 There are rumors that Spotify was going to drop some massive features that were going to have game changing results for artists in terms of the engagement and streams that they get. And I'm talking about for the indie artists, but now it's been confirmed. We've received an email from the inside and I'm going to read you these three new features and how they can be game changing for artists in 2024. This is how you level up on Spotify in 2024. Let's get to it. So I'll just read the email and to be clear, right? This is actually a new email directly from Instagram. Obviously, y'all know we have a lot of relationships, work with labels some rather big artists, indie artists, all that good stuff. And they put us in contact with certain teams and certain information. People like talking to us. They like talking to us, right? And we're giving y'all the sauce right now, obviously. This hasn't been on an article yet. This is just direct. I'm excited to announce we are partnering with Spotify to test new I.G. Reels features that will enable fans to easily engage with music they discover on Instagram by building seamless ways to save and listen on Spotify. This is within Instagram. In addition, we will inspire Instagram and Spotify users to create Reels featuring the music they love by surfacing editorial track recommendations from Spotify within Instagram. And we will make it easier for users to link out and create Reels directly from Spotify. Now, that's the the paragraph, right? But let's get into the bullet points feature by feature so you can really understand what's going on. The first feature is a share to Reels option within Spotify's share sheet in all markets where Instagram audio library is available. What does this mean? This means you can be on Spotify and then click share and share it to the Reels to share your music directly. But not just you, obviously, the users. And that's the most important part. If I want to share what I'm listening to and if you're thinking like, oh, that might be a little bit of weird to share my audio. What does that even look like? This this is what they call it the rub. I've never used that term before. Someone said I heard someone say this is the rub. I'm going to try that one out. This is the rub. Basically, if you looked at Spotify, the moves they've been making over the last year, maybe two years, they've been preparing for this moment, right? Because Reels or what? You know, that's the vertical, right? They copy TikTok. Well, what is Spotify done themselves with canvases? Right. They created canvases. You have this vertical video that's basically like a gif. But they've gone beyond that to allow those canvases to be this entire discovery engine within Spotify. I don't know if you've seen it yet. Have you really seen that heavily when you use Spotify yet? Yeah, a little bit. Like it's not something that like I go looking for. But right. So I don't look heavily either. I can't say I'm a hyper engaged power user of the canvas discovery engine. However, I have like found my way there a couple of times in seeing like 50,000 views, like 500,000 views on someone's canvas. And when you add the ability to just easily share that small video that an artist creates, putting that on Instagram is a smooth option. Right? Yeah. It makes it very easy for me to show people what I'm listening to, show people my identity. This is what I'm on right now, because people do this already. How many times have you seen in somebody's stories where they'll just have a picture of a project? Like, this is what I'm vibing to right now. I got home is who do that all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So for you artists, this means you having a canvas is even more important than it used to be because I've kind of like looked at it as optional to be honest, like for the most part, of course, I want an artist to have that extra piece of content. I want an artist to have every single piece of content that they can have. However, it's extra. You don't have to have a canvas if you don't want. That's kind of how I looked at it for the most part. But now I'm like, there's no reason not to do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's another part of the experience. And I think it's interesting because what's interesting about it to me is that, you know, Instagram Reels has caught a lot of flack recently for inflated views, right, and what seems to be inflated viewership with no real trickle over to the music. Like I've talked to multiple artists and even seen it. Sometimes on my own side, you might see a Reels do like crazy numbers. Like I had a homie do one and get one to hit like five million views on it. And there wasn't any type of uptick in the music. And then you compare it to something like a 20,000 view TikTok, you know, and then you might see at least a couple of hundred, if not a couple of thousand people trickle over. So I feel like this has something to do more so with Instagram wanting to prove to the music industry that we have. We can make an impact. And then we're going to have this direct line from one DSP to the platform that we can all track and see, you know, what type of impact we actually have. So it could be very well be a case where maybe the UGC component of it with the share is more powerful than just like your own Reels. You know, saying kind of hitting and going viral. But that's what I'm interested to see is like, are they are they right? You know what I'm saying? Or have our suspicions pretty much been right all along. And that shit ain't hitting like it need to be here. But I want them to feel that pressure because it's not for the most part. I do have some artists that I work with, like some genres where apparently it's a little bit more popping on Instagram than TikTok for them in general. But for the most part, it's nowhere near. Like we're going to artists right now who has like 2000 followers. And like we're talking about from ground zero, 2000 followers now on TikTok. And he's collectively gotten maybe 20,000 streams all organically over the last. Let me see, like basically 60 days. You know, so he went from near zero to 2000 followers as 20,000 streams just posting content on TikTok. And for people who think TikTok doesn't work. Look, he's not popping or going viral. He hasn't been viral yet. He doesn't have one video over 10,000 views yet. That's all he's doing. And he has, you know, like I said, 20,000 streams and that's only going to grow. So that still works. And I think IG, yes, they are still feeling that pressure from it. I want them to feel that pressure, bro, because it's only going to make it better for us. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, like if they can fix whatever is going on from that pipeline of viewership to the thing we're trying to push them over to, it definitely will be. It will make a good case for them, you know, because I think Instagram is picking up in terms of like UGC becoming more important over there, you know, thanks to, you know, now being able to track the creates under a reel, the same way you can. It's made people become a lot more aware of that. I mean, they had their tie in with the algorithm, like the bait, you know, saying the carrot was dangling with the organic reach. But it's just like, yeah, I feel like the average artist or music person that hasn't really taken advantage of it yet, they get you get caught up in the game they're trying to spit you back. And then as soon as you use it and you see your first hit over there and you're like, oh, like she didn't really do nothing. You didn't do anything. The whole spark just kind of died. So I agree, like I need to do something to bring to make to make music. One of music artists want to use Instagram outside of just the influencer community because that's still the part where they still kind of dominate with music marketing is the music promotion community over there is top tier compared to other platforms. But everything else about it is weak. Very, very. But this one, I think will help a lot because the second feature is Spotify playlist recommendations within the U.S., Brazil and Indonesia. These recommendations will be within the IG Reels audio browser pages. So what I imagine from that is you're going through your Reels experience, right? And then, bam, you see a playlist recommendation that's randomly pop up. That's what I'm getting from it. Yeah. See, that's that's a that's a musicianship play. Do you think so? I don't understand who why no artist playlist is probably going to be on that. It's going to all be, you know, we know it's going to be editorials. Yeah, maybe, maybe if they the relationship gets symbiotic enough, maybe they start recommending some algorithmic playlists, you know, because they have Spotify can do like custom algorithmic playlists now. So yeah, maybe it gets that micro, but no, this is that's I mean, I was to be to the third feature, but the whole thing to me just screams Instagram to me is Instagram scream like, hey, music industry. Like, look at us. Like we can do we can do stuff to please the big people who got the money first and then we can work our way down probably. So it's like, here's a feature that everybody can take part in, which is the share, right? And then it's like, I hear something to your point, bigger music industry to make y'all happy. Yeah. I mean, you know, and playlisting has still been tough for any artists. Like most of them aren't relevant. There's a few platforms that are credible, worth using and checking out when she's still got submit hub. Who's another one? Like playlist supply, if you want to go find your own playlist. That's a solid one. There's a couple of of them we can go through. I know we've talked about many before. The only new one that I've discovered is Groover. OK. Now, them, they're interesting. Have you ever used them at all? I've been like once. Like for me, what I've seen with some of the artists, because whenever I see it, you know, we have a new platform that we get to go across, just like we did with TikTok. I'm always going to say, like, who is some of the artists we know? And they're asking to test it out, right? I want to really experience before I talk about it to the rest of the world because I really want to see what it looks like and not from the they're selling you as a marketer. They know you have an agency and all that. I don't want that perspective because we talk and work with any so heavily as well. And what I love about their platform is they had some of the best reviews I've seen. All right. You still can't ever guarantee that somebody gets on a on a playlist. Right. Nobody can do that. Right. Not unless it's just straight up payola. Yeah. But the reviews were so quality. I was like, man, this artist, when she gets this feedback, which she did, like she's going to be able to improve how she makes her music, you know, and she's going to be in a better position for how she pictures herself going forward. And you get it for basically cheap. All right. You get this super objective feedback, not your homies who, you know, might not be able to tell you the truth. Not the person that's like maybe a marketer who's like, I just want your money. You know what I mean? You know, like, it's OK, but I'm going to go ahead and take, you know, bite the bullet just so I can make this extra money. And then you're not going to get great results. And they're going to say, well, I guess it was the music, like not any of that. I'm sure for like a hundred dollars, I can't remember what the artist paid or whatever, because you have to like buy tokens. Yeah. One of those type of platforms, right? But it's not a lot of money at all, though. And I said, the quality of feedback they had in and I did see results from another artist who had some better music than the other the other artists and they were able to like see, oh, I got on a couple of playlists, get some solid results. It's not some fake stuff and because the recommendations were solid. I mean, the playlists were real. Their recommendation in the engine started to grow because this artist was kind of like closer to ground zero. So now you saw his artist also. I mean, your fans also listen to artists like this area that evolves. So his algorithm got corrected. And that's the only thing I really love playlists for. I don't like using playlists for like trying to blow up. It was like, let's just get a couple if we can that are really correct. If you can find something, get your algorithm sped up to, you know, so they know who they should reach out to. And then like I personally move on. That's how I typically look at it. But their quality platform also I feel like I feel like there's one more we might be missing. It's at Smith Hub, it's at Google. We haven't said playlist supply playlist. No, no, no, no, playlist push, playlist push. Yeah, there's still a really solid one as well. So, you know, any of y'all check any of those out. We've talked about all the other ones that left Groover. It was newer to me. I don't think it's a new platform. I just, you know, just knowing about it for maybe about three months. So, you know, check that one out as well. If you are somebody who uses those type of sites moving on to the last one. Because, yeah, like you already said, that's second feature. That's more in the label. But we threw out that playlist stuff for y'all, right? But the last feature, third, but not least, both add to Spotify and listen on Spotify calls to action on licensed music, audio pages within Instagram in all markets where audio library is available. Now, what does that mean? This is what I see it as, right? When you go to listen to the sound. You also have add to my lot of Bray on Spotify. All right, save on Spotify. That is beautiful. It is beautiful. That is a very strong feature because literally I see somebody's video. Oh, what song is this? Because I'm going to try to read and I want to hear a little bit longer of the snippet. And if I hear it, I can just save it for later without leaving the platform because how many people are just going to convert over just because, oh, this song, this snippet is so hard. I got to listen to the whole song and it's rare. Even for a song you really like all the best intentions you will want to convert over, you know, and go ahead and listen. But your reality is now I got to get back to that last three set of memes that I saw before I clicked through. So let me go ahead and save this thing. And then I'm going to go back to watch those memes and those images that I said, I need to click that image real quick. Yeah, man, it's so interesting because it's it's literally the opposite of Tik Tok, right? Tik Tok has a similar partnership with Apple, right? You can you can go on your Tik Tok sound and if you got Apple music, there'll be like an Apple music option there. Yeah. Instagram is doing it with Spotify, right? Which to me, it's just so interesting, man. It's like we're seeing Tik Tok trying to actively fight to almost like separate themselves from the industry, but be respected by it. And then we're now watching Instagram kind of fight to be a part of the industry in the way that it seemed like they wanted to talk to be a part of the industry. Yeah. You know, and it's just it's so weird to see. It's a great feature. It's going to be great for. I mean, because I like I use Spotify. So that's what would hurt me about Tik Tok. Like I would rather do my music discovery on Tik Tok, but I have to to your point, remember to go convert to it later or do it in the moment while I was doing some other shit. It makes me feel like maybe if all these things come together, you know, and Instagram upstair music discovery as a Spotify user, that's it would push me to start looking for music more on Instagram than it would on Tik Tok facts. I would think about it knowing that I can actually save it. I'd be more curious to step in. It really would change your behavior like that. So for me, yeah, I'm big on that because I'm like you. I'm Spotify. I'm not really using Apple music at all. And I hate when I'm like, man, somebody sent an Apple music link and I'm like, Apple link, my mother's work for three people in your life. I used to, bro, I used to just listen to the teaser and now sometimes I'll be like, yo, man, I don't have Apple music very heavy. Hit me back. But I think the takeaway is really Spotify is making some real moves. Finally, should have been made these moves. Thankfully, Apple, I mean, Tik Tok created a little pressure and now they're making some moves that's really going to allow Instagram to engage. Dang, Tik Tok did two fold pressure. They pressured IG and Spotify at the same time. This is beautiful. It's beautiful. But yeah, like this is going to increase the experience. You've already seen the canvases you're seeing features like this and it's only going to get better from a discovery and marketing standpoint. Now, when we talk about the royalties and payouts and those other changes, we recorded that episode. We dropped that episode, you know, a week or so ago, you know. So you all can go check that video out right here, you know, or here, wherever we put the video other than that. We want to know what y'all think about these features. Peace.