This is part 2 of our five-part series diving into For Artists features on streaming platforms. You can read part 1, which provides some context on why we’re doing this, by clicking here.

The listener experience features of For Artists (FA) platforms aim to enrich audiences’ engagement with music on DSPs. This category of features enables artists to personalize their profile pages and provide biographies, song credits, and lyrics, allowing listeners to glimpse deeper into their artists’ lives and creative processes.

DSPs differ significantly in the range of listener experience features they provide to their subscribers, and the extent to which artists can control these features through FA platforms. For instance, while music distributors usually offer the ability for artists to submit detailed song credits, the DSPs ultimately determine the level of detail displayed to subscribers. TIDAL stands out for showcasing individual musician contributions to a song, such as drums, bass, guitars, and producers. At the same time, Amazon Music and Deezer offer minimal information, showing only the songwriters behind a track. Apple Music became the first DSP to enable artists to directly submit song lyrics via their FA platform in November 2022 (versus having to submit them through a distributor). 

Artists are still limited in terms of what they can present to new listeners or fans beyond just their music. There have been just a handful of industry announcements over the past year that demonstrate the DSPs are focused on further enabling artists to customize the listening experience

—

The rest of this analysis is available only to paying Water & Music members.

If you’re already a member, please sign into your account here.

If not, sign up today for a quarterly or annual membership plan to get smarter on music and tech and meet like-minded professionals in the industry. You can read more about our membership benefits here.