How To Set Up A Spotify Artist Profile

If you are an artist, you have to be present on Spotify. Firstly, to reach a wide audience, since this streaming music platform is the most popular; and secondly, to start organizing a strategy based on the information offered by your statistics, but d o you know how to upload your music to Spotify and how to create an artist profile?

How to upload your music to Spotify?

Spotify does not allow artists to upload their songs directly. At the end of 2018, the possibility was explored to do without intermediaries, but this decision was revoked in July 2019 for reasons unknown. So if you want your music to be part of the vast catalog of the Swedish company you need to go to the services of a digital distributor.

Or sign under a record company, which will be in charge of uploading your music from the distributor they work with. It is important to bear in mind that, the more intermediaries,the benefits generated by wiretapping will be divided in more parts.

Digital distributors make it easy for you to host your music in dozens of virtual stores and streaming platforms. This is a massive distribution. Not only on Spotify, but also on YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, Beatport, Shazam, Deezer, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, Pandora, TikTok and many more. You only have to sign up for one, upload your single or album in a high-quality format such as WAV or FLAC, the cover page in JPG, choose the release date and fill in other data like artist name, album title, label, year of composition, genre, etc.

The process is simple and inexpensive. Generally, the conditions are:

You pay a monthly or annual fee to receive all the benefits generated by the plays of your songs in its whole.
You upload your songs at no cost in exchange for giving a percentage of the profits to the digital distributor. Generally around 15%.

Some of the most popular digital distributors are the following:

CD Baby
Loudr
LANDR
TuneCore
Symphonic
Ditto Music
Record Union
MondoTunes
iMusician
Reverb Nation
The Orchard

But having a space on Spotify with all your music does not mean that you have a profile and can manage it. For this purpose, the platform launched the Spotify for Artist service.

How to create and verify an artist profile with Spotify for Artist?

You can access Spotify for Artist from the following link: artists.spotify.com. Once there click on "Get Access" and then on "Continue".

Artist Profile on Spotify

Search for your name and, once located, 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. It is a simple and intuitive process. During it, 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" to start managing your profile.

What are the advantages of having Spotify for Artist?

Edit your profile

Choose the profile photo you want and keep it always updated. You can also write your biography to introduce yourself to the world and link your social networks.

Announce your concerts

Spotify has agreements with Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, AXS and Songkick to display the dates of your live performances. When it comes to the latter of the platforms, you'll need to create a profile to sync to Spotify and, most importantly, keep it up to date!

Sell merchandising

You will be able to make all your products available to your fans, thus facilitating their purchase. Of course, you will need to have an account in Merchbar.

Enter the most popular new playlists

Songs do not enter the most followed playlists on a whim. Once you have your profile, you will be able to propose your songs to the curators of the different playlists so that they value their inclusion and thus reach a much wider audience.

Get to know your audience better

This is the central aspect of the service. You will know how many listeners are listening to you anytime, as well as the number of listeners, plays, followers and the place from which they listen to you, and the playlists in which they have included any of your songs. With this information you will be able to optimize your tours, searching for concerts in those cities where most of your listeners are located, and make better decisions in your promotional strategies. It is undoubtedly a very useful service that helps artists, their representatives and record companies to evaluate the different musical careers in an objective way, based on real statistics that show where they are and, consequently, be able to take the right decisions that favor their growth.

Do you want to get the best out of your artistic digital identity?

In Drop.Show we have developed Drop.Artist, a service for artists established as the ideal complement to the previous metrics.

Do not focus only where your music is more listened.

With the Single Reports you will be able to analyze not only the data related to Spotify, but also the one collected by the different social networks in which you are registered. All in a single document, so that you have a wider global vision of your artistic career. Don't just focus on the places where you listen to your music the most. Seek to encourage new sources of interest. Find out which artists are similar to your musical style, where their audience is, and work in those areas where you still don't have a presence but you know that, due to stylistic affinity, you have a potential audience waiting to hear new music. Take advantage of all that the Musical Big Data has to offer!

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