Spotify Letting Artists/Labels Promote Tracks in Recommendations

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch:

Spotify announced today it will begin to test a new service that gives artists more of a say in how their music is discovered on the Spotify platform. At launch, the service will allow artists and labels to identify music that’s a priority to them, and Spotify will then add a signal to help the music get surfaced by its personalization algorithms.

While the new service is not a paid promotion and requires no upfront budget on artists’ or labels’ part, Spotify says that the artists, labels and rights holders will agree to be paid a “promotional recording royalty rate” for streams where the company provides the service.