 So there's been a lot of leaks over the past year that Spotify is coming for TikTok and all sorts of other features. And anyone who follows Spotify knows that you constantly hear about new features for sometimes years before they happen. But as of today, we can finally see and touch some of these new features. So it's time to get musicians up to speed on what that means for them, you know, the people who actually make this platform worth using. So today, Spotify hosted its second big announcement event they call Stream On. And it was a star-studded affair and featured that creepy robber baron guy who owns the company and exploits musicians, and a few people who are dressed like they may recruit you into a pyramid scheme, which it could be argued is accurate when it comes to Spotify. So as fast as I possibly can, I'm going to tell you what the new features are and what they mean for musicians, as well as some things I learned watching it that would be of interest to musicians. So while the event was mostly filled with a comical level of Spotify saying, we listen to musicians, they told us to do blank. And shockingly, it wasn't the number one thing musicians actually tell them, which is pay me more. They guess that the crowd like a guy who's been mainlining Andrew Tate relationship advice content into their veins and instead pretended what we really wanted is features that will help the top earners on Spotify. But let's get into that because it's not all bad news. So the big news is the new homepage, which is divided into three sections depending on what you want to get into music, podcasts, and audiobooks. It's nice to think of listeners this path instead of pushing podcasts as hard as they used to, since we all know they were doing that so that they can drive down, listens to music so that they can drive up their profits since they don't pay as much for podcasts to be played. Anyway, if you click the music tab, it's going to give you what has been described as a tick tock like feed. As of now, mine doesn't look like tick tock in any way, except in the way that I was pleasantly shocked by how good the recommendations of what I may want to listen to were since they range from the unfamiliar to records I love, but haven't bumped in a second. It seems that this is rolling out to different users a little at a time, so you may not have it quite yet. But if you watch Spotify slick demo, it's filled with music video clips or clips of videos where artists talk about the song. But obviously you want to know how you do this. And the answer is if you head to Spotify for us, you may have a video tab where you can put up 30 second videos that are linked to your profile and album pages. Now obviously this is so new, no one knows what works video wise, but you can start with music video clips, cannon videos of you talking about your songs, since they seem to be tied to being a story that goes with a song or a playlist from what I could see so far. I will obviously make a video update as I know more. But this seems important since Spotify's language is that they will be using this to recommend music to users. As we always see with these types of features, the people who do it first usually reap the biggest rewards. So I had to Spotify for artists and see if you have that video tab and put up some if you do. But here's some really good news. If you already have canvases for your songs uploaded to Spotify, those will be used in this feed as well. But I know so many of you ignore that. And if you do hit the description since I have a video on how to do canvases in there and you should really get to work. Next we have Spotify's new countdown feature, which allows you to put a countdown on your page. So any fan of this channel knows I think for DIYRs who don't have a massive fan base doing countdowns teasing or the ultimate cringe, big things coming posts are truly the biggest waste of time since there's so many options for people to consume that if you actually get their attention then say in seven days you can have this well they're gonna be mad and you wasted a chance to do a promotion with a song that may have turned them into a fan because they're not coming back in seven days. Great work. But the big huge artists with massive fan bases are different and that they need to get everyone who ever liked them to know that they have something new and hopefully get them to consume their new release. So countdowns are helpful for them. Now since Spotify is not forcing this like a post where people are looking for value and to be entertained like on TikTok and potentially get you unfollowed I actually think these are pretty good because if a fan is going to your page and they see this well they can find out a lot more and they can see some things that they can consume already since oftentimes you have track listings that are blank here for your future release that will then show up but they can consume the songs that already exist. But sadly like most features in Spotify this is being rolled out slowly to users but if you see it is available I would implement it as it's a great way to show your fans they should stay up with you and to explain this a bit more these countdowns are pages you could point to where you could push presafes yes presafes in Spotify a damn miracle which will probably be a game changer but yet again another thing we'll probably have to discuss after we see them in action a bit since Spotify claims that 80% of the people who presave you using them then stream the record on release week that means these are pretty important but on these pages you'll also be able to allow fans to watch videos pre-order merch and preview track lists so this is pretty cool and helpful even for DIY artists speaking of Spotify is also attempting to ingratiate themselves to the musicians they don't pay well enough through their fans first program again which for those of you who've forgotten about it's the one that sends emails and notifications to the most enthusiastic fans of ours to alert them to ticket pre-sells and exclusive merch as well they're going to push your merch and concerts even more rather than hiding them at the bottom of your profile as they'll now appear more widely in Spotify's app on its now playing screen you know when people are actually listening to the artist who has tickets and or merch available so if you have a merch store through Shopify you can sell merch on Spotify I know it's confusing and if you update your tour dates on soundkick they'll appear on Spotify and get served oh yeah and for those of you who have enough listeners to use the marquee tool which I really see doing lots of good for us getting fans to listen to their music but is yet again another gross payment from musicians to Spotify that shouldn't exist well the good news is they've expanded it from just being in the US to the UK and Australia as well and lastly they announced they were expanding their discovery mode and bring more features to it so more people hear artists in the program which is getting tons of artists I know way more fans at the expense of losing 30% of their royalties of listens that happened while in that mode if you don't know what discovery mode is and want to learn more and how you can promote your music and then well just last week I made a video on it and you can watch it right now since it's on the screen thanks for watching