5 Things We Learned From Top Spotify Exec Kevin Brown At Inaugural Spotify Talks Event

As streaming service Spotify gears up to celebrate their 5th year in the Australian market tonight, we headed down to their inaugural Spotify Talks event, the start of a new series bringing knowledge from some of the best and brightest in the streaming service biz.

Spotify's Head Of Artist & Label Services International, Kevin Brown, sat down with Marc Fennell to chat about all the things you can do to make your artist stand out in the wilderness that is Spotify's 30 million songs.

TheMusic.com.au were on ground and to celebrate five years, here are five things we learned from Brown.

give us something interesting

"Music marketing is now less transactional [with streaming services] — it used to be beating the consumer over the head and saying, 'buy buy buy'. Now it's encouraging the fan to engage with the music. Here's the artist doing something interesting, here's a different version of the song..."

use those stats

"Each of the 30 million songs [on Spotify] have data attached to it — did the user find this on a playlist, did they search for it, there's lots of data.

"It's what you do with the data that makes it interesting. We've just launched out of beta, Spotify For Artists to better unlock this data. For example, an act like Glades can see who and where in America is listening to their band and specifically tour those places."

video is coming to spotify

"We want to get better at telling the stories of artists and the best way to do that is video, it colours in the lines. We're also developing long-form content, examples are the Landmark — Metallica: The Early Years documentary and Traffic Jams.

playlisting is not religious

"Our playlisting is completely agnostic and based on how people respond to the music — it is not all major label music. It's whether the audience responds and reacts to it and how it works in the context of a playlist."

chicken or the egg? the song

"We talk about technology all the time but it's important to remember that it always starts with the artist and the song."