Head of Government Affairs

Spotify launches direct video upload beta for Artists. Spotify is rolling out a beta feature that enables artists to upload full-length videos directly through its Spotify for Artists dashboard, marking a new front in its competition with YouTube. June 17, 2026 Spotify is testing a new feature that lets artists upload full-length videos directly through its Spotify for Artists dashboard, a move that sharpens its rivalry with YouTube as a hub for music video content. Direct uploads and royalties. Artists participating in the beta can upload official music videos, live performances, studio sessions, and covers. According to Spotify, all of these are "royalty-bearing and may be chart-eligible." Music videos have been available on Spotify for a year, but only through labels and distributors. The new beta opens direct uploads to artists for the first time. After streaming a video, listeners stream that song 64% more often over the following three weeks on average. They're also 1.4x more likely to save it, share it, or add it to a playlist. And they go on to stream the rest of your catalog 57% more during that same period. Uploaded videos will appear in a dedicated tab on artist profiles, as well as on the Spotify homepage, release pages, the Now Playing view, and in push notifications. They may also be surfaced in the algorithmic 'Videos For You' playlist, which is personalized for each listener. Spotify has also introduced curated playlists: 'Today's Top Videos', 'Live Performances', and 'Video Covers'. Guidelines and Clips retirement. Spotify has set guidelines for uploads. Videos must be in landscape 16:9 format. The following are not permitted: * Visualizers * Lyric videos * Multi-song concerts * Videos without music The launch coincides with the phase-out of Clips, a feature introduced in 2023 that allowed artists to post 30-second videos. Spotify will stop accepting new Clips uploads, though existing Clips will remain accessible. Over time, the Clips tab on artist profiles will transition to the Video tab, which will house both music videos and previously uploaded Clips. The beta is not yet open to all artists; interested musicians can join a waitlist for access. Competitive landscape. The direct upload feature positions Spotify more directly against YouTube, which has long dominated long-form music video streaming, including live performances and studio sessions. Spotify is also reportedly in discussions with festivals about livestreaming rights, an area where YouTube and Amazon Music have been active. YouTube recently launched its 'Music Nights' series of exclusive concerts, a format that mirrors Spotify's own artist partnership strategies. Spotify previously experimented with direct artist uploads in 2018, when it beta tested a tool for musicians to upload audio tracks directly. That program was discontinued within a year. Rybeena announces 'mr bee deluxe', renews dapper music deal. Muneyi's 'shumela venda' reclaims venda's contested history. June 17, 2026

Spotify hit with lawsuit claiming royalty rules hurt indie artists. A new lawsuit claims Spotify's 1,000-play royalty threshold and stream-filtering policies have led to a "systemic suppression" of indie artist compensation. Mark Kratter, an independent musician and attorney living in Connecticut, sued Spotify last Wednesday (June 3) for alleged violations of the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act. The lawsuit, obtained by Billboard, claims the streaming giant "employs opaque rules and undisclosed filtering criteria that disproportionately harm independent artists, including plaintiff, while benefiting major labels and high-volume catalogs." "This action arises from Spotify's undisclosed, unfair and deceptive business practices that materially reduce compensation to small creators by filtering legitimate listening activity, failing to count key engagement signals, suppressing algorithmic discovery, and imposing a 1,000-stream minimum threshold before any royalties are paid," reads the complaint. Since 2024, Spotify's policy has been that a song must reach 1,000 streams within 12 months before becoming eligible for payouts from the royalty pool. Kratter's lawsuit alleges that this threshold, already difficult for many indie artists to meet, has become even less attainable in recent months. The complaint alleges that starting in March 2026, Kratter's songs saw a "sharp and measurable decline in counted streams, despite continued listener activity." He concludes that this must be the result of new filtering policies in which Spotify does not count certain autoplay, algorithmic and "low interaction" listening sessions towards an artist's official stream count. "But for Spotify's undisclosed filtering practices, plaintiff's tracks would have exceeded the 1,000-stream threshold, maintained normal discovery levels, and continued to generate royalty-bearing algorithmic exposure," reads the lawsuit. Kratter is seeking unspecified financial damages through the lawsuit. He also wants a judge to declare that Spotify's 1,000-play threshold and stream-filtering policies "constitute unfair and deceptive practices under Connecticut law." While Spotify has enacted numerous new policies in recent years to counteract streaming fraud, there is no public indication that a rule change went into effect in March. A Spotify rep declined to comment on the lawsuit, but referred Billboard to a 2023 blog post explaining the company's decision to introduce a 1,000-stream threshold. In that blog post, Spotify said tracks with under 1,000 streams generated an average of only three cents per month. "It's more impactful for these tens of millions of dollars per year to increase payments to those most dependent on streaming revenue - rather than being spread out in tiny payments that typically don't even reach an artist (as they do not surpass distributors' minimum payout thresholds)," read the post. "99.5% of all streams are of tracks that have at least 1,000 annual streams, and each of those tracks will earn more under this policy. We also believe the policy will eliminate one strategy used to attempt to game the system or hide artificial streaming, as uploaders will no longer be able to generate pennies from an extremely high volume of tracks."