I realised that the Deezer app recommends major label artists and popular acts most of the time on mood channels, playlists, flow and home page.
As an independent artist, I realise there’s literally no way for people to get to find my music unless they search for my artist name or song name. Even if they search by song name, my song will be placed at the end of the search results. I guess the algorithm prioritises popular/mainstream artists?
As Deezer is always advocating for fair pay to artists by UCPS and equality for all artists regardless of their current progress in their careers, I think something has to be done to give the independent artists exposure they need. I have some suggestions…
- Add a platform for artists to pitch their songs to curators so they can be promoted on more playlists.
- Add a flow feature purely for rising artists for users to discover non-mainstream and experimental tracks. ( Tbh, the popular tracks are so anodyne and plain boring and we need some cool and experimental stuffs to switch it up. I don’t want to hear the same old boring popular songs in my flow)
- Add a new “undiscovered” channel with feed for non-major label/ undiscovered artists for new songs to be featured. Maybe prioritise the local acts as I would love to hear more stuffs by artists in my region. (Maybe make better use of the country selector function to feature more undiscovered acts in that region)
- Add a “surprise me” feature that plays any songs (by artists not in their library)
Maybe we could even add a hot or not button to rate songs (privately) to influence the algorithm for better recommendations (especially for independent artists)
