If I worked for @Spotify (a thread)

I'd introduce an indie artist verification scheme with features like:
- Higher revenue share for releases ≤ 500k streams
- Bandcamp link up to buy physical & integrate artist to fan messaging
- 30% of featured content to include indie bands

Without independent artists (not affiliated with the 'Big 3' labels) there is no pipeline of future music. Spotify has an opportunity to take a bottom up approach to democratizing the listening experience without damaging its existing major label relationships...

Things like pay for playlist promotion is still rife despite it being against Spotify's own Ts & Cs. What if Spotify put more time and effort into supporting indies so they didn't feel they needed to panda to these scams?

Whilst it needs a free support scheme in place, Spotify can also earn out of it. Much like Facebook before they blew up the algorithm many indies would pay a bit for targeted ads etc if the rates were reasonable and they could help them reach the right people

Spotify doesn't pretend to care about artists, or even music. Ek refers to an "audio first strategy" not music. And here their focus on "capturing the share of time listeners spend elsewhere" implies it doesn't matter WHAT listeners do, they just want them to do it on Spotify

However, that doesn't mean they shouldn't look to expand music services beyond the current strategy of sheep dipping the audience into one major-label bubblegum release after another. There's money on the table here for Spotify and indie artists if they choose to take it

I respect that its not all about the money for most of us. But really what I am proposing is about artists reaching more people who will like their music. The trick - rightly or wrongly - is to make it make commercial sense for the distributor so that they choose to back it

What do you think? What would you introduce?

If you liked this thread check out my 'If I worked for Bandcamp' suggestions here - https://twitter.com/Mike1inFive/status/1360973252600995845?s=20