It’s a true sign of the times that this year, music from Pakistan’s well-established Coke Studio platform will be available for streaming only on Spotify. In a deal struck between both parties, all the songs Coke Studio puts out this season will allow featured artists on the series a chance to “share their music with Spotify’s 381 million users and connect with a global audience across 184 markets.” Apart from the new season of Coke Studio, Spotify is also home to all previous seasons of the series.

Khan went on to add how Coke Studio has become a household name, creating interest in multiple genres and regional music. “As their official streaming partner, we look forward to creating a memorable and enhanced listening experience for our Pakistani and South Asian listeners as they browse through our collaborative destination.”

The destination being referred to consists of territories such as United Kingdom, United States, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Japan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

Talking to Instep in an extensive conversation, Khan FM shed light on how Spotify will go about doing things within the Pakistani market to help the music industry at large. An excerpt from the conversation…

Instep: Can you expand on your job description?

Khan FM: I’m the Artist and Label Partnerships Manager at Spotify. I look after three markets: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. I work very closely with key artists, independent artists, their managers, and labels; to understand everything there is with regards to the world of Spotify. We focus on music releases, Spotify tools (I’ll explain later) and strategic initiatives that artists across these markets can take with regards to maximising their reach on Spotify, increasing listeners that they have and ensuring their music reaches all their fans.

Instep: How do you break down compensation for someone like Atif Aslam (who released at least four songs that rose to the top of the charts, with each song with a different label)?

Khan FM: As much as we’d love to report on the money artists take home as a result of their Spotify performance, the fact is we do not have insights of each individual artist or songwriter as they’ve chosen various records, channels of distribution; the rights owners are various labels. We can report the data that’s available to us which is usually the amount of money that’s left Spotify as a whole. It’s worth noting that Spotify doesn’t pay artists directly but labels which could be a major label or independent label, a distributor or otherwise. We make money from two sources: Spotify premium subscribers and advertisers from Spotify’s free tier. Roughly two thirds of this money is paid to the rights’ owner. In 2020 alone, that number — what we refer to as the ‘royalty pool’ — was over $5 billion from Spotify alone. So, in the case of Atif Aslam for example, only he is savvy to how much money he is making from his streams. All this depends on the contracts he has with different labels. It is worth noting that money is not divvied up upon fixed amount per stream. Premium subscribers don’t pay per stream; they pay a subscription fee for access to Spotify.

Instep: What about local and independent labels such as A for Aleph Records which is promoting some of the most promising music content. How do you deal, for example, with them?

20 years ago the music industry was a restrictive club unless you had the right resources to record, produce and distribute music. Even getting a song on the radio was difficult. With streaming everything has changed. Speaking specifically about Pakistan, this is a huge leap forward for creators in Pakistan towards a global audience.

Khan FM: We equally guide all our label partners about artist content, how to deliver their music. I’m constantly guiding artists and labels to Spotify for Artists, which is a one-stop shop for all of them to analyse the data that’s available for them. They can see how to pitch for playlists; they can see how many streams they had over a period of time; they can see male to female ratio of listeners; they can see different age groups they have access to, and which markets and which countries are consuming their music the most - domestically and internationally. There has been a rise in independent music labels across Pakistan. You’ve got Silent Roar Productions, Laal Series, Rearts Records (who are doing a phenomenal job promoting their artists) and at the end of the day, we all want to work together to ensure that the music being created in Pakistan is heard by Pakistanis all over the world and beyond.

Instep: When you say ‘partnership’ what exactly do you mean?

Khan FM: It means collaboration, a lot of teamwork between artists, labels and myself to support the work of all the artists. There are so many artists in Pakistan who are creating amazing music, and this is across genres. You’ve got blues, rock, a lot of hip-hop and folk music so when we talk about partnership, it’s literally educating each other on the music landscape of Pakistan and ensuring that artists and labels can maximise the use of all the tools that are provided by Spotify to make sure they can get as many listeners as possible.

Instep: How do you decide which artists to promote by Spotify in other territories and how do you build playlists listeners can follow having seen the music market in Pakistan?

Khan FM: We are an inclusive platform and open to every artist; it’s not only for key artists who have established themselves over the years or a new artist who is independent and doing everything by themselves. We are here to help every artist who is making music so for example if we look at Spotify for Artists, there is a new music submission tool within that dashboard which artists can use to pitch their music. Once their music is pitched, we have an amazing editorial team that will listen to their music and playlist it accordingly. We have also developed powerful algorithms over the years, all work towards one simple yet hard thing: delivering listeners the right audio at the right time. A soundtrack to enrich your life personalized to fit your individual taste. We like to say that there are about 381 million different versions of Spotify and that’s because every listener gets their own experience. There are some playlists like the daily playlist that is built solely by algorithms based on the taste and listening history of all the people on Spotify who are listening to music.

Instep: What else brings it together?

Khan FM: Other than the daily playlist, there is also top hits playlist, the hot hits (Pakistan). Having said, we see Spotify as an ecosystem and we feel two methods work in harmony which is the algorithmic playlists and playlists created by the editorial team and on that note, it’s really important for artists and labels across Pakistan to plan their releases in a way they can pitch for playlists by Spotify for Artists. It’s only by pitching their songs that they get playlisted through the editorial team or the algorithmic process. It is something every artist should think about in advance to make it to the relevant playlist.

Instep: Do you take a new artist, an unknown act and introduce them to listeners?

Khan FM: We are a platform that champions discovery. It means that more creators are creating and succeeding than ever before. 20 years ago the music industry was a restrictive club unless you had the right resources to record, produce and distribute music. Even getting a song on the radio was difficult. With streaming everything has changed. Speaking specifically about Pakistan, this is a huge leap forward for creators in Pakistan now to reach out to a global audience. The ‘Fresh Finds (Pakistan) Playlist’ was launched a few months ago and it’s dedicated solely for independent artists. We help them get discovered by fans all over the world. It’s not just the world; it’s also very localised. There are people in Pakistan who had never heard these artists before. Independent music is where all the artists start off and Fresh Finds Pakistan playlist is for artists to collaborate, grow, and be discovered.

Instep: Can you elaborate further on how you are fostering growth and discovery for artists?
Khan FM: Every quarter we have a Spotify for Artists Masterclass. These classes are designed for artists and labels as well as established artists to take a deep dive into the world of Spotify for Artists. They understand the algorithms better and pitching tools better and how to utilise the data and analytics they have access to; they also get access to tools like Sound Better which allow musicians to create music virtually anywhere in the world; they allow songwriters and artists to connect in a virtual network of engineers, producers, session musicians, and not just any professionals. These are Grammy award winning professionals, which all the artists in Pakistan now have access to and can collaborate with. These are just some of the tools available to artists in finding newer listeners.

Instep: There are mixed reports about songs reaching a million streams but compensation isn’t the same?

Khan FM: The nature of million streams has changed. Streaming services pay based on share, not a per stream because of streaming growth and engagement per user. To get a better sense of the Spotify ecosystem, you can play around with the interactive tool on the site Loud and Clear, which reflects data as of December 2020.

Instep: Is there a plan to create partnership between Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka?

Khan FM: Of course, we are keen to facilitate collaborations across the border. It has already happened in the past and who’s stopping it from happening in the future. We have the reach, and the tools to foster cross-collaboration via Spotify. For example in Middle East region, there is a program called Radar fostering collaboration between an Arabic artist and a K-Pop artist and if that’s possible we don’t see any reason why we won’t be able to do it across South Asian markets.