A Little Knowledge... #6

???BULLETIN NEWS: Spotify announces new artist tools at its 'Stream On' event in LA

Spotify held its ‘Stream On’ event in Los Angeles last week, and while one of the big announcements leaked out early – its new TikTok-esque swipeable homepage – there was plenty of other news from the streaming service:

• There was a big emphasis on tools for artists, including something we tipped in our prediction feature earlier this week: an expansion of short-form video on Spotify.
• A new feature called Spotify Clips will see artists able to add 30-second videos to their profiles and album pages, to talk about their new music and offer behind-the-scenes footage.
• Spotify is also launching a feature called Countdown Pages, promoted within artists’ profiles and the homepage feed. They’ll be hubs where fans can pre-save albums as well as watch videos, pre-order merch, and preview tracklists.
• The company is also expanding its full-screen ‘Marquee’ ad units from the US to the UK and Australia
• Spotify’s controversial Discovery Mode is also expanding: being made “directly available for artists on select distributors” within its Spotify for Artists dashboard. This tool lets artists and their teams choose tracks to be promoted in Spotify’s radio and autoplay modes, in exchange for a lower royalty rate.

Lots more was announced, including more prominence for concert tickets and merchandise, a new ad unit called Showcase that will sit within Spotify’s new homepage feed, and an expansion of the Fans First program - read our coverage in full here .

??? Music Ally archive: Spotify

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??? TOOLS: Offstage – analytics platform that lets you ask "natural language questions"

Last week, we took a deep-dive into Offstage , an invite-only platform which launched, in private beta, in February 2023. Previously known as the live streaming and ticketing platform Release Party , the company rebranded to become a data and analytics tool. It brings together data from different platforms used by musicians: ticketing platforms (Eventbrite, Ticketmaster), streaming platforms (Spotify, YouTube), social media (Instagram), Linktree, Mailchimp, Shopify, and Bandcamp – as well as owned spreadsheets. Users can ask "natural language questions" about their fanbase and get an AI-driven response, delivered in an intuitive way. So what did we think of it??

?? Read the full article here .

?? A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA...

Our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email.?

• Well this was inevitable. “Use our trained AI monkeys to give you a list of viral TikTok ideas... ”
• The humble – and devious, apparently – bollard is properly celebrated by the World Bollard Association
• (There are more weird links in The Knowledge every week…)

This is only a glimpse into this week's newsletter – subscribe for FREE to The Knowledge and every Friday it’ll arrive in your inbox, with:

??? The best new platforms in TOOLS, ?? Our utterly vital COUNTRY PROFILES, ?? ??? Some great and/or strange music in SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND, A look back in TIME MACHINE, The Music Ally Focus PODCAST, and ?? more links to our favourite unusual stuff in A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.