MOODY signs to Universal Music!

Updated October 19, 2017 

Spotify is without a doubt the giant of the music streaming world, and a very good friend to artists (signed and unsigned) worldwide. One of the things we love most about Spotify, is their artists-only tool Spotify For Artists.

As a music service but also a tech company Spotify is constantly evolving so we have put together our one-stop-shop for understanding Spotify For Artists, which we will continue to update each time there is a new feature added to the service.

In this article we will explain: 

• What Spotify For Artists Is
• How To Get Verified on Spotify
• How to edit your Spotify artist profile & bio
• How to add team members to your Spotify For Artists account
• What data you can find in your account

Getting verified on Spotify is now easier than ever!

Spotify is very important to us here at Spinnup – it is one of the major online retailers we distribute to, and we collect important Spotify trend data which is displayed in every artist account under ‘Stats & Activity‘ to help artists gauge how their releases are performing from day one. Plus they started in Sweden, just like us!

Lately Spotify has been going through some changes, which can have an impact on each and every one of you, both as artists and as listeners. So if you find yourself asking, “what’s new with Spotify? And how will it affect me?” Well, we got you covered.

Fan Insights / Spotify For Artists

Back in late 2015 we told you all about Spotify’s beta version of Fan Insights, but now *drumroll please* Fan Insights has been renamed ‘Spotify for Artists‘ and is available to all artists!

In the two years since Spotify launched data tools for artists, they have been talking (and listening) to artists and management teams all over the world to optimise this aspect of their service and make it as useful as possible.

Spotify describes the reincarnation of their data tool as “a one-stop shop designed to guide you through Spotify.” What they mean by this is Spotify for Artists will help you access improved audience insights, song data and play listing information

This helps you get to know your fans better by finding out where they live, how old they are, what features they’re using to discover your music, and what other artists they are listening to. Just read the testimonials of artists who have used the new Spotify data to make more informed touring and release decisions, which means you can too. 

As well as improving their data insights tools, it is now easier than ever to manage your Spotify artist profile and…

Get Verified!

No longer do you have to wait until you have 250 followers to even be able to apply for verification. Instead, now all you need to do is have access to Spotify for Artists!

If you don’t already have access to Spotify for artists, click here and follow the steps to access your account.

But if you’re already verified don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything to keep the pretty blue tick on your profile. The new verification system means you’ll use Spotify for Artists to add and remove playlists from your profile, but use your personal account to create and edit them.

What does this mean for existing verified artists?

• You will keep your verification and all playlists will remain
• You will now add and remove playlists in Spotify for Artists, but you create and edit them from your personal account, like always
• If you’re using Fan Insights, you need to switch to using Spotify for Artists

What if I’m not verified?

• You can become verified really easily, simply by accessing Spotify for Artists, no more 250 followers!
• You will need to add/remove playlists in Spotify for Artists, but create and edit them from your personal account
• You may need to wait a few weeks for the blue tick to appear on your profile.

Artist Profile & Bio 

Now that you’re a bonafide and verified Spotify artist you are able to freely edit your public profile! Get your creative hats on because now you can update your artist image as often as you change your outfit – sounds like a lot of work, but each to their own! You can also show people what music you’re jamming to by choosing your ‘artist’s pick’ that sits at the top of your profile, and add playlists – either ones you’ve created or your favourites that you want to share with your fans.

In September 2017 Spotify announced that artists can now directly edit their artist bio, which was previously unavailable. This is a great place to let fans know more about you or your band, and convey your personality, creativity or sense of humour. Have fun with it, but don’t go too overboard!

Electronic musician Caribou keeps his bio short and sweet, but is a nice touch!

 How to edit your artist bio, step by step: 

1. Go to your Spotify For Artists profile and scroll down to ‘Artist Bio’
2. Write your amazing, brilliant, creative, thoughtful bio in 1500 words or less
3. Add links to your music, music you feature on, playlists – anything on Spotify! Just use the ‘@’ symbol to look up playlists, artists or albums
4. If you have a Wikipedia page (if not, why not create one? It’s free and easy!) you can add a link to that here.

Team Members 

In September 2017 Spotify added an extra feature to Spotify For Artists, allowing artists to add team members to their account. Being a musician is a tough business, and having a team around you to support and grow your career goes a long way to helping you become a success! Now your team can help you even more by accessing your data and profile.

All artists can add team members to their Spotify For Artists account in three different access levels:

• Full Access – users that you grant complete access to all your features, including artist profile, stats, and the ability to invite and edit team members
  Recommended for: Band members, managers 

• Edit Access – these users can update your artist profile, view streaming stats, invite new team members for edit or view access, and view all members and their contact information
  Recommended for: Booking agent, promoter, publicist 

• View Access – these guys can view your streaming stats only
  Recommended for: producers, collaborators 

How do I add Team Members?

To add as many members as you would like to your team, simply signup or login to Spotify For Artists, and click the arrow next to your name. In the dropdown menu select ‘Manage Team’, which opens a page where you can input email addresses for the lucky few you will give access to, and set the access level for each.

Spotify Data

It’s no secret that here at Spinnup we love data, and lots of it. Which is why we were so excited to hear that Spotify has added even more data and analytics to the Spotify For Artists platform. You can read all the info about it here, or read below of a breakdown of what you can expect in your own SFA account.

• Stats for all songs – no longer do you have to earn 1000 streams to see your data, now you will se absolutely all of it for your top 200 songs. Don’t have 200 songs yet? Well what are you waiting for? Get recording!
• Time filters – you can now view your data by 7 days, 28 days (so 4 weeks, really), or two years! The reason this is so useful is that it will give you the chance to see if any big pushes (think PR cycle, a particular gig, social media campaign etc) really made an impact to your fans and streams.
• Follower data – your followers are your super fans, the ones who love your music so much they want to be notified every time you release something new. In your SFA account you now have a Follower Timeline to be able to track, and hopefully grow your follower count. More followers = more fans = more streams… you get the picture.

 

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There is so much on offer here for you to take advantage of, so access Spotify for Artists and explore the full rundown of new features on the Spotify blog.

A few weeks ago our friends at Abbey Road Studios showed us something very special they were working on – their first ever app!

Called Topline, the brand new app is designed for artists and songwriters of all genres to help them catch their musical ideas instantly and precisely, sketching the beginning of a song as it happens. We’ve put it to the test and can say with certainty that this will change the way you make your music.

We know very well just how many voice note recordings artists have on their phones as they try and get down that melody that just came to them, or the lyrics that popped into their heads. And the most annoying part? Trying to share all those voice notes with your band members, producers or collaborators.

With Topline you can share files easily, sing over imported tracks, add lyrics, tags and pictures, find previous work at speed, and always have space for new ideas by synching songs to your favourite cloud (Google Drive, Dropbox etc.)

The app officially launched this week, but Spinnup artists Bloom and duo Indigo Palace (J Francis & Dee 93) were given special early access, allowing them to download and demo the app in advance.

We joined Bloom and the Indigo Palace guys at the launch event at Abbey Road Studios this week, where they showed off the app to the UK’s music media, demonstrating how they’ve come to use the app for their music over the last few weeks.

We spent the day in Abbey Road’s new studio The Gatehouse, where in between interviews Bloom and Indigo Palace made use of Topline and the impressive studio equipment to write and record a new song together!

 

 

You can read more about Topline here, and download for iOs from the App Store. It is currently only available in the UK app store, but will be available worldwide very soon!

Make sure you check out BLOOM and Indigo Palace’s latest releases below, and you never know, you might just see their collaboration live in stores soon!

BLOOM – Millenial Tides EP 

Indigo Palace – Dial EP 

 

Attention all Spinnup music makers! We want to let you know that the Spinnup artist site will be down for the whole day on September 27, 2017.

The reason we’re going offline is that we are making some much needed updates to the Spinnup service that we know you’re going to love!

While we would love to spill the beans and fill you in on all that now, we’re going to leave you in anticipation for just a little longer! Stay tuned to your inbox on the blog for our new feature announcements.

As a part of our exciting upgrade our systems will be slower than normal for about two weeks before September 27th, and one week after. If you are planning on releasing your next project around this time, we recommend allowing up to 15 business days for your release to go live in stores. We recommend making any time sensitive releases before September 13th to avoid any potential delays. We apologise for any inconvenience, and hope that this doesn’t affect your release schedule.

We will be back up and running as per normal – scratch that, BETTER than normal – very soon. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team.

Spinnup HQ ✌🏽

The summer is ending and the cold is on it’s way back to us… But don’t worry too much, because Spinnup is working hard to get the best offers for our artists out there so you can spend more money on getting warm instead!

Spinnup artists always receive a 10% discount on all purchases from Cover Art Factory, but during the whole month of September our artists will get a huge raise to a 30% discount on everything on Cover Art Factory.

Cover Art Factory offers a huge range of pre-made cover art designs you can choose from and customize by uploading a photo and entering your art and title information. Two days later you have your own professional looking artwork!

They also have premium a Custom Made Design feature where you can pay to have a designer custom make unique artwork specifically for your release. Read their page on how the process works for more information.

Creating a release means having the whole package – a great track AND good looking artwork. We’ve had great reviews from the numerous Spinnup artists who have used the service in the past. Make sure you take advantage of this special offer, as it will only last until the end of our free release period on March 3rd, 2017.

To receive 30% off all products at coverartfactory.com, use code SPINNUP30 at checkout. 

 

August was Kimberly month here at Spinnup with one of our Swedish Scouts, Kimberly, taking over our Spotify and sharing on our Instagram for the first Scout Takeover.

We introduced you to Kimberly at the beginning of August, finding out how she became a Scout and what music she’s loving at the moment. Over the last month we’ve gotten to know her music tastes better with weekly playlist updates featuring artists such as Flume, Blood Orange, Khalid, SZA and Maala. Through her work as a Scout she also uncovered and featured Spinnup artists Julian Maverick, Isak Danielson, Celéste, Mako Road and MIKI. 

With more pushes coming in to her account than usual, you guys must have loved Kimberly’s work as much as we have!

 

Before we let Kimberly get back to her normal life, we had a chat to recap her Scout Takeover and find out how to best get her attention as an artist.

How did you enjoy being the first Scout to ‘take over’?

I feel that the Scout Takeover month is a great way for the artists to get to know us, scouts, a bit better and what kind of music we enjoy. So, I was more than happy to be the first one!

What’s your favourite song you added to your playlist?

My favourite song added on my playlist has to be Bittersweet Symphony; I never get tired of that intro.

Way Out West. I love this festival. This year is one heavy line-up! 🌟🙌🏼 #ScoutTakeover

A post shared by Spinnup (@spinnup) on Aug 11, 2017 at 1:06pm PDT

Did you discover any new Spinnup artists over the month?

Spinnup’s duo EASY FREAK is literally right now my favourite discovery. I love their sound!

What’s next for you?

School’s just started and I am excited about it (as well as terrified) being the last year! I am also working on my own music and hopefully, I will put something out there really soon for people to hear.

What’s your key piece of advice for Spinnup artists wanting to get your attention?

To really get my attention I want to hear something exciting and unique! Another thing I also look into is the effort you as an artist put on promoting your music. I like when you have a profile where you as a listener can get a sense of what kind of vibe you as an artist have, by that I mean a great bio and the visuals, like for instance your artwork; it really connects everything and makes it into a ‘whole’.

 

We’ll be choosing another one of our Scouts to do a Scout Takeover soon, could they be from your country? Stay tuned.

 

There is literally nothing that makes us happier than when one of our Spinnup artists gets discovered and signed to Universal Music, and this week our 33rd artist has been signed, Denmark’s MOODY!

MOODY (real name Josefine Moody) first came to our attention in 2016 with the release of her first EP on Spinnup, Golden Souls. Since then she has won popular Danish talent competition DR KarriereKanonen, been signed to Universal Music Denmark and released her debut major label release, ‘Karma‘.

But before we get into all of that, exactly who is MOODY?

Started at 5 years old

Music has always held a special place in the heart of 22-year-old Moody, starting to write her own songs at the tender age of five years old. Jump forward 16 years to 2016 when Moody began to follow a career in music with great determination, setting herself up with the right software to begin producing her own music to accompany the songs she had been writing for years.

Moody says:

“I could do whatever I wanted. It’s awesome! I don’t really have any musical background, and I think that made it a whole lot easier, because I just listened and felt what I think sounded good.

It came from inside my soul somehow. And it’s just a f*cking great feeling to be able to create something yourself. From scratch. I’ll never get tired of that.”

Since beginning to produce and release her own music, life has been moving in fast forward up for the singer/songwriter/producer. From releasing on Spinnup in November 2016, to winning KarriereKanoonen and being signed, all within the space about 9 months!

Stream Moody’s new single “Karma” below. Not a Spotify user? Listen to Karma on your preferred music service here moody.lnk.to/karma.

As you all well know, our worldwide network of Scouts is one of the most important parts of Spinnup. Without them we’d be… well we’d be like every other distribution service out there. Our Scouts volunteer their time to Spinnup, lending their ears and expertise to our artists giving them feedback to help them improve as a musician and navigate the industry. But what else do they do outside of Spinnup? What music do they listen to in their own headphones, what do they do for fun?

To answer all of this and more we’re introducing the Scout Takeover, where one Scout will ‘take over’ our Spotify and Instagram for a full month. First up is one of our new Scouts from Sweden, Kimberly! As a Scout for Swedish artists, Kimberly is also one of special International Scouts which means she is pushed releases from artists all over the world in countries that don’t have their own local Scout team.

But that’s just one part of what she does… read our interview with Kimberly below and make sure to follow her Scout Takeover playlist to see what tracks she is loving right now, which will be updated each week for the whole of August. Who knows, she might just come across your release to add to her playlist. She’ll also be taking over our Instagram adding photos and stories from her summer escapades!

 

Spinnup: Hi Kimberly, thanks for being our first scout to ‘takeover’! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Kimberly: For as long as I can remember music has always been a part of who I am. During my younger years, I competed in song contests and performed at every social event I could. From the age of four, I was constantly engaged in activities where singing and dancing played a big part. Ever since music has always been my greatest interest and passion.

Now that I’m a grown up (kind of) I have been working towards getting into the PR in the industry, so I chose to study media and communication science; to get the development I need to break into the field.

Outside of the time I put in being a Scout (of course!), I love hanging out with my friends and family here in Sweden. But at almost all times you will always see me with my headphones on!

S: How long have you been a Spinnup Scout?

K: I joined the Scout team in May of this year, but  already I have stumbled upon a lot of great music and cool artists the world needs to hear! Make sure you check out Isak Danielson, Leo The Kid and Mos Isley!

S: What made you want to be a Scout?

K: Finding new sounds and unique artists is something I put a lot of effort into and something I truly enjoy doing. But I also wanted to find a way to do this and incorporate my existing experience and skills in music and PR to help artists reach their dreams!

S: What’s your favourite track you’ve come across on Spinnup so far?

K: That’s a tough one, but I would have to say ”Ingen som” by MIKI. It’s currently on the Scout Picks playlist on Spotify.

S: What’s your favourite genre of music?

K: Oh that’s tough – every kind of music that grabs my attention from the get-go really! Whether it’s funky rhythms or a soulful voice.

S: What kind of tunes can we expect to hear on your playlist this month?

K: It will be eclectic for sure. Everything from smoky soul, rhythm & blues through to electronic poppin’ sounds and Hip-Hop. Tunes that will definitely make your heart and body feel some sort of way. Basically anything that I like!

S: What else will you be up to during your Scout Takeover?

K: I will be updating my Scout Takeover playlist each week for the month of August, but you will also get to follow me on Spinnup’s Instagram. You will be joining me when I visit Way Out West festival in Gothenburg (my favourite Swedish festival), the school’s kick-off and perhaps get a glimpse of my own music project!

Make sure you listen to Kimberly’s Scout Takeover playlist, and follow Spinnup on Instagram to see what else she gets up to during her Scout Takeover!

A couple of weeks ago we announced our new signing Milwin, but we thought it was about time we got to know him a little better, and find out just how he came to be signed.

Milwin had been a Spinnup artist for a few years, even since the release of his first single ‘Coming After You‘ in 2015.  After releasing a few more singles the Swedish Spinnup team discovered hMilwin’s latest track ‘Follow Your Heart’ and they introduced his songs to the A&Rs at Universal Music Sweden. Polydor saw potential in the 20-year old music producer, and the whole thing ended with a signing to Polydor Sweden! He re-released his single “Follow You Heart” with Polydor -it’s a great summer-banger that we hope you haven’t missed out on yet!

You can stream or buy the track it here!

Since then, we’ve gotten to know Milwin better, and now he has also given YOU a chance to get to know him too! Watch the video below to listen to his story behind ‘Follow Your Heart, his musical history, and don’t worry, he also has some advice for Spinnup artists who are serious about wanting to get discovered and signed!

Want to hear what Milwin is listening to right now? Check out his Favourites playlist on Spotify, and don’t forgot you can create your own artist playlists on Spotify – all you need is a verified page! Read our blog post here on getting verified on Spotify to find out how.