Spotify announced its ‘Spotify Singles’ initiative at the end of November 2016: plans to launch double-track releases recorded by artists in its own studios, pairing live recordings of their own songs with covers of their favourites. Yesterday, we got an update on how the initiative has performed.
“Now, in under two years, we have hours of exclusive content from 185 (and counting!) of your favourite artists that you can’t hear anywhere else,” announced Spotify, addressing listeners. “And thanks to you, those 380 singles have been streamed, collectively, one billion times.”
That’s an average of just over 2.6m streams each, so these tracks don’t tend to be big-hitters of the Spotify ecosystem – Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ alone has 1.8bn streams, as a reminder – but collectively their listening figures have grown steadily. As at the start, Spotify Singles remain the property of the artists’ labels, copyright-wise, avoiding any unpleasantness over trampling on rightsholder toes with the original recordings.
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