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Universal Music Group announced Thursday (March 28) that its artists will soon be able to publish unreleased music on Spotify.
Sharing snippets of unreleased songs on social media has been one of the most popular promotion methods for artists in the TikTok era (sometimes to the chagrin of songwriters). Often times, artists haven't even finished writing the song they're making fun of. But fan enthusiasm can cause these snippets of music to go viral, especially on his TikTok, prompting artists to rush to write another verse, record the entire song, and release it as soon as possible. Masu. We hope to have an enthusiastic reception.
Universal Music Group's announcement is notable because it comes as the company's conflict with TikTok nears the end of its second month. Official recordings of UMG acts are currently not available on the app. (The same is true for many, but not all, songs that feature contributions from UMPG songwriters.) Most of his UMG artists continue to use the app as a social tool to communicate with their followers. However, your ability to promote your music on TikTok is severely limited.
Teasing songs on Spotify represents a potential alternative to these practices. “We are excited to expand our relationship with Spotify by introducing new content offerings and collaborations that bring an even deeper 'social music' experience to the platform,” Lucian Grainge, chairman and CEO of UMG, said in a statement. ”
“Future features will give artists and their teams more power to truly express themselves and streamline their work,” said Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify. “This will allow us to promote and increase the monetization of art.”
UMG did not say when artists could start sharing pre-release snippets on the platform. It's also unclear how actively Spotify users seek out pre-release music on the streaming service. Many users prefer a more passive form of engagement.
TikTok, by contrast, excels at attracting people who see fandom as a participatory sport: people who comment on unreleased demos and create their own remixes. The app is often a popular source of music discovery, especially for younger listeners.
Midia Research found that TikTok is the second biggest music discovery driver for Gen Z after YouTube. According to a study by Luminate released in November, U.S. TikTokers are “nearly twice as likely to discover music on short-form video platforms than the average user of social or social-style video platforms.” That's what it means.
Spotify is where many of these listeners go to listen to the full songs they discover on TikTok. To make this process even smoother, TikTok last year released a new feature that lets users quickly save the music they discover on the platform to Spotify and other streaming services.
But Spotify executives have been eager to tout streamers' ability to drive discovery themselves. “There's a disconnect between where music is being teased and where music is actually being streamed,” Surinna Ong, global editorial director at Spotify, said at the company's Stream On event in 2023. He spoke at Like when they opened Spotify, they chose to be involved in music. ”
At the same event, Spotify co-president Gustav Soderstrom said, “Spotify recommendations drive nearly half of all user streams.” “Every time your music is played on a playlist like Release Radar, on average he will receive three times as many streams from that listener over the next six months,” he added. Ta. “And if a listener decides to follow you, on average he will listen to five times more music.” This recommendation system allows Spotify to create “a fleeting moment of viral fame.” We are different from the platforms we provide.
UMG also announced Thursday that its publishing division has signed a deal with Spotify, allowing the platform to share music videos in the United States. Spotify's Music Videos launched in beta for premium users in 11 countries in early March, but was not available in the United States. At the time, Charlie Hellman, Spotify's vice president and head of music products, called video “an important part of so many artists' toolkits.”
“It's only natural that they live in the same places that more than 500 million people choose to listen to music,” Hellman added in a statement.