Spotify's NEW Artist Verification Program (what it is, how to get it)

My band is now verified by Spotify, but what does that actually mean? Well, Spotify used to have a verification system where you get a blue check mark, but that's actually been replaced by this new green check mark verified by Spotify thing that we're going to be talking about in this video. >> [music] >> So, this news actually came out a couple weeks ago and I talked about it on the My Point 4 Cents podcast that I'll I'll link here. Um if you want to see me and three and a few other music marketing people argue about it. >> [laughter] >> Um but they have this extensive article about it. I'll put in the link in the in the description below. So, if you want to read more. But uh it's essentially a way for them to increase authenticity and trust in the platform. It's kind of a way to fight against AI in the platform. And they've been doing a few features like this recently where they have this thing called song DNA that allows you to see more in-depth credits behind the people who make music. Um it's about the song which which is a similar thing allows you to see stories about the song for bigger artists. And also AI crediting. I made a video a couple weeks ago where um on Spotify you can actually like credit where AI was used in a song. So, you can say like we used AI for everything. We used AI for the lyrics. We used AI for just this this this guitar part or whatever. Um which I know people who who have done that. Like they they wrote their entire song from start to finish, but they needed this like orchestral thing in the middle. And so, they composed it in in some crappy MIDI things they don't even think they could afford doing buying like a Spitfire audio thing and then spend all the time to learn it. So, they made like a kind of mediocre version and then they uploaded it to Suno and had it turn into like a fancy orchestral part based on their own composition that fit in their song. So, like there are a lot of cool applications where artists can use AI to just like improve their work. And that was the thing with the AI credits where it's like, "Okay, well, can we give credit to AI so that there's more transparency on the platform. And this is just the next level of that. And it's not all sunshine and roses. We're going to talk about the bad stuff, too. So, don't you worry. I can hear all you furiously typing in the comments about the negative things before you even finished watching the video. But, the idea is this new verification system proves that you have a consistent listener activity engagement over time. You've been following Spotify's policies, and you seem like you're a real artist. And going deeper, what that means is AI-generated artist or AI personas, or rather AI-generated music or AI persona artist, um do not qualify. So, that's the biggest kind of thing here is like only human artists can get this green check mark. Additionally, if an artist is violating the policies, which could involve using bots to inflate your numbers or maybe payola to get on playlists, or whatever, maybe that's what they mean in terms of following the policies. Maybe it has to do with the your songs being too on the fringe of what's allowed. Um but, the biggest thing here that artists are are mad about is this consistent listener activity engagement over time. I don't know if this article says it. I haven't really seen it here. Um but, I know it's buried in some It's buried in some help article with the actual numbers. But, essentially, there's a certain streaming volume that's required for this. You need at least 10,000 monthly active listeners for 3 months to be qualified to be verified. That doesn't mean you need 3,000 or 10,000 monthly listeners. Um I know people with 30,000 monthly listeners that don't even have 10,000 monthly active listeners. My band has always had like a pretty high percentage of monthly active listeners. We're an alternative metal, so like play listing and algorithmic stuff and editorials not that big. Um and so like we we've had a we've had a pretty high percentage of monthly active listeners. So like more than half of our audience is active. And um so we we've had a threshold for quite quite a while. And you can come in here and look at this graph the last 12 months and you can see like we've had this monthly active listeners above 10,000 for you know, the better part of a year, which is how we were able to qualify for it. And based on some estimates I've seen, it seems like there's about a quarter million artists who hit this threshold. However, there's 12 million artists on Spotify. 12 million. So what that means is something like 95% or something ridiculous like that, 98% um of artists don't qualify for this verification mark. And there's a few layers to this. One, most of those 12 million artists and I would argue at least 11 million out of those 12 million artists don't even care about this at all because they're not active serious artists. They're just people who uploaded their music because they think it's cool. They're hobbyists. They uploaded their music for fun. So they don't even care. So what that still leaves three quarters of the active artists in the world um unverified because they don't meet that that threshold. Um which surprise, surprise, if you have 10,000 monthly active listeners, you are in the top like 3% of artists on the platform. Just because of that fact, because most people uploading are are hobbyists or they were trying to be serious and then they they gave up and got a got a day job or something. But real artists with that small the smaller monthly listener numbers are mad because if they don't have the verification, they're worried that like are people going to think that they're an AI generated project? Because the prevalence of AI music on not just Spotify, actually. Every distribution platform, right? Like the People don't upload music to one platform. They upload it to every platform using a distributor. So, like the This isn't a Spotify thing. Um it's an every platform thing. But on Apple, they don't label anyone. And on like Tidal or YouTube Music or Amazon, they don't label anyone. So, it's a little bit like Spotify When I first saw this, I was like, "Wow, I'm glad Spotify's doing this because no other DSP has even thought about doing any way to kind of label human artists or or AI. Um but I do see the argument that like, "Hey, because Spotify is labeling it, but they're not labeling everyone, it kind of puts the smaller artist at a disadvantage from like a from a fan perspective cuz if you're like, "Oh, like if some I can't guarantee something's human-made unless it has this little check mark, do people start wondering if I if my music's even real?" Now, here's my take on it that you might not like if that's if that's your take, but but hear me out. If if you're finding an artist that has hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners, you're more likely to be like, "Oh, this is like a big serious artist." and kind of fall down the rabbit hole. I don't think any casual fan is finding an artist with 5,000 monthly listeners and assuming they're AI-generated. All the All the people who are like early adopters of indie music, who actually even look at profiles and look at these metrics, are generally going to be more attuned to hearing and seeing and figuring out for themselves what's AI and what's not. You can figure it out, right? Go to profile. There's no artist image. There's no socials link. There's no bios. You go on the social media page if there even is one, and there's no images. There's no video. No one talking. Um you can figure it out. So, the people who actually go and look at this stuff, they come to this page and they look at this thing, and they go down the profile and look, those people, they can already figure out if someone's AI or not. And all the people that don't do that stuff, they're the ones that are going to get easily fooled. And they're the ones that that only look at big artists. So, like for them, the verification's important. So, that's my my opinion is that it doesn't matter that small artists aren't getting this because the people who really need this aren't the ones seeking out music in that manner. But, I found a lot of people ask me since I posted about this on on Threads a couple weeks ago when the first news first came out is like, how do you get verified? And uh well, I did nothing to get verified. So, that's really your answer is like, you have to have above 10,000 monthly active listeners for at least 3 months to qualify for the pool, and then basically 2 weeks after they announced this, my banner was verified. So, it takes a couple of weeks, it seems, to do that. I'm sure in the future it'll get faster. Um and I would be surprised if a year out or 2 years out, that threshold gets lowered because from Spotify's perspective, you know, if you have to spend 20 minutes looking at every artist to conclude if they qualify and they're human, multiply that by 250,000 artists, it takes a lot of time. So, I wouldn't be surprised if in like a year they get it faster, and they come up with some way just to crank it out. And they're not working through this back queue, right? They're only dealing with like new artists who are reaching the criteria. So, I wouldn't be surprised if the threshold gets lowered over time. And in fact, I genuinely hope it does because it Even though I don't think it really matters, I think it would be nice if it's like 1,000 monthly listeners, you can get verified. And that way it's like it's pretty easy for any like it doesn't take too long for an artist to hit 1,000 monthly listeners and live with that uncertainty of like are people judging me thinking I'm AI up until this point. Like I feel like that's a reason a more reasonable bar than 10,000 active monthly listeners, in my opinion. Now, if you're wondering how do you get to 10,000 monthly active listeners, well, you can watch this video right here to learn about how you can run some meta ad campaigns to promote your music. If you want to see whatever YouTube thinks you should watch, check out this video right here. Anyways, thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Music marketing. >> [music] >> Bye.