Last month, Spotify announced that as part of its coronavirus relief efforts it would soon add new fundraising features for artists on its platform. Today, the company is following through with the launch of “Artist Fundraising Pick,” a feature that allows artists to fundraise for themselves, their crews, or one of the verified music relief initiatives Spotify has already vetted through the Spotify COVID-19 Music Relief project.
At launch, Spotify is working with a small group of fundraising partners to make the donation process easier, including Cash App, GoFundMe, and PayPal.me.
Artists in the US and UK who link to their Cash App username and collect at least one donation of any size will get an additional $100 from a pool of $1 million which works out to 10,000 musicians getting extra support.
At the moment, it seems you’ll only see the fundraising links on Spotify’s mobile app; when I went to find them on desktop, they weren’t there. In addition to raising money for themselves and their crews, musicians can also collect donations for organizations such as MusiCares and Help Musicians. Spotify has published a breakdown of best practices to help people get started.
“Given the urgency and impact of the COVID-19 crisis, we’re working as quickly as we can to develop this new product and get it out to as many artists as possible,” the company said. “However, we’ve never built a fundraising feature like this before. We consider this a first version that will evolve as we learn how to make it as helpful as possible for the music community.”
The feature addition follows the announcement of Spotify’s COVID-19 Music Relief project, which will see the company match donations dollar-for-dollar to a group of verified organizations that are offering financial relief to artists and industry professional. How much the company’s latest feature will help musicians will depend on how much money people can afford to donate. The coronavirus pandemic has hurt the earning potential of a whole host of different people, not just creatives. Still, as with any situation, some help is better than no help at all.
