Spotify’s end of year review feature offers a lot of fun insights, but it falls short of giving artists actionable data. We have a solution (or three).
Spotify released a ‘Wrapped’ feature for artists this week that shares interesting information regarding their performance on the platform. Anyone with access to a Spotify For Artists account can see how much their music was consumed, which days they were most popular, where their fans live, and more through a series of animated slides that — at first glance — appear to offer crucial insights into consumer behavior.
But there’s a problem. While fun data that offers no true value is good for pleasing listeners, artists deserve more. Spotify lives and dies based on whether or not artists choose to promote through their service, so it would benefit the streaming giant to give musicians additional insight into the listening habits of their fans. What they offer now is a good start, but truthfully, the data provided only scratches the surface of what is (in theory) possible.
Here are three changes that would greatly benefit all musicians and, in turn, help Spotify continue to reign as the preferred platform of people around the globe.
Give musicians more information about their biggest fans.
Spotify For Artists will tell musicians how many users listened to their music more than anyone else in a given year. However, the data stops short of telling us anything about those listeners. Who are they? Where do they come from? Without invading anyone’s privacy, Spotify could share geographic insights to help plan tour routes and targeted digital marketing campaigns. Knowing how many people listened to you more than anyone else is cool, but ultimately useless without any supplementary information.
If Spotify knows when interest peaked, can it tell us why?
Spotify For Artists will tell you the date and hour when your music was most popular. It can also tell you how many times your music was streamed during that hour. What we don’t know, however, is why that surge happened. Was the musician added to an influential playlist? Did all the streams happen for a specific song, such as a newly released single, or was it a bunch of tracks all at once? Was there any rhyme or reason for the surge of interest, or did it merely happen out of the blue? We don’t know any of this information because Spotify stops short of giving artists what they need to craft better marketing campaigns in the future.
Let’s talk about money
The first screen in the Spotify For Artists Wrapped feature shows a musician’s most popular songs for the last year, the total number of streams, and the day that song was played the most. Another screen tells artists the total playtime for all their songs throughout the year. This data is once again interesting, but it doesn’t tell us much in terms of usefulness. Knowing how much money a song generated over the course of a year is more beneficial to an artist than knowing their audience spent 1,000 hours listening to that song. The same goes for the catalog as a whole.
Many artists, especially those with label deals, are splitting their royalties between numerous parties. Receiving a grand total for revenue from Spotify can help shed light on whether or not musicians are receiving the money they earned. It can also help them understand the value or promoting their music through Spotify.
