Spotify is shutting down its direct upload program, which allowed artists to upload music to the streaming service without getting a third party involved. On Monday (July 1), the company announced its decision to close the beta program and stop accepting direct uploads by the end of the month.
“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.”
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Spotify’s direct upload beta was launched last September. It allowed independent artists to upload to the streaming service without having distribution.
With the shutdown, indie artists will need to resume using services provided by companies such as TuneCore and DistroKid.
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