Spotify punishes Apple exclusive artists, as Katy Perry knows
In the battle Spotify vs Apple Music, Spotify has a new strategy: punishing artists who sign exclusive deals with Apple Music
Bloomberg revealed a story that accuses Spotify of burying musicians for their Apple deals.
Several anonymous reports claim that iTunes is making it difficult for its users to find new music from artists under exclusive deals with rival streaming services.
It would seem that the issue concerns just Apple Music, but let us not forget that also artists who have windowed their music on Tidal have the same problem.
So, is Spotify deliberately making it harder to find the Apple and Tidal exclusive artists, moreover excluding them from influential playlists?
Spotify has denied the claim, saying that it is "unequivocally false".
Spotify's head of communications told the Verge:
"Of course, we understand that short promotional exclusives are common
and we don't have an absolute policy against them,
but we definitely think the best practice for everybody is wide release."
The single Rise, Katy Perry's first in two years, was originally released worldwide as a windowed iTunes and Apple Music exclusive.
Since landing on Spotify, one week after iTunes release, Rise didn’t get the commercial boost and the desired success.
Music Business Worldwide has looked at this issue very seriously.
MBW understands that Spotify has around a total active user base of somewhere between 110m and 120m; meanwhile, Apple Music has around a total active user base of 17m.
So, as MBW states:
“Every time a superstar like Katy Perry strikes an Apple Music deal,
they risk being downgraded (in playlists; not search) in front of around 120m people”.
