Here’s where things get weird – a whole bunch of artists just read that, and did as instructed. The artist email email concludes with the instruction to “share your highlights with your fans on social.” (Richard Lawler wrote this up for Engadget.) (Mine for some reason isn’t available, so I’m guessing there’s some lag from demand.) The service coincides with a “Wrapped” report for listeners/fans, which shows which tracks they streamed most. Spotify sent an email last week to all artists registered for the Spotify for Artists program, with a link to “2019 Wrapped for Artists.” You need to be an artist with music on Spotify, but that’s it – the company even says you only needed three (!) listeners prior to the end of October to qualify for the “Wrapped” report. Putting aside the streaming business model itself for a moment, though, let’s consider what artists are doing here.

There are reasons to distribute music to streaming services, and ways of leveraging that distribution to financial benefit (albeit largely indirect).

First, before I sound immediately anti-Spotify or anti-streaming, this isn’t necessarily about that.

Spotify for artist yes or no