What did Spotify announce at Stream On 2023? - New features for artists and listeners

What did Spotify announce at Stream On 2023? – New features for artists and listeners

By Tom NewmanMarch 13, 202313 mins read

Spotify just wrapped up their 2023 Stream On event. Their second conference, live from LA, introduced plenty of new features!

What did you miss at Spotify’s second live Stream On event? Here are all of the top details for artists, podcasters, authors and listeners. Keep an eye on the RouteNote Blog, to stay up-to-date with all of the latest news from the event and more.

The stats from Spotify Stream On 2023

The show started when CEO Daniel Ek took to the stage, in front of an audience filled with creators. The floor was later occupied by various other Spotify heads, artists and podcasters. The show wasn’t short of Spotify and wider music industry stats and figures:

“Today, there are over 10 million creators on Spotify.”
“We recently passed half a billion monthly listeners across 184 countries and markets.”
“Looking ahead, our ambition is to have 1 billion users by 2030.”
“In fact, that community [subscribers] is now over 200 million strong.”
“More artist are making a living off their music than at any other time in recorded music history.”
“We estimate that even the 50th thousand most streamed artist on Spotify generated more than $50,000 across all recorded revenue sources.”
“Spotify’s pay out to the music industry, since our founding, is approaching $40 billion.
“The single biggest source of revenue for the entire music industry.”
“Gone from just about 10 million podcast listeners in 2018 to more than 100 million today.”
“In 2022 alone, 165 of our own productions, meaning our original and exclusive series, hit number 1 on the charts across 99 markets.“
“Spotify has four of the top five biggest [podcast] hits worldwide.“

The new redesigned main Spotify feed

Outside of the numbers, Spotify gave updates to their features for listeners and artists. Most notably, this includes a redesigned app interface, with an emphasis on music discovery and video.

Recommendations drive close to half of all streams on Spotify. Each time your music gets played on a programmed playlist, you receive on average 3x more streams from that listener over the next 6 months. If a listener follows you, they listen to on average 5x more of your music. Spotify have been testing a discover feed for over year now, with an announcement of a TikTok-like, vertical-scrolling feed of songs and Canvas videos back in April last year.

Now, Spotify are taking this discovery-focused feature to the main home page, with plenty of emphasis on how they encourage full-track streams, which leads to sustainable artist careers, over small, meme-y, viral moments as on short-form video platforms like TikTok (without specifically naming them). This comes alongside another new feature – Showcase, which looks to be a promotional tool to boost your content in the new feed.

What is Spotify Discovery Mode?

Spotify says that 33% of new artist discoveries happen in Made for You sessions. Spotify Discovery Mode was briefly mentioned on stage at the last Stream On event. Since then, select labels and distributors have had access to the feature, allowing them to boost select songs in Spotify’s algorithm. Tests have shown 50% more saves, a 44% increase in user playlist adds, and lead to a 37% increase in follows, within the first month of Discovery Mode-enabled tracks.

While there’s still no date of a full rollout, Discovery Mode is coming to Spotify for Artists for select artists. The screenshot shown on stage gives some further details on the payment structure: “A 30% commission is applied to recording royalties generated from all streams of the selected track URIs in Discovery Mode contexts. Today those are Spotify Radio and Autoplay. All other streams are commission-free.”

While a lower pay rate and the almost ‘pay-to-win’ approach is likely to cause controversy, initial tests look positive and giving artists the options to opt-in is a good move.

Spotify update Loud & Clear with 2022 stats

Spotify also announced their annual update to the Loud & Clear report. This is Spotify’s public look at how revenue flows within the music streaming service. This included a shout-out to independent distributors like us and independent artists like you:

This is a global Renaissance, providing artists more options to build their careers, whether they’re on major labels, indie labels or independently distributed. Of these 57,000 artists [earning +$10k on Spotify], over 20,000 live outside the top 10 music markets and a quarter of them self-release their music through an independent distributor. Artists who in the past might have struggled to find opportunities, are now finding their audiences and making a living. Our global reach, combined with our programming is creating space for all new types of artists to find an audience and turn them into fans.
Sulinna Ong, Global Head of Editorial, Spotify

You can find all of the 2022 Loud & Clear data here.

Changes coming to podcasts on Spotify

There are a couple of changes coming to Spotify’s podcast platform too for creators. Previously, creators would likely work across Anchor, Spotify for Podcasters and Megaphone to make, distribute, monetize and track analytics of their shows. Spotify are now combining all of these tools into Spotify for Podcasters.

Spotify are also partnering with Patreon. Podcasters can now offer Patreon exclusive content to listeners on Spotify.

What else was announced at Spotify Stream On 2023

Spotify says, over 80% of pre-savers stream the release within the first week. The Jonas Brothers came on stage for a total of (and this is no exaggeration) 40 seconds, to talk about Countdown Pages. Countdown Pages adds a countdown timer to the album page of an upcoming release.

On top of the numbers and new features above, Spotify also touched on the following:

DJ – AI-powered radio feature
Smart Shuffle – adds similar tracks to the playlist currently playing, into your queue.
Audiobooks – continuing to develop the feature
Spotify Clips – short video clips, for artists to give a behind-the-scenes look
Autoplay For Podcasts – plays similar shows at the end of an episode
Merch & Tours – serving merch and tour dates in more places on the app