Published on
October 22, 2023
Written by
Susant Swain
Spotify today is rolling out a big change in terms of how users connect with artists on its streaming music platform. With the newly debuted artist profile pages, content has been reorganized under three main tabs, including Music, Events and Merch. The Music tab will also now not only feature the artist’s tracks and albums, but also social features like Clips — short-form videos that let artists tell their own stories. And they can include fundraising links that allow artists to crowdsource financial support from partners like Cash App, Givealittle, GoFundMe, iyzico (a PayU company), Mercado Pago, PayPal.me, PayU and Music Relief organizations.
Artists can also use the Music tab to showcase their popular releases, featured playlists — including editorial, radio and algorithmic, like the “This is…” playlists — and their own Artist Pick. The latter can be anything important to the artist, including a release, playlist, show announcement, new merch or podcast. This pick will expire every six months to encourage artists’ to regularly update their profiles with fresh content.
Clips, meanwhile, are less than 30-second short videos, similar to Stories, that allow artists to offer a look behind the scenes or talk about their creative process. However, Spotify notes that Clips is still in beta testing and only some artists currently have access.
Image Credits: Spotify Clips
In addition, artists can include their bio on this tab, which can be up to 1,500 characters, and they can link out to their profiles on other platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, X or Wikipedia — similar to a Linktree collection.
Spotify will also leverage the profiles to introduce fans to other music they may like via a “Fans Also Like” feature and an “Appears On” section that highlights other albums and compilations the artist appears on, including as a songwriter or producer.
Image Credits: Spotify
Meanwhile, the Events tab lets fans purchase tickets to shows or tap the “Interested” button to get updates about shows coming to their area.
The ticket sales themselves are facilitated by Spotify’s third-party partners — a long list that includes big names like Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, AXS, Songkick and as well as other smaller partners, online brands and international sellers, including DICE, Gigantic, NoCap, nugs.net, Resident Advisor, See Tickets, StageIt, Ticketek, Tixr and Eplus (in Japan). Spotify notes that tests of its dedicated Events tab boosted engagement with concerts by 70% and drove a 15% increase in ticket sales.
Image Credits: Spotify
On the Merch tab, artists can show up to 12 of their merch items with the most recently listed items showing first. This is made possible through a partnership with Shopify, first announced in 2021, which lets artists sync selections from their product catalogs to Spotify’s app. The integration offers artists an additional revenue stream and could potentially encourage artists selling on their own websites to switch over to Shopify’s storefronts instead. By putting merch in its own tab, Spotify saw a 22% increase in purchases from users who visited an artist’s profile, it said.
The revamped profiles follow other artist-focused announcements introduced earlier this year at the company’s Stream On live event, where Spotify debuted new marketing tools for promoting releases and its TikTok-like video-centric Home feed, where fans are introduced to new music. The company said at the time it would also begin to showcase merch and events in other places throughout the app, to allow fans more access to these features, including through a Live Events Feed personalized to their tastes.
The new tab design is rolling out today, but only on Spotify’s mobile app, not desktop or web.
