With 8.3 billion streams, Puerto Rican rapper and singer is Spotify's most-streamed artist of 2020, the first time an artist that has never sung in English tops the year-end list. Second to Bad Bunny for 2020 is Drake, while another Latin act, J Balvin, came in at No. 3, followed by the late rapper Juice WRLD and The Weeknd. Bad Bunny's album 'YHLQMDLG' is also the most-streamed album globally on the service, with over 3.3 billion streams, ABC reports. Spotify’s most-streamed song of the year is Blinding Lights', with 1.6 million streams globally.

Stereogum explores the power of Spotify, similar to TikTok's, describing the lives of two relatively obscure indie-rock songs from the 1980s and 1990s. Pavement's 'Harness Your Hopes' was three-decade-old b-side before it became number one on Pavement’s Spotify page, ending up with over 28 million plays to date. Another one in Galaxie 500's 'Strange' which was a song from a long-overlooked album track, and ended up as the most popular Galaxie 500 song on Spotify. How did this happen? Mostly, thanks to Spotify's Autoplay feature which cues up music that “resembles” what the listener has been listening to previously.

A serious analysis in the Baffler of Spotify and its business model: "Over the past year, Spotify transformed its stated aspirations as a company. It used to see itself as the go-to platform providing 'music for every mood and moment' - not just a music streaming service but one that knows your taste better than you know it yourself. That changed in February 2019, when Spotify announced its acquisitions of Gimlet and Anchor in a letter declaring itself 'Audio First'". Spotify went wider with the content becoming a podcast company as well, but - "in many ways, though, the $50 billion company is treating podcasters similarly to how it has historically treated musicians, with a system that privileges the already moneyed and powerful".

"Spotify has to keep three competing interest groups - investors, audiences, rights-holders and creators - happy or it does not have a business. As it gets bigger and more established, however, it feels that it can afford to make moves that may antagonise rights-holders / creators and audiences but that will keep investors happy" - Music Industry Blog writes in an analysis of the new Discovery Mode Spotify announced this week (offers artists and labels more play for lower royalty rate). "The logic is that Spotify is getting so big that those two audiences cannot do without it (the ‘too big to fail’ stage) but that investors have many other places to put their money. So, investors are more ‘at risk’ than the others".

Spotify has announced a new feature through which artists, labels and rights holders can promote specific songs within the service's autoplay and Radio algorithms, The Verge reports. This visibility boost will be available at the cost of lower royalty payouts. Spotify hasn't yet announced how much lower.

Over 6,000 musicians, producers, road crew, and other industry workers had signed an online petition demanding a penny per stream royalty from Spotify, which is about triple what Spotify is currently paying. It might, however, be too much for the Swedish streaming company - "If Spotify's model can’t pay artists fairly, it shouldn’t exist", Union of Musician and Allied Workers says, according to CoS.

Very successful 1995 Oasis single 'Wonderwall' has reached billion stream on Spotify, becoming thus the first 90s song to ever surpass one billion streams on that streaming service, Stereogum reports. 'Wonderwall' was originally released as a single on October 30, 1995. It was released on Oasis' '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?' album, the UK’s third best selling album of all time.

The UK government is to launch an investigation on whether the artists are paid fairly by streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, BBC reports. Music streaming in the UK brings in more than £1bn a year in revenue, however, artists can be paid as little as 13% of the income generated. Spotify is thought to pay between £0.002 and £0.0038 per stream, Apple Music pays about £0.0059, with YouTube paying the least - about £0.00052 per stream.

Streams of mental health playlists on Spotify have doubled this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, Independent reports. Playlists related to "mindfulness", "calm", and "self-care" have been streamed 57 per cent more in 2020 than they were last year. Podcasts related to self-help and self-care have seen a 122 per cent increase in streams.

The majority of concerts is moving online, and hopefully, the number (and production quality) of these will grow, so Spotify is adjusting. This week the streaming service had added all those virtual concerts to its "On Tour" listings. Spotify is working on it in partnership with Songkick.

NPR wonders how are listening future will look like, taking two of the biggest services as examples: "Spotify and Bandcamp could not be more opposite. Where Spotify highlights playlists, most often of its own creation, Bandcamp sticks to the album. Where Spotify pays royalties according to little-understood formulas that can only be analyzed by reverse calculation, Bandcamp lets artists and labels choose their own prices. Where Spotify requires working through a limited number of distributors to access their services, Bandcamp is open to anyone. Where Spotify has revenue streams dependent on ads and data, Bandcamp operates on a simple revenue share with artists and collects no information on its users".

"Gone are the days when a musician could afford to take all the time they need to carve and craft the next ‘Loveless’ or ‘OK Computer’" - NME's Mark Beaumont writes, looking back in anger to Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek words that “you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough". But, there is a solution - streaming platforms like Spotify should "work with the labels to reconfigure their increasing profits to ensure that all artists get the fair share they deserve from their streams and can continue making and releasing music as and when they want".

"Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough" - Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told in a Music Ally interview, but, he claims - "from the data, there are more and more artists that are able to live off streaming income in itself". He offered a piece of advice: "The artists today that are making it realise that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans". Ek's statements have rankled musicians around the globe - Exclaim collected those.

There are around 40,000 songs added to Spotify each day, so most of the music uploaded there and other streaming services every day sinks without a trace - Rolling Stone says in a great article about new artists trying to reach out to the audience. There is a way to reach them, in certain numbers, for money - for $250 an artist will be placed on playlists with a total of 50,000 followers, while $4,000 promises a playlist reach of one million, and around half a million streams.

In the last quarter, Spotify hit a high of 299 million monthly active users, up 67 million from last year, 138 million of whom are paying subscribers via Spotify’s premium tier, CNBC reports. Users’ overall podcast consumption has more than doubled, and one-fifth of monthly active users are listening to podcasts. But the company proceeded to report a 21% year-over-year loss in advertising revenue, as well as a 9% year-over-year drop in its premium monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) — and overall in Q2 2020, the company posted a loss of €356 million. Spotify has been consistently hitting new growth milestones while suffering large losses for years. Apart from announcing the business facts, Spotify has expanded their latest feature The Group Session, to allow multiple people to listen to, and control, the same playlist in real time, while being physically apart. It allows up to five people.

Spotify will launch in Russia next Wednesday (July 15), which will by Spot's first major global expansion in 16 months, following its launch in India in February 2019, Music Business Worldwide reports. Russia is home to a population of approximately 144m people, including an estimated 95m+ smartphone owners. Russia was the fastest-growing major market globally for the record industry in 2019, with a 50.3% revenue increase year-on-year, generating above $170m last year, making it the world’s 17th biggest music market.

OneZero has an amazing article about scammers who are gaming Spotify with fake artist features, in order to inflate their Spotify streaming numbers. This is how it works: First, the scammer uploads a song to Spotify using a third-party site. When filling out the track’s information, they add a popular artist as “featured” (when they are, in fact, not involved with the song at all). The last step is automatic - Spotify’s algorithm places the song in prime spots across the platform. The goal: to rack up streams and money, of course.

Universal Music Group has established a $25 million “Change Fund” that will be invested across six areas of focus, including aid/charitable giving, global, internal/institutional change, legislative/public policy, partners and programming/curation, Billboard reports. Spotify has pledged to match $10 million in donations, after being called out by its employers, and give $1 million worth of advertising to social justice groups, Digital Music News reports. Blood Orange's Dev Hynes helped raise $500,000 in just two days, with a limited edition t-shirt, Uproxx reports.

Working-from-home-themed playlists have seen a 1,400% increase on Spotify during lockdown, with Fifth Harmony’s single 'Work from Home' the most-added track to those playlists (it's actually about waiting for a lover to come home). Dolly Parton’s '9 to 5', Beethoven, Bach and the pianist Lang Lang’s version of 'Für Elise' follow, as well as 'Circles' by Post Malone, and 'Don’t Start Now' by Dua Lipa. Specific playlists have also seen a surge - Cleaning Kit playlist, a six-hour medley of songs to mop to, has had a 30% increase in streaming, painting-themed playlists are up by 90%, baking by 120%, and gardening playlists up by 430%.

Spotify has lifted the limit of the number of songs, albums, and playlists allowed in a user’s Library. That limit, which was set at 10,000 items, is now gone. The change does not affect offline listening, where users can download 10,000 songs across five different devices. In addition, the new update does not change that playlists can have no more than 10,000 songs.

Joe Rogan is taking his podcast exclusively to Spotify in a licensing deal worth more than $100 million, in one of the largest such deals in the rapidly growing podcast business. Spotify's aim, presumably, is to become “the largest audio platform in the world”, but what does this deal mean for music in general?. Spotify users will probably spend less time listening to music, but Spotify will probably gain subscribers thanks to podcasts, who will also listen to music. Music Business Worldwide goes into detail what will this deal mean for both record labels and artists, as well as music publishers and songwriters. BIG thinks this means "death to independent podcasting".

Spotify has officially launched new Group Session feature, which allows multiple people to control the same playlist in real time, The Verge reports. The feature can accommodate up to 100 users, and hey all have to be in the same location. To use the feature, the “host” will tap the Connect menu in the bottom-left corner of their Play screen, then share with their “guests” the scannable code that appears. The guests then join the session by scanning the host’s code. Then, using Spotify’s built-in controls, they’re able to pause, play, skip and select tracks on the queue and add choices of their own to be played next.

“Morning routines have changed significantly. Every day now looks like the weekend” - Spotify announced in their quarterly report. The change of trends in Spotify usage is mirroring, of course, the change of daily habits of workers who don't commute and listen to music on their way to work anymore, TechCrunch reports. Spotify says that it now has 286 million monthly active users worldwide (an increase of 31 percent) and 130 million subscribers (also up by 31 percent), with revenues in Q1 standing at €1.848 billion (up by 22 percent). Music Business Worldwide has put these numbers into perspective. Spotify’s ARPU – the average revenue paid each month by its Premium subscribers around the world – fell by 7% at constant currency, year-on-year, to €4.42m in Q1 2020. It’s the first time in history that Spotify’s official ARPU has fallen to less than half the €9.99-per-month subs price it launched with, in Europe, in 2008.

This month saw the streaming site introduced a function that allows listeners to tip specific artists they like, much as you might once have dropped a pound coin into a busker’s guitar case or compensated a starving bassist with van-based sexual favours... Should musicians depend on charity and goodwill to survive, making them ever more reliant on a platform making vast sums from their efforts alone and paying them a pittance? Now they’re posting monster multi-million-dollar profits, Spotify need to be rapidly increasing their payments until their suppliers – the musicians – can make a fair living off of significant streams - Mark, My Words takes a clear stand in his latest blog post.

Spotify has introduced a new feature Artist Fundraising Pick that allows artists to receive "tips" or donate money to charity, TechCrunch reports. Bands can pin a badge to the top of their Spotify profile, highlighting a fundraising destination where fans can send cash. As well as fundraising for themselves, artists can give money to charity or to road crews who are out of work while tours are on hold due to COVID-19.

tify is rolling out a suite of new features and projects intended to help artists who are struggling financially due to the coronavirus crisis, Billboard reports. First up is Spotify's new COVID-19 Music Relief project, which helps connect musicians and other music professionals in need of funding to grant-giving organizations, in addition to helping fundraise. Spotify will match donations made via the project's webpage dollar-for-dollar for up to a total Spotify contribution of $10 million. Next, Spotify is working to add a new feature to its Spotify For Artists platform that will enable artists to fundraise directly from fans, and Spotify will not take any cut of the contributions. Spotify's music talent marketplace SoundBetter is waiving its revenue share, it's audio recording platform Soundtrap is offering extended free trials for educators, and podcast firm Anchor is waiving fees on its Listener Support feature.

Musicians are calling on Spotify to triple its royalty rates following the coronavirus pandemic causing tours cancellations all over the world, the Guardian reports. An online petition posted by musician Evan Greer asked Spotify to triple its rates permanently - it is widely believed that Spotify pays artists about $0.00318 per stream, meaning that a rights holder would receive $3.18 (£2.74) per 1,000 streams.

Over the past several months, Sony Music has been investing aggressively in podcasts business, with those investments including at least five different partnerships and joint ventures with third-party podcast production companies - Somethin’ Else (U.K.), Broccoli Content (U.K.), The Onion (U.S.), Three Uncanny Four (U.S.) and Neon Hum (U.S.) - spanning topics including daily news commentary, investigative features, comedy/satire, politics and even family and parenting issues. Patreon sees a simple and obvious explanation for it: Sony Music’s foray into podcasting is a direct - and in many ways competitive - response to Spotify.

"People may text me their song, but... the playlist submission tool is the only way we review music. Editorial decisions are based purely on the quality of the song and its fit in the playlist" - Spotify's co-Head of Music Strategy told Forbes about how to get to Spotify playlists. There are now 3,000 Spotify playlists, and a few metrics to determine whether a song is getting on any - "We'll look at the time people spend on the songs — it takes 30 seconds of listening for it to count as an official stream. We also look whether people are actively searching for the song or just hearing it from editorial tools. Then there’s the skip ratio". Generally, he says - "it's really hard to break as an artist but hopefully we created a world where everyone has a fair shot".

Spotify is asking record labels and artists for money to advertise their songs within its app, arguing that they’ll reach new fans and increase their popularity - Bloomberg writes in an analysis of the streaming giant's change of business model. The effort is controversial because it’s complicating wider talks over long-term music rights between Spotify and the record companies. The service has already introduced one tool, called Marquee, and is pitching a second.