Now in beta, this optional feature lets you review eligible releases before they appear on your profile on Spotify.
Music has been landing on the wrong artist pages across streaming services, and the rise of easy-to-produce AI tracks has made the problem worse. That’s not the experience we want artists to have on Spotify, and that’s why we’ve made protecting artist identity a top priority for 2026. Today, we’re announcing a first-of-its-kind solution to a problem that’s affected streaming for years.
In the streaming age, it's easy to deliver music to dozens of streaming services and digital retailers at the same time. Open-access distribution channels have lowered the barrier for independent artists to share music with the world, promote collaborations easily, and transfer music between distributors seamlessly. But that openness comes with gaps that bad actors can exploit.
Sometimes, this means a release that isn’t yours appears on your profile across streaming services — whether due to a metadata mix-up, another artist with the same name, or someone maliciously attaching their music to your profile. When that happens, it can impact your catalog, your stats, your Release Radar, and how fans discover your music. We know how frustrating this can be for both artists and fans alike and one of the top requests we’ve heard from artists over the past year is that you want more visibility before music appears under your name.
Artist Profile Protection
That's why we’re introducing Artist Profile Protection, an optional feature in Spotify for Artists, now in limited beta. It adds a review step before releases go live on your profile, helping you stay in control of what music lists you as an artist on Spotify.
For the first time on any music streaming service, we’re giving you the ability to review and approve or decline releases delivered to Spotify from most providers. To protect your artist identity and prevent listener confusion, only the releases you approve will appear on your artist profile, contribute to your stats, and show up in recommendations to your listeners.
Artist Profile Protection isn’t necessary for every artist, but could make sense if you’ve experienced repeated incorrect releases, have a common artist name, or want more control over what appears on your profile. It requires you to actively review releases before they go live, so may delay or block your legitimate releases if you forget to take an action. It's best for those who are comfortable very actively managing their catalog.
This new feature builds on our reporting tools already in place, giving you proactive review and reactive reporting, so you have the chance to act both before and after a release connects to your profile.
How It Works
If you’re included in the beta, you’ll see the feature available in your Spotify for Artists settings on desktop and mobile web (Artist Team Admins and Editors have the ability to manage the settings). If you turn Artist Profile Protection on, you’ll receive an email notification when music is delivered to Spotify with your name attached.
From there, you can review eligible releases and decide whether to approve or decline them.
- If you approve it, at the release date, it will appear under your name and contribute to your stats and recommendations to your fans as usual.
- If you decline it, or don’t take action, the release won’t list you or appear on your profile. (Note, the release may still go live on other streaming services besides Spotify, so you may still want to notify your label or distributor.)
To help legitimate releases move smoothly and to save you time, you’ll also be assigned an artist key: a unique code you can share with trusted providers. When music delivered to Spotify includes your artist key at delivery, the release is automatically pre-approved and goes live as normal.
What Happens Next
This is an early beta, which means that if you decide to opt in, what you’ll see in Spotify for Artists is not the final, full functionality. Throughout the beta, we’ll collect feedback from artists using Artist Profile Protection and keep refining it before rolling it out to all artists as soon as we possibly can.
If you’re not included yet, or choose not to opt in, releasing music still works the way it always has. And if a release is misattributed to you, you can still report it here.
To learn more, visit the Spotify for Artists Help Center.
