aylor Swift's re-recording 'Red (Taylor’s Version)' smashed the record for the most-streamed album in a day by a female artist on Spotify with more than 90.8 million streams around the globe, Billboard reports. That number only surpasses Swift’s own 'folklore', which previously held the record at 80.6 million streams upon its surprise July 2020 release. Taylor also earned the distinction as the most-streamed female artist in a single day in Spotify's history with more than 122.9 million streams.

YouTube has surpassed the milestone of 50 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, growing its subscriber base by around 20 million in the past 11 months, or around 1.8m subscribers per month since October 2020, MBW reports on the music stat. YouTube's biggest rival Spotify's global Premium Subscriber base grew to 165 million in Q2 2021, which was up 20% year-on-year. Apple Music in June 2019 announced it had surpassed 60 million subscribers.

Spotify's Premium Subscriber base grew to 165 million in the second quarter of 2021, which was up 20% year-on-year. The company’s total global monthly active users grew 22% year-on-year to 365 million in Q2 2021. Spotify’s Premium subscriber growth translated into revenue of €2.056 billion in Q2. That's big numbers, there are some small numbers, on which everything depends really - the firm’s average monthly revenue per subscriber landed at €4.29 in Q2. Music Business Worldwide takes a closer look at the numbers.

"There's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, but there isn't good payola and bad payola. There's just payola" - Music REDEF's Matty Karas argues about Spotify's Discovery Mode, which allows indie artists to chose which songs they want to be played more on the streaming service, in return for a lower royalty rate. "If major labels have a built-in advantage on Spotify playlists, another way to put indie artists on an equal playing field would be to allow them to single out tracks for playlist consideration and *not* charge them for it. Call it Discovery Mode and don't change a thing about it except the price" - Karas points out. Two law professors on Billboard argue it's not really band kind, whereas Future of Music Coalition sees it through the lens of payola.

Spotify announced its new Fresh Finds program, which will spotlight indie musicians in marketing campaigns and equip them with a variety of educational tools, Music Ally reports. The program is a spin-off of the Fresh Finds playlist, which has added more than 25,000 emerging artists since its launch five years ago. In 2021, about half of the artists added to the playlist previously had fewer than 21,000 monthly listeners, but the average artist sees their listens increase by 108% in the month after being playlist, according to Spotify. The first four Fresh Finds program artists are Wallice, Unusual Demont, Julia Wolf, and EKKSTACY. For now, the Fresh Finds program is U.S.-only, but Spotify is expanding the reach of the Fresh Finds playlists, adding new regional versions in 13 territories including the U.K., South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as other parts of Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Slate tracked down imposters using famous artists' names to attract listeners on Spotify, without even trying too hard to hide what they're doing. There was a Diana Ross who didn't look anything alike to the "real" Diana Ross, the age didn't match, music neither, and the artist was actually connected to Philippines-based record label Star Music. Electric Light Orchestra is the English 70s band, with the same name co-opted by an autotune-happy rapper. DJ Quik suddenly on Spotify started rapping in Spanish, and wasn't willing to show his face either. This happens a lot on Spotify, Slate argues.

The desktop version of Spotify now contains play counts for every track on every album available. InsideHook took a chance to find songs with a small number of plays, which deserve to be played much more, like Joni Mitchell's 'The Last Time I Saw Richard' and Metallica's 'The Struggle Within'.

Tom Morello, DIIV, Talib Kweli, and 180 other musicians signed an open letter calling on Spotify to make a public commitment never to utilize, license, sell, or monetize a patent for technology that could monitor and record users’ speech and background noise to help curate and recommend music, Pitchfork reports. “Spotify claims that the technology can detect, among other things, ‘emotional state, gender, age, or accent’ to recommend music” the letter reads, outlining the five major concerns that the coalition has regarding the technology: “emotional manipulation,” discrimination, privacy violations, data security, and the exacerbation of inequality in the music industry.

Spotify's former chief economist Will Page published a new study Twitch's Rockonomics which claims that artists make roughly 10 times more on Twitch than streaming providers. However, Twitch is very specific, and very different from Spotify - artists use Twitch to livestream content to their fans, charging monthly subscriptions (for $5, $10, or $25), earn digital tokens called Bits, or generate ad revenue. In general, Twitch aims super-fans willing to pay more for artists they like...

Spotify's monthly Premium subscriber ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) in the first quarter of 2021 stood at just €4.12, down 7% year-on-year. In Spotify’s prior quarter (Q4 2020), the firm’s ARPU stood at €4.26, while in the prior year quarter (Q1 2020), it was €4.42. Music Business Worldwide recalculated it in US dollars - Q1 2021’s €4.12 per month figure was the equivalent of USD 4.97 per month period based on current exchange rates. Spotify has announced it is set to raise prices in Europe and the US by 1 to 3 euros/pounds/dollars, depending on the plan.