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Spotify Is Shutting Down Direct Distribution: What Artists Need To Know Now

Spotify announced yesterday that it is closing down its free direct upload system after less than a year, and forcing all artists to find an outside distributors within 30 days. Continue reading [https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/07/spotify-is-shutting-down-direct-distribution-what-artists-need-t

,   and  Bruce Houghton
Question-markSpotify announced yesterday that it is closing down its free direct upload system after less than a year, and forcing all artists to find an outside distributors within 30 days if they want their music available on the top streaming service. Here's what artists need to know to avoid problems during the transition."We’re working with our distribution partners to help make this transition as simple as possible for the artists who uploaded music through the beta, said Spotify. "At the end of this month, we’ll stop accepting any new uploads through Spotify for Artists, and artists will need to move their already released content to another provider."To keep their tracks on Spotify, artists will need to move already released music to another provider. The streamer promised that some distributors will be offering discount codes to help with the switch.  We have not seen the discounts yet, but in the past Spotify "preferred" distributors have included CD Baby and DistroKid,, which the streamer invested in last year.
Don't WaitWe don't recommend waiting long to move tracks, however. Things can go wrong and we've known artists that have been thrown off Spotify for days and weeks after a piece of metadata went missing during a distribution shift. More from Spotify here.

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