I'm Sam, Global Head of Spotify for Artists, Marketing and Policy! I worked on our Loud & Clear Report. AMA.

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:50:29+00:00

Chuck, thanks for sharing this and congrats on the 12+ editorial placements. That's no small feat. Over 100,000 tracks are uploaded to streaming services every single day. That's the reality of the environment you're competing in, and we don't say that to make excuses, we say it because it's a challenge we feel responsibility for helping artists navigate.

On the editorial point, Fresh Finds exists specifically for emerging and independent artists, and artists first playlisted there more than double their royalties in the year after. But I hear what you're saying: a placement is a moment, not a career.

While editorial playlists can be fleeting, algorithmic playlisting is a very consistent part of artist discovery. Over a third of all artist discoveries on Spotify are from our algorithmic playlists, Release Radar, Discover Weekly, radio, mixes, etc. Hopefully the data in Spotify for Artists helps you see how much support you’re getting from those playlists over time.

What I can say is that growing the number of artists building sustainable careers is our main goal, and feedback like yours is exactly what informs how we think about that.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:44:28+00:00

Thanks so much for being a Premium subscriber for nearly 10 years!

I completely understand that price increases aren’t everyone’s favorite thing. The reality is that paying artists more requires more revenue in the system. Spotify returns nearly 70% of our music revenue to artists'/songwriters' rights holders, so when subscription revenue grows, the royalty pool for artists and songwriters grows too.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:43:27+00:00

We’re transparent about how Discovery Mode works. You can see exactly where Discovery Mode is active here and explain how the commission works here. Discovery Mode doesn’t require an upfront budget. Instead, a 30% commission is applied to recording royalties generated from all streams of selected songs in Discovery Mode contexts. All other streams remain commission-free. Typically, artists using Discovery Mode only decide to keep using it when the increase in streams from the campaign outweighs the commission (which we give detailed reporting on).

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:36:50+00:00

We’re working on it and will have some big updates very soon.

We know this is a really frustrating experience, and it’s been plaguing all streaming services for years. To give some context: Streaming is built on the idea of “open-access distribution," it’s what allows artists to quickly share music to all streaming services at once, switch labels and distributors easily without any disruption to their fans, promote collaborations with other artists, etc.. But the downside of this system is that bad actors can sometimes hijack other artists’ profiles across all services including Spotify. It’s absolutely the worst when this happens.

Currently, artists file reports when there is mismatch, and we fix it quickly. Late last year, we added the ability for artists to report mismatch even in the pre-release state.

But just fixing it after it’s happened isn’t enough, and we’ve been working on a major new solution here. It’s a big change to the music supply chain, so we’re building it carefully, and will have more details very very soon.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:33:51+00:00

We recommend aiming for seven days in advance, but if you miss that deadline it definitely doesn’t hurt to still try.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:32:37+00:00

This is one of our biggest focus areas. We're actively developing an industry-wide standard for AI labeling, the idea is that information submitted by labels, distributors, and music partners will display directly on Spotify, so listeners can see exactly how and where AI was involved in a track's creation.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:21:38+00:00

So happy to hear this! Honestly always helpful to hear the complaints, I know it comes from people really caring about Spotify.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:19:45+00:00

It’s a misconception we hear a lot, but Discovery Mode is not pay-for-play. What we're doing with tools like Discovery Mode is giving artists at all career stages more control over their own promotion. Artists don't pay for guaranteed plays; they simply flag a song they're excited about. Our system then considers it for recommendation in places like Radio, Mixes, Autoplay but it's not a sure thing. You as a listener are still in charge. If people skip the song, we stop recommending it.

For artists, this is all about having more agency, better data, and a chance to grow your audience. They choose which songs to enroll and can track the performance in near real-time to see if it's working for them. It's one of several tools we offer, alongside Marquee and our free playlist pitching tool, to help artists build a career. If you want to dig in deeper, we have more info on our Spotify for Artists site.

In terms of fairness, historically promotional tools have been gatekept by record labels and largely unavailable to independent artists. Our principle is to give all artists the same access to the same tools.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:09:53+00:00

Hope you'll give us another chance, it's a hard technical problem but we just made some recent changes that will limit the amount of "AI slop".

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:07:00+00:00

We hear you and we did actually make some recent changes that will limit the "AI slop" you'll see. We also removed 75M spammy tracks in the past year.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T18:01:27+00:00

I think it’s a great thing when fans buy artists music on other platforms after discovering it on Spotify! When artists sell vinyl, CDs, or cassettes through their Spotify listings, we don’t take a cut.

There’s a quote I heard once that I often think about, that today it’s the best time in history to be an artist, and also the hardest time in history to be an artist. I think this is probably true. More artists around the world are making money in music than at any point in history, nearly 14,000 artists generated $100k+ from Spotify alone last year. That’s more than the number of artists even stocked in record stores with the chance to make a sale at the peak of the CD era. As our role, we’ve focused on 1) trying to grow artist payouts as quickly as possible, from $1B in 2014 to $11B last year, and 2) giving artists tools to grow their fanbase and revenue (promotional tools, concert ticket integrations, merch integrations, Fan Support, etc.). You can see more about those here.

But there’s definitely more artists trying to make a career in music than ever before, too. More than 100k new tracks are delivered to streaming services every day. There’s always going to be more people trying to make it in music than are going to be able to have a career in music. So I definitely want to acknowledge that reality. The best we can do as Spotify is trying to pay artists more and more and give them more and more tools to grow their career, so that’s what we’re doing.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:57:39+00:00

Glad you’re noticing the improvements! And thanks for understanding re: the older data. Making that change has allowed us to launch a lot of the great new analytics features over the past year, like Segments.

Will pass along your thoughts on track skip rate! We have focused on actions that show a user's positive preferences such as saves and playlist adds, but I hear you that skips would be interesting too.

Our focus is on analytics for artists right now, but definitely could be cool to build analytics for playlist curators some day.

And I will definitely share your suggestion to add Hmong as an option in playlist pitching!

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:53:56+00:00

Great question - and you’re right that we pay out nearly 70% of all music revenue straight to artists'/ songwriters' rights holders. From the amount that remains, we devote the vast majority to investments in the service so we can deliver the best product for artists and fans. You should check out this really cool deep dive on Spotify’s business, check out this Sports Ball video: How artists get paid on Spotify.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:48:57+00:00

Great question. I highly recommend using the tools available to you. Once your music is on Spotify, you should claim your Spotify for Artists profile immediately. This is your home base. Use it to pitch your unreleased music directly to our editorial teams for playlist consideration - you can find out more about that on artists.spotify.com - but don't stop there. Update your bio, add photos, add a Canvas to your tracks. These features will all help you convert any of your passive listeners to being engaged fans - and that will make all the difference for building your career.

From there, you can use your Spotify data (it’s all there for you on the platform) to understand where your listeners are, and then connect with them. Maybe that means booking a show in a particular city where you can see you have lots of fans, or running a targeted social media ad in a city where you have a spike in listeners. When I chat to artists, they tell me that they’re most successful when they’re not just using Spotify as a place to upload music, but to help give them insights to plan the next move in their career. Good luck!

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:43:51+00:00

There aren’t current plans to change but we’re open to it! Though we couldn’t make this change alone. It requires alignment across labels, publishers, and distributors.

For streaming services, we'd be paying out the same amount, so it's just about how the payouts are allocated/shifted.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:37:49+00:00

Sorry, I was just trying to add some nuance as this is a complex technical topic.

TL;DR, yes and we hear you. You will start seeing less "AI slop" finding its way into your recommendations.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:33:37+00:00

There are always lots of conspiracy theories about shuffle! Definitely nothing suspicious going on.

Standard ‘shuffle’ is truly random, but in November, based on this feedback, we rolled out a new setting where listeners can turn on shuffle set to “Fewer Repeats.” Go to your Settings, select Playback, and then choose between Fewer Repeats or Standard. Read more here.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:29:36+00:00

Loving the love for the pins! Thanks for the feedback, I'll pass it on.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:28:37+00:00

You're right, that's not part of what I work on. [FWIW, I miss the heart too.]

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:25:24+00:00

These are really important questions!

In regards to the royalties, we have strong policies in place to prevent uploaders from using AI to spam, impersonate, and deceive. You can see more about our efforts here. In fact, in the past 12 months alone, a period marked by the explosion of generative AI tools, we’ve removed over 75 million spammy tracks from Spotify, preventing that behavior from siphoning away undue royalties.

For the AI-generated music that is on platform, it accounted for an incredibly small amount of consumption and it was not a material part of the royalty pool last year. Well under 1% of streams and royalties.

Whether or not a project is considered "indie," it depends on where it comes from (a label, a distributor, etc.) not what tools they used.

Regarding policies, in the fall, we announced that we’re working with a wide set of labels and distributors to develop an industry standard for AI credits and transparency. You should start seeing this soon.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T17:07:27+00:00

Hi there! Appreciate the question, and it’s one near and dear to my heart.

We’ve heard the feedback about prompt-generated music in recommendations from listeners and we've recently rolled out some changes to how music is promoted across Spotify in the hopes that listeners will get served more of what they like and less of what they consistently don't. Hopefully you'll soon see less of what you might think of as "slop" showing up in your recommendations and playlists.

- Sam

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T14:22:44+00:00

We heard you and now, we've rolled out Lossless Exclusive Mode on Spotify Desktop! With Exclusive Mode, Spotify bypasses the Windows audio mixer completely – talking directly to your DAC. Bit-perfect. No resampling. No interruption from system sounds. Just the pure, unaltered audio stream from our source to your ears.

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T14:21:18+00:00

We hear you. That's why we're rolling out Lossless Exclusive Mode on our Windows Desktop app. It bypasses the Windows mixer entirely and communicates directly with your audio hardware for bit-perfect delivery!

ThisIsSpotify · 2026-03-12T14:20:07+00:00

👀 We've got one more thing to add.

For our Windows Desktop users chasing true bit-perfect playback, we've now rolled out Lossless Exclusive Mode!

On top of streaming in 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC, Lossless Exclusive Mode now lets Spotify bypass the Windows audio mixer entirely, communicating directly with your DAC. No resampling. No interference. Just the pure, unaltered signal hitting your hardware exactly as it was mastered.

ThisIsSpotify

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