SONGPEOPLE.CO.UK LISTEN. RATE. WIN

Spotify announced this weekend at the Great Escape Festival that it will be sharing data with record labels in order to help those companies improve marketing and average revenue per user. This means that a user of the music streaming service who shows a particular interest in an artist may begin to receive promotions from that artist.  This could be a significant change infor this music industry.

The network’s found and chief executive, Daniel Ek, said at the Brighton festival: “We want to hand out consumer data we have to give to labels so they can target consumers better and communicate better. That is what’s lacking in the music industry. We need to get better at following the consumption of music.”

Ek went on to tell The Telegraph that the company has “real time insight” into consumer trends that will mean a great deal of assistance to the music industry, “such as which music is becoming popular across a range of countries and consumer groups.”

Users will have to opt in to having their listening habits shared with third parties, and a Spotify spokesperson confirmed to the Telegraph that any data sharing would certainly be “purely under user discretion.” Listener’s habits would be shared with both artists and recording labels.
The company has already signed provision agreements with some labels, including EMI, and it is known that some of these labels have taken equity stakes in Spotify, though details of individual agreements were not made available.  

Spotify users can stream music for free in exchange for listening to about a minute’s worth of advertising every half hour – though for a monthly charge of £9.99, listeners can by-pass the ads.  In addition to implementing this data sharing program, the network will also be launching a mobile service in the UK which will allow users to synch their mobile music players to their Spotify accounts.