You can soon pay Spotify to recommend new albums

Australian labels, publishers, managers and artists can soon pay Spotify to make full-screen recommendations for new albums.

Brand New Music For You pop-ups for premium and free tiers will be trialled in the US before being rolled out elsewhere.

It’s going to be a feature that will divide Spotify’s 100 million+ subscribers, however, Premium subscribers will have the option to turn the feature off.

“It’s really exciting to see Spotify is creating tools that are designed from the ground up with music marketing in mind, and giving indies more power to reach their fans with new music,” said Spotify executive Jordyn Reese.

“This will absolutely be one of the top tools in our growth arsenal.”

Until now, Spotify’s recommendations have only been based on a combination of user listening habits and human curators.

Spotify points out that paid sponsorships will still depend on personal tastes.

“These recommendations will continue to be powered by your music taste, so you will only hear from artists that you frequently listen to or follow,” the service said in a blog post.

At this stage, the offer only covers new albums. And if the feature works, Spotify is hoping that the music industry will swing more digital marketing dollars towards it.

In Q2 2019, the company’s quarterly ad revenues of €165 million (A$268.7 million) only made up 9.9$ of its overall revenues in this period of €1.67 billion ($2.71 billion).