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Labels never asked for fan data
What Direct Access Is Worth
Take a fan who has played a Taylor Swift album 700 times. If Swift could reach that fan directly, she could sell the ticket and the merchandise herself. An artist with 200,000 people who love her can make a lot of money selling them music and then higher-margin things like hoodies and t-shirts.
The Leverage Labels Held
When the major labels cut their deals with Spotify, they held all the leverage and used it to take equity in the company. They could have asked instead for real access to the data, with fans opting in to hear from Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar. Most likely they didn't, because an artist with a direct line to fans no longer needs a record company.
Why There Was No Data
United Masters, the distribution company started in 2017, began as an attempt to fix this. Its first idea was a customer-relationship system that worked across record companies, the way Amazon follows a toilet paper sale with a plunger. A fan who plays Life of Pablo 30 times would be offered Yeezys or a hoodie next. There turned out to be no data to get: Spotify, YouTube, and Apple would never hand over user IDs, so an artist couldn't advertise straight to a fan's phone.
How did record labels get Spotify equity?
Spotify launched in 2008, and its catalog depended on licenses from the major labels. Several of the labels took ownership stakes as part of those arrangements. Spotify's 2018 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, made ahead of its stock-market listing, disclosed those holdings.
Why can't artists message their Spotify listeners?
Spotify holds listeners' identities and does not hand them to artists. Privacy laws such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, in force since May 2018, require a legal basis such as consent to share personal data. The Spotify for Artists dashboard shows aggregate figures, such as listener counts by city, without naming anyone.
How do some artists still collect fan emails?
Bandcamp, a music sales site that launched in 2008, gives artists the contact details of buyers who opt in. Buyers choose at checkout whether to share their email address.
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