SPOTIFY GIVES CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Spotify has started listing songwriter and producer credits using label-provided metadata. Finally, the world will know who produced all those Beatles albums.

After considerable sturm und drang from the behind-the-scenes creative community, Spotify is including information only found on liner notes and on web sites such as Discogs and Allmusic.

Spotify will display the source of the credits and plans to evolve to become more efficient and incorporate more information from industry partners over time.

Currently, the service is only available on the desktop version—right-click on a track and select “Show Credits” from the menu of options.

“With the newly launched credits feature, we aim to increase songwriter and producer visibility and, in turn, foster discovery among new collaborators, industry partners, and fans,” said Tiffany Kumar, Spotify’s Global Head of Songwriter Relations.

“When I won a Lifetime Service Award at the NMPA’s Centennial Annual Meeting last summer I called upon the streaming services to display the names of the songwriters who wrote the songs just as they clearly credit the artists who recorded them," said Sony/ATV chief Marty Bandier. "With this announcement, Spotify has taken a first, important step to properly recognize the vital contribution that songwriters make to its service and should be applauded for it. Songwriters are the essential lifeblood of the music industry. Without their words and music there would be nothing for artists to record, no hit songs and no music to stream.” In the spirit of the occasion, Bandier gave credit to Nick Perdomo.

The new credits feature follows on the heels of other Spotify songwriter-focused initiatives such as the Secret Genius program.