Spotify introduces free analytics to win over musicians

The Spotify Artists site provides musicians with an overview of how Spotify works, best practice tips on getting the most out of the service, as well as providing free listening data to all artists.

Spotify has teamed up with music analytics company Next Big Sound to offer this data, which includes information on how much the artists’ music is being listened to, their most popular songs, listener demographics and the social media activity of listeners.

According to an article in The Guardian, Spotify has been the subject of criticism from a number of high-profile musicians this year, who have questioned the benefits of streaming in supporting the music industry.

“The position we take is look, we know Spotify is not perfect for all artists yet, but this is the theory behind it, this is where we are, and this is where we’re going,” Spotify’s director of artist services, Mark Williamson, told The Guardian ahead of the Artists site launch.

“With any format change in music – CD and iTunes included – there’s a lot of confusion around how these different models work, and quite often some serious scepticism. We understand that’s out there, so we want to be as clear and transparent as we possibly can in explaining how Spotify fits in.”