How Spotify are bringing attention to the people behind the music as well as the artists
With the digital equivalent of liner notes and artist pages just for songwriters, Spotify’s Head of Songwriter and Publishing Relations talks spotlighting the creatives behind the music.
It’s easy to look at an artist, the person who sings or plays their music and represents the face of it, as all there is. But behind the music you hear there are often whole groups of people getting no recognition: songwriters, producers, session musicians, engineers, and others.
Spotify have been making an effort to give credit where it’s due to everyone involved in making the music happen in recent years. In 2018 they added ‘Credits’ to music so that listeners can see who performs on each tracks, who the songwriters are behind lyrics and melodies, and producers who have helped polish or even create the sound from scratch.
Then earlier this year Spotify introduced songwriter pages where listeners can easily explore and listen to all of the music that a songwriter has created and written whether it’s their own or for other artists. These songwriters also gain a ‘Written By’ playlist that lets users dive into listening to a songwriter’s creations.
Spotify’s Head of Songwriter and Publishing Relations, Jules Parker has spoken in a new post about how they want to highlight these behind-the-scenes creators more.
There’s a long-standing perception of a solo songwriter pitching their songs to other people. This can happen—and of course, many artists write and record their own songs—but the reality today is that you generally get in a room with an artist and write a song together, then and there. (Or alternatively, you’ll swap tracks and toplines over email and write the song virtually—all too common these days).
So it’s all about networking and collaborating—and that’s where publishers come in. A publisher looks to connect artists with songwriters and other creative opportunities. Plus, these days there are even more opportunities for songwriters to transition to also be successful recording artists—like Julia Michaels, Benny Blanco, and more.
At Spotify, we’re now giving publishers and writers more ways to help unlock opportunities via analytic and songwriter tools. These will, long term, help support both up-and-coming and established writers because they’ll have more information, leading to better connections and networks. Through our Publishing Analytics, publishers and teams can access next-day song and writer stats based on accurate data, and through our songwriting camps and free-to-use studio spaces, writers and artists can pair up to create something new.
They hope that they not only bring these talents to light who are too-often forgotten as background characters in the light of whoever the face of the music is, but also hope that they can drive the discovery of songwriters and producers by showing people their versatile work and getting listeners discovering new music that they might not have know an artist they loved was involved in.
Currently Songwriter pages are available only for a select few artists however it seems that Spotify are looking to continue expanding these features and hopefully there will be more songwriter pages and new ways to explore everyone who is involved in the music we love soon.