How to Upload Music to Spotify

Spotify is the leading music streaming service worldwide, offering both major and independent labels and artists a place to promote their music. Spotify offers two models: Spotify users can either listen to music for free with audio advertisements in between tracks, or pay a subscription to remove the advertisements and access other Spotify premium features such as offline listening.

Either way, you make money every time someone streams your music. So how do you upload and sell your music on Spotify? Unfortunately, Spotify does not have direct deals with independent artists and labels, which is why you need to go through a digital music distributor like iMusician. No hustle, no paperwork, we save you time by distributing your music library on the widest range of streaming sites worldwide.

In the third quarter of 2022, the Swedish streaming platform reported 456 million monthly active Spotify users: 195 million of those users being paying subscribers of Spotify premium. The library contains over 80 million songs that can be found in four billion different Spotify playlists. The revenue paid to rights holders recently reached €8 billion. You can now get your music on Spotify in 184 countries including Brazil, Vietnam, Israel, and South Africa. The company made its debut on the New York stock market on April 3rd, 2018, with a share price set at $165.90. The company was then valued at $29.5 billion. In June 2020, the music streaming site’s value went up to $44.96 billion.

In 2018, Spotify launched “Spotify for Artists” – an online tool to help artists and record labels to manage and customize their artist profiles with biographies, pictures, social links, and more. Once an artist profile is ready to go, artists can start promoting their music directly and get into Spotify playlists to increase streams and revenue!

It’s easy to get your music on Spotify. But where do you start? It’s pretty simple – all you have to do is create a free account with iMusician and upload your music via your iMusician dashboard. We take care of the rest. There’s no catch or hidden costs. There’s no startup fee, no yearly fee, and you can cancel at any time.

To get your music online, all you have to do is:

• Create your iMusician account.
• Upload your album, single, or EP.
• That’s it – we’ve got you covered. Your music will be on Spotify soon.

Spotify has some specific guidelines and technical requirements that independent artists should take into consideration.

For remixes, if the original song is not yours, it will be necessary to obtain the authorization of the copyright owners of the original version (author, composer, publisher), and also the authorization of the owners of the audio recording of the original version (very often the record label that produced the track). Your track will be considered a remix if you have used part or all of the original recording. So if you want to upload your own interpretation of Lady Gaga's “Shallow”, or your remix-to-end-all-remixes of “Old Town Road”, in principle it's possible. Just make sure you have permission beforehand.

For cover versions, if the songwriters are not from the United States, you can distribute your release freely. However, the holders of the original rights always reserve the right to request the removal of your cover version. The situation is more formalized if the songwriters are from the United States. In this case, you will need to obtain a compulsory license from a collecting society (e.g. Songfile) with payments based on the number of units sold or streams played.

Your track will be considered a cover version if: your track is identical (lyrics, melody, basic arrangement) to the original version — with the difference being that you are the performer of that cover version. As soon as the lyrics, the melody, or the basic arrangement are changed, the song is not considered a cover. Rather, it becomes an adaptation or an edit that needs the clearance of the songwriters.

In a nutshell, these are the specific guidelines to upload your music to Spotify:

• You can only upload songs you own the master recording rights to
• A song with samples must have approval from its owners
• Covers are also allowed, as long as you have permission
• Check the specifications for your artwork, and only use those you have the right to
• Make sure your name is spelled correctly so it doesn’t wind up on different profiles. With iMusician you can directly give your Artist URI or, in case you still don’t have one, we create it for you.

Spotify is a platform for artistic expression. While everyone has the right to make their voice heard, there are certain requirements that must be met. Illegal, explicit, or hateful content has no place on the platform (or any platform for that matter) and can be removed or filtered from Spotify.

This includes:

• Content that is protected by copyright or royalties. This means if a copyrighted track is published without the consent of the copyright holders, or if a sample has not been cleared in advance with the owner of the sample.
• Hateful content which incites racial hatred, violence against individuals or communities.

At iMusician, we want to level the music streaming playing field for independent artists and record labels. We believe that everyone should have equal access to all streaming sites and music platforms. We make it easy for musicians and record labels to sell, manage, protect, and monetize their music across the world.

• iMusician distributes your music to Spotify plus a wide reach of global music platforms and popular regional shops.
• No matter where you are on your musical journey – we have a pricing plan to help ensure your music gets on Spotify.
• Your music stays online forever. No yearly or monthly fee to keep your tracks in stores.
• Get help and support in your language from our global Artist & Label Relations Managers.

With iMusician, we also make it easier for independent artists to submit a track for playlist consideration. If it’s your first release on Spotify, we allow you to select a release date that’s at least two weeks in the future. That should give you enough time to claim your artist profile and get your track submitted.