Why do artists need 250 followers to get verified?

[dttcc]

Dear staff,
I was trying to understand the reason why spotify set a bar of 250 followers to start the verification process for artists. I mean, this mostly leads to lot of "follow me-follow back" threads and poor follow exchanges. I know it's more useful for the platform to have people struggling to reach this amount by sharing their profile around. But what's actually the reason behind that? How does this method assure a better verification?

[FriekoRieko]

Sounds kind of arbitrary to me.. By the way, there are lots of so called deals out there that will get you 250 followers, 10.000 listeners, tracks added to popular playlists etc etc etc.. https://nl.fiverr.com/gigs/spotify

[NicoRenner]

Things I wanna know too.. why 250.. 

[felipepelaquim]

I guess it's just a way to guarantee that a recognizable artist doesn't get his profile copied / duplicated. 

Just my opinion anyway. Hope it helps!

See ya,

F.R.

[Jorge_Segovia]

maybe an unknown artist is not worthy to be verified as one, I think it is unfair for us, the non commercial ones...

[Jazzwhatever]

Hey Artists, @Jorge_Segovia, @felipepelaquim, @NicoRenner, @FriekoRieko, @dttcc

Maybe you can compare the verification process with organising a concert. If only your parents like your music there is no reason to organise a concert in the local concert hall. You have to have atleast 250 followers before you can play there.

Do you agree with me? 

Bytheway, many people don't have their albums on Spotify. Be happy about it that YOU do.

[Jorge_Segovia]

yeah, I agree

That is why I am seeking for virtual "audience" and I like the fact that Spotify pushes us to increase it.

[DonSolare]

What I see is that having 200 or 300 followers doesn't make ANY difference at the end of the day. What makes a difference is to have Listeners, not Followers.

I don't want to give names here. But a quick research -that you can also do- leads to interesting results:

- Established Artist A (say, The Beatles). Listeners: 7m; followers 2m.

- Underrated, undiscovered, under the radar artist B. Listeners: 30, followers 200.

These are real numbers (rounded). Analysis: in the ratio of artist B something is peculiar, since not even their followers are listening the music!

In extreme case: you could have a "fiverr" artist with 251 followers and zero listeners. Now tell me the use of this.

In "large numbers" artists, where faking is more difficult, the ratio Listeners/Followers is a number between 3 and 6. Exceptions possible. But I did my research... do you want an articule on the subject?

JMS

[FriekoRieko]

A source to check your facts would be great, thanks. Also for background reading off course.

[Jazzwhatever]

@DonSolare I agree with you. In this case Spotify should change followers to listeners. So 250 listeners to get a verified profile. 250 followers means nothing. Anyone can click on the follow button, but to really listen to music is another thing 🙂

[dttcc]

Hey all!

I guess you're kind of misunderstanding. I don't want to claim artists pages to be called an artist, that's something I can do myself. I just want to know why there is a bar that prevents somebody to manage his "artist" page. full stop.

The similarity with a concert simply does not work: from my personal profile I just can spread the news with my friends and relatives, from an "artists" profile I can work things better (no wonder why facebook let's artist pages use sponsored content so easily).

The feeling of being lucky because an album is on spotify is something I had hard times to get, since online labels take part of the earning to put the album on the platform.

Coming to the Beatles-Unkown artists comparison: the follow button, from an UX point of view, is mostly unused. People enjoy the freedom of picking up whatever song they want to listen to at the moment, avoiding notifications to costantly remind them of what they should check out. In case they need a reminder they go on the discovery section or use the Spotify playlist. Because it's 2016 and (sadly) people tend to listen to group of songs, regardless of the album format.
That said, the follow button starts being unnecessary, letting the number of listeners increase despite the number of followers. Who needs followers the most? Small sized bands, since they need to get to the 250 threshold. In this case the number of followers does not correspond to the number of listeners (way less than expected).

Again, I don't want to know what defines an "artist", I want to know how to manage a page and why there's a threshold.

[Jazzwhatever]

@dttcc Ok. I think the only reason why there is a limit of 250 followers/listeners is so that not just anyone can have the freedom of making an artist profile. I think it's to prevent internet trolls from making fake artist profiles. People with 0 folllowers who register for the free Spotify and make 1000 fake profiles.

[DonSolare]

@dttcc Yes, maybe I  am kind of misunderstanding, as you say, as a matter of fact I have a hard time trying to understand your English, possibly because it is not my mother tongue, dear Diego.

In any case: having a verified profile does NOT (NOOOOOTTTTTT) mean that you are an artist. You are an artist on Spotify from the moment you upload a "song" / track / piece where you performed or that you composed. Period. There are lots of artists with unverified profiles, a prominent example being Frederic Chopin (and no, I am not being sarcastic).

"The feeling of being lucky because an album is on spotify is something I had hard times to get, since online labels take part of the earning to put the album on the platform."

I cannot agree, actually. My personal hapiness does not depend on the 15% that my aggregator (NOT online label) takes. Consider that Spotify itself retains 30%, so a simple math operation tells you where you have to look for happiness killers.

"the follow button, from an UX point of view, is mostly unused." [citation needed] Please mention your source. Do you have hard facts to support this? Is not a question of believing or wishing, this is merely a numbers game.

"That said, the follow button starts being unnecessary, letting the number of listeners increase despite the number of followers." Well, possibly is unnecesary, but it's fun. That said, really necessary is to eat and to have a piano at home. Not to have 250 followers on Spotify or elsewhere.

Back to your problem, copycat club, the point is that -as for today- you have 224 followers and 26 monthly listeners. So your followers are not listening. THAT is -musically- a huge problem, a credibility issue. BUT you have the artist status. This is not an issue.

"how to manage a page" No, no, being verified doesn't mean that you can manage your artist page. The Bio and pictures, for instance, come from allmusic. All stats and related artists come from Spoty's algorithms. The concerts come from songkick. So you actually don't manage "no nothing" when you get verified.

[dttcc]

Thanks for the reply, I get your point but there are several things we can keep on discussing forever (like what do you mean by managing a page - bio, stats and concerts are not the things I'm pointing to) and the number of followers (are not 224 but simply 39 - so the number of listeners is in a more reasonable ratio). I don't assume that followers=listeners, I explained why in the previous answer.

This discussion, anyway, does not answer my question.
Do you know why there's a 250 followers bar to reach?

I'm not asking if somebody can guess why, I'm asking if somebody actually knows the reason.

[felipepelaquim]

But I'm not an artist / have an album on Spotify! I was just guessing. 😛 

[dttcc]

ahahaha
no worries, it seems like my tone is kind of aggressive but it's mostly because of my way of writing! I was just concerned about the fact that the topic was switching to "what defines an artist & stuff like that"

[DonSolare]

@dttcc

well, here is a printscreen that says that you have 260 followers... or is there another copycat club?

Copycat Club 260 followers 12 sep 2016

[DonSolare]

@dttcc

as for your other question, Spotify's website says

"Requiring artists to build a small following on Spotify before verification helps us to verify artists in a timely way and improve our wider artist support.

We have chosen a low number so that even very new artists can still get verified and use Spotify’s tools to grow their audience even further."

Now, which is the verdad verdadera, I cannot answer any better.

Provisory answer: is an arbitrary number. Now, we have not been asked if we want this or not. Spotify set the rule and we have to play with their rules. Wondering "why" leads nowhere.

Save time and get listeners.

[dttcc]

Ok, there must be something wrong. You can see 39 followers in my signature at the end of comments. But I started the verification process anyway, the staff will tell me better on the way, I guess.

You keep on pointing the focus on the "listener" argument.
Ok, how do you get listeners? I think the most valuable option is to be featured in an official playlist. Who owns the most followed playlist?
"the Spotify playlist empires owned by the three major labels — Topsify (Warner Music), Digster (Universal Music Group), and Filtr (Sony)"

Source: this article

So, let's suppose it's like that. To have more listeners I have to deal with major labels, which I strongly avoid, since I don't agree with their policy (I don't stress this point or we will start a completely new topic).

Now you could tell me "Make your own playlist and promote it with your means".

And that's EXACTLY why I want my verified page! To do it by myself and not messing up with labels & stuff! THAT way I get listeners, not promoting my page using a private spotify account.

[DonSolare]

@dttcc

Diego, you must urgently put some order in your thoughts about how things happen.

Since you read Spanish, I suggest that you start reading this article and develop your own strategy, as 99% of the independent artists are doing.