In a surprise announcement, Spotify will now allow indie artists to bypass distributors like CD Baby and TuneCore and directly upload their songs to the platform. Best of all, there will be no charge to do so, relieving artists from paying the nominal fees that distributors charge for the service. The upload feature will be available via the Spotify For Artists section of the platform, which has about 200,000 users so far. An artist must have a verified account first before being able to join Spotify For Artists.

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CD Baby, TuneCore, Ditto, and DistroKid are distributors that will take an artist's songs and distribute them to all the streaming platforms for a fee. Until now, it was the only way for an act not signed to a label to get their music on Spotify and Apple Music, as well a host of competitors, at the same time. Ideally, an artist should be on every platform to be sure that they accommodate the preferences of their fans and accumulate revenue, but since Spotify is king of the streaming hill at the moment, many less savvy artists will believe that being on just that one major platform may be enough.