While you're probably familiar with Spotify's core music streaming services, Spotify for Artists is a lesser-known feature. But if you're a creator, it has many handy tools for building your presence on the platform.

So, what is Spotify for Artists? And if you're looking to build a career in music, why should you consider using this service? This article will cover both questions, along with looking at its coolest features.

What Is Spotify for Artists?

Spotify for Artists is a free add-on feature offered to creators. Once you have published your first song, you will be able to utilize the tool to attract more users.

As an artist, you can use Spotify for Artists to improve the look of your profile and demonstrate your authenticity. You can also gather insights that enable you to make smarter decisions regarding marketing and more.

Beyond engaging with your existing fanbase, Spotify for Artists also has various tools to help you discover new listeners on the platform. You can also verify your profile to make sure your fans know that it's really you.

Both you and your production team can use Spotify for Artists.

Spotify for Artists: The Best Features

Below are some of the best features artists can use the platform for.

In-Depth Analytics

While you should create art from a place of love, measuring your performance is helpful if you want to reach more people with your music. And with Spotify for Artists, you can do precisely that.

Using the platform, you can discover a breakdown of how your monthly listeners have increased or declined over time. You can do likewise with your followers, too.

You can use Spotify for Artists' analytics to better understand your listeners' demographics on a more granular level. The platform displays information, such as their age, gender, and which countries and cities they live in.

Using these analytics will help you market yourself better. You could also find some cool new locations for concerts that you may never have anticipated.

Advertising and Sponsored Recommendations

Beyond analytics, Spotify for Artists can help you grow your reach in non-organic ways too. The platform gives you an impressive number of areas to place your advertising campaigns, along with providing tools to customize them.

Whenever you share a new song or album, you can use a Marquee to promote the release to users who might want to listen to more of your music. With this feature, you can add a clickthrough popup onto their screen. You can advertise to both Free and Premium users with Marquee.

Another way of promoting yourself to potential listeners is through audio advertising. On Spotify, you can run vocal advertising campaigns for up to 30 seconds in length.

Audio advertising is beneficial for targeting Free users, who hear ads at regular intervals as part of their package.

Profile Customization Tools

On Spotify, you're competing with countless other creators. As such, standing out is challenging—even if your niche isn't one of the most popular. Besides your music, your profile is one of the best ways to set yourself apart.

Related: How to Grow Your Personal Brand on Social Media: Essential Tips

Beyond becoming a verified user, Spotify for Artists offers numerous ways to optimize your profile. One of those is editing your bio. Doing this allows you to tell your story and deepen the connection with your fans.

If you've worked with other artists, you can also add this to your profile. The same is also true for sharing playlists where your music exists or any albums and artists you look up to. You can also use Spotify for Artists to customize your profile picture.

Canvas

Spotify's artwork customization features have come a long way since the streaming platform was founded in 2006. One of the newer ways you can add another dimension to your songs is through the Canvas feature.

With Canvas, you can add 3D graphics, videos, 2D graphics, and mixed media. When users play your music with an internet connection on their smartphone, these visuals will show instead of the album artwork.

Related: How to Create the Perfect Artwork for Your Spotify Playlists

As an artist, you can change canvases on your songs whenever you want. You can also find designers through Spotify, rather than needing to reach out via other means elsewhere.

The Benefits of Using Spotify for Artists

Beyond the above cool features, using Spotify for Artists comes with numerous benefits. Below are some of the biggest ones.

Increased Visibility

Spotify for Artists is primarily about helping you build a larger audience on the platform. As such, increased visibility is a perhaps unsurprising listed benefit.

With Spotify for Artists, you can determine how to target your advertising campaigns—both in terms of location and listener types.

Beyond doing this on the platform, the analytics will also give you an idea of how you could grow your presence elsewhere.

As an example, let's say that you have an unusually high number of listeners in Norway or Argentina. Using Spotify's analytics data, you could consider running social media ad campaigns in those countries.

More Authenticity

For any creative looking to sustain a long-term career, authenticity is an absolute must. People can see right through you when you lose face, and it's one reason that many creators fade away.

Spotify for Artists allows you to showcase your authentic self beyond more than your music alone. You can get creative with your bio and highlight your sources of inspiration by linking to other artists. You can also use Canvas to upload visuals that match your aesthetic.

Better Returns on Investment

Once your music career starts taking off, managing the finances of your business becomes even more critical. The cost of marketing and playing in venues adds up, and if you're not careful, you could significantly overstep your budget.

Related: How Much Money Does Spotify Pay Artists?

Using Spotify for Artists, you can determine where your money should go away from the platform. But when it comes to advertising on its desktop and mobile apps, you can also measure how successful each campaign was.

Once you know what worked and what didn't, you can make the necessary tweaks needed to grow.

How to Get Spotify for Artists

Once you've published your first song, you'll need to go through a process to get Spotify for Artists. Here's how to claim your page as an artist.

1. Go to artists.spotify.com/claim.
2. Depending on your role, choose Artist or manager.

   

3. On the next page, named "Claim an artist profile," click Continue.

   

4. You will then see an account if you're logged in on your desktop. Either click Next or Change account, depending on what shows up.
5. On the following page, you'll be prompted to claim a profile. Copy and paste the URL.

   

Once Spotify has reviewed your request, you'll have access—as long as they accept.

Let Your Uniqueness Shine With Spotify for Artists

Spotify is renowned for helping users discover new music, making it the ideal launchpad for your career. Spotify for Artists can help you find new fans, optimize your ad spending and show off your true self to the world.

Getting started is easy and, since the platform is free (minus advertising costs, of course), you've got nothing to lose by giving it a try.