Updated May 27th 2021
Spotify is without a doubt the giant of the music streaming world and a very good friend to artists (signed and unsigned) worldwide. One of the things we love most about Spotify is their artists-only tool Spotify For Artists.
Spotify is just one of the many major online retailers we distribute to, but it also one we collect important trend data from that is displayed in every artist account under ‘Stats & Activity‘, to help artists gauge how their releases are performing from day one. All you need to do is a release your tracks on Spinnup and the data will start showing in your account 1 day after release.
As a music service but also a tech company Spotify is constantly evolving so we have put together our one-stop-shop for understanding Spotify For Artists, which we will continue to update each time there is a new feature added to the service.
In this article we will explain:
• How to claim your Spotify For Artists Profile
• How To Get Verified on Spotify
• How to edit your Spotify artist profile & bio
• Adding social media links to your profile
• How to add team members to your Spotify For Artists account
• What data you can find in your account
• How to pitch to Spotify Playlists
• Direct Donations
How to claim your Spotify For Artists account
Claiming your Spotify for Artists profile is a really easy process. To start, head over to artists.spotify.com and then click on “Get Access”.
After hitting continue, search for your name.
Once you’ve found it, log in with your account or create one that you want to associate to manage that artist profile.
Click on “Yes, claim it” and on “Yes, continue”.
Follow the steps that are indicated. You will have to link your profile to your website, to your Twitter or Instagram account in order to verify your identity. The Spotify team will review your request and get back to you within 3 days.
Once you receive the email notification, go back to the Spotify for Artist page and click “Log in”. Once authenticated, go to “Your Dashboard” for instant access to start managing your profile on Spotify.
Get Verified
No longer do you have to wait until you have 250 followers to even be able to apply for verification. Instead, now all you need to do is have access to Spotify for Artists!
If you don’t already have access to Spotify for artists, click here and follow the steps to access your account.
But if you’re already verified don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything to keep the pretty blue tick on your profile. The new verification system means you’ll use Spotify for Artists to add and remove playlists from your profile, but use your personal account to create and edit them.
What does this mean for existing verified artists?
• You will keep your verification and all playlists will remain
• You will now add and remove playlists in Spotify for Artists, but you create and edit them from your personal account, like always
• If you’re using Fan Insights, you need to switch to using Spotify for Artists
What if I’m not verified?
• You can become verified really easily, simply by accessing Spotify for Artists, no more 250 followers!
• You will need to add/remove playlists in Spotify for Artists, but create and edit them from your personal account
• You may need to wait a few weeks for the blue tick to appear on your profile.
Artist Profile & Bio
Now that you’re a bonafide and verified Spotify artist you are able to freely edit your public profile! Get your creative hats on because now you can update your artist image as often as you change your outfit – sounds like a lot of work, but each to their own! You can also show people what music you’re jamming to by choosing your ‘artist’s pick’ that sits at the top of your profile, and add playlists – either ones you’ve created or your favourites that you want to share with your fans.
The first place to start? Your bio. Let fans know more about you or your band, and convey your personality, creativity or sense of humour. Have fun with it, but don’t go too overboard!
Electronic musician Caribou keeps his bio short and sweet, but is a nice touch!
How to edit your artist bio, step by step:
1. Go to your Spotify For Artists profile and scroll down to ‘Artist Bio’
2. Write your amazing, brilliant, creative, thoughtful bio in 1500 words or less
3. Add links to your music, music you feature on, playlists – anything on Spotify! Just use the ‘@’ symbol to look up playlists, artists or albums
4. If you have a Wikipedia page (if not, why not create one? It’s free and easy!) you can add a link to that here.
Pimp your profile with an image gallery
As of March 2018 artists can now make their Spotify profile look even better than ever with new custom image galleries. Once you login to your Spotify for Artists account, go to Profile under Tools in the left-hand menu, just like you would to edit any of the info on your Spotify artist page. Above where you enter your bio you can now add up to 125 photos of your choice! These could be official artist images, photos on you in the studio or making music, or on the road performing live – the possibilities are endless! It’s a great way to show fans what you’re up to and let them get to know you better. You can also edit your gallery from the Spotify for Artists mobile app.
You can edit the order of images, add or delete them at any time – so get creative!
Image requirements:
jpeg, gif or png
690px x 500px
Avoid text, logos, and busy backgrounds
Max 125 images
Add a Canvas video to your releases
Having a slick looping video to play alongside your release in the Spotify app used to be just for big-name artists, but not anymore! Now all artists can add their own custom Canvas video to every track within their Spotify For Artists account.
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, a Spotify Canvas video is an 8-second looping video that will display full screen (vertically) instead of your album artwork in the ‘Now Playing’ view.
To add a Canvas video to a track you need to be either the first main artist listed on the track, or a main artist listed on both the track and release
How to add a Spotify Canvas Video:
1. Log in to Spotify for Artists.
2. Go to Music.
3. Select a track.
4. Click ADD CANVAS (web) / CREATE CANVAS (mobile app).
Add your social media links
While we’re on the topic of editing your profile, a common question we are asked is about how to link Instagram to your Spotify artist account. Well, artists can now add social media links to their profile, making it easy for fans to find them elsewhere online. And if there’s any advice we can give you, it’s to make yourself as easy to find online as possible.
Like above, just head to the Profile tab in your Spotify for Artists account, click About, and on the right-hand side, there is a new ‘More Info’ panel. Here you can add links to your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia pages.
Spotify also now have their own ‘Promo Cards‘ to help share your playlists, tracks and albums as well as when you get featured on a Spotify playlist (or one of its 60 other partner playlists) on Social media. These free Spotify Promo cards also include the ability to announce:
• Follower Milestones: Share your account milestone notifications with your fans when you reach 1k, 5k, 10k, 25k, 50k, 100k, 500k, 1M, 2M, 5M, 10M, 20M, 25M, 50M, and 100M followers on your Spotify profile.
• Charts Milestones: If your track enters the top 50 Top Global Weekly Songs chart.
• New Release Badges: Promo Cards created for tracks, EP’s or albums that have been released in the past seven days, there will be a special badge to alert fans of your new release.
• Deep-linking to Promo Cards: To make it easier for teams to coordinate around the creation of Promo Cards, Spotify have added deep-linking to the site. When you navigate the site, the URL will update, so you can send it to a collaborator to create their own card more easily without having to go through the “search” process.
Team Members
In September 2017 Spotify added an extra feature to Spotify For Artists, allowing artists to add team members to their account. Being a musician is a tough business, and having a team around you to support and grow your career goes a long way to helping you become a success! Now your team can help you even more by accessing your data and profile.
All artists can add team members to their Spotify For Artists account in three different access levels:
• Full Access – users that you grant complete access to all your features, including artist profile, stats, and the ability to invite and edit team members
Recommended for: Band members, managers, record labels
• Edit Access – these users can update your artist profile, view streaming stats, invite new team members for edit or view access, and view all members and their contact information
Recommended for: Booking agent, promoter, publicist
• View Access – these guys can view your streaming stats only
Recommended for: producers, collaborators
How do I add Team Members?
To add as many members as you would like to your team, simply signup or login to Spotify For Artists, and click the arrow next to your name. In the drop-down menu select ‘Manage Team’, which opens a page where you can input email addresses for the lucky few you will give access to, and set the access level for each.
Spotify Data
It’s no secret that here at Spinnup we love data, and lots of it. Which is why we were so excited to hear that Spotify has added even more data and analytics to the Spotify For Artists platform. You can read all the info about it here, or read below of a breakdown of what you can expect in your own SFA account.
• Stats for all songs – no longer do you have to earn 1000 streams to see your data, now you will see absolutely all of it for your top 200 songs. Don’t have 200 songs yet? Well what are you waiting for? Get recording!
• Time filters – you can now view your data by 7 days, 28 days (so 4 weeks, really), or two years! The reason this is so useful is that it will give you the chance to see if any big pushes (think PR cycle, a particular gig, social media campaign etc) really made an impact to your fans and streams.
• Follower data – your followers are your super fans, the ones who love your music so much they want to be notified every time you release something new. In your SFA account you now have a Follower Timeline to be able to track, and hopefully grow your follower count. More followers = more fans = more streams… you get the picture.
• Songwriter credits – You are now able to be publicly credited as a songwriter of tracks you have worked on alongside tracks you have performed on.
In May 2020 Spotify publisher their first Fan Study, an in-depth look at how fanbases listen to music around the world. It has some really useful info that all artists could learn from. Check out Spotify’s Fan Study here.
Pitching to Playlists
As of mid-2018, all artists are able to promote your music and pitch their music directly to Spotify in the hope of having their song placed on a Spotify-curated playlist. The best part, it takes just a few minutes and can all be done right from within your Spotify For Artists account. The most important things to note are:
• You can only pitch one song at a time per release, so if you have an EP or an album you can only select one song from the project
• Tracks can only be pitched if they are in a pre-release state. That means you have created your release on Spinnup and set a release date in the future (we recommend two weeks at least), it has been approved by our team and is sitting in the ‘Upcoming’ tab of your SFA account
This is such an important tool for artists to use that we have dedicated a whole separate blog post to this.
Click here to read our guide on how to use Spotify’s playlist pitching tool
Direct Donations
The situation for artists in times of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed: concerts and festivals are no longer available, and with it the fees. What remains as a source of income is all your downloads and streams. Spotify has now released a great function that fans and followers can now support musicians even more directly – your own fundraising link!
Simply log in, click on the blue banner in the Spotify for Artists Dashboard (“You can now add a fundraising link to your profile so your fans can support you or your cause directly”) and fill out the form:
You can e.g. B. insert the link to your GoFundMe Page or Paypal link.
Then confirm, submit and you’re done! Your fans and followers can now make a donation directly on your profile. All payments are forwarded directly and in full, Spotify does not retain any part of it. However, please note that the fundraising apps may charge small fees for the transaction.
There is so much on offer here for you to take advantage of, so access Spotify for Artists and explore the full rundown of new features on the Spotify blog. Get your music on Spotify with Spinnup, log in to get started.