through Artist Pick.
To claim a label team you need a Spotify account and your work email address. If you are the first person from your organisation to request access, you also need the URIs of at least three tracks you have previously delivered to Spotify. If your organisation is already set up, your request goes to the admin of your Spotify for Artists label team.
Start at artists.spotify.com/c/add-team, or open Settings and choose Create Team while logged in to Spotify for Artists. Spotify's own help centre and website give a full overview of the features.
Deliver in time, then pitch in time
Spotify's pitch tool closes seven days before the release date, and by then the editors have almost no time left to consider your track. Plan on delivering your release to The Source at least six weeks before the release date and pitching four weeks before it. That window is also what gives the stores time to process the release, attach it to the right artist page, replace auto-generated Art Tracks with your official video, and consider it for editorial playlists.
Our Release Rollout guide sets out the whole schedule week by week, from six weeks before release to the weeks after release day.
Metadata that decides where your music ends up
Spotify's tools only work well when the delivered metadata is right. Three fields matter more than most clients expect.
- The Spotify artist link. Add the Spotify artist URI or URL for every displayed artist role: main artist, featured artist and remixer. That is how we place a release on the correct artist page instead of leaving Spotify's systems to guess or create a duplicate page. Is the artist genuinely new to Spotify? Then mark the artist as new and Spotify creates a fresh page.
- Full composer and lyricist names. First name and last name, not initials and not a band name. Spotify requires this for the large majority of new tracks, it drives correct royalty reporting, and it is the basis for the Songwriter Page and for the analytics in Spotify for Publishing.
- The original release date. The very first date the recording was ever released, in any country and in any format, which is often not the same as the copyright or publishing year. This is what makes a discography read correctly, and features such as Spotify Wrapped rely on it.
You fill all of this in yourself in the Release Builder while you set up the release. The promotion steps in the Release Builder are also where your pitch information belongs.