SPOTIFY COUNTS THE REMIX

In a move that brings significant validation to the entire dance-music community, and particularly the DJs coming up who use remixing as a tool to evolve into full-fledged music producers (the path from which some of our biggest current talents like Diplo, David Guetta, Zedd, Avicci and Afrojack have all traveled), Spotify has announced the service is making a change in its rules that will allow streams of remixes to count toward the remixer’s monthly listeners.

"Remixes are a major part of the way music evolves in the 21st century," the company said in a blog post, "They build bridges between genres and they connect cultures around the world."

The new rule will apply to all songs with a remix credit dating back to 2015, and remixes are also now eligible to appear in the Popular and Latest Releases sections of the remixer’s artist profile. Further empowering them, remixers will now get access to song-level insights for their remixes in Spotify for Artists.

This is also a powerful maneuver against Spotify's competitors in the dance music space, particularly SoundCloud, whose more lenient rules in this regard have enabled popular remixers to gain widespread visibility when they trend in the Top 50 and New & Hot charts. With most of the electronic-dance world already migrating from SoundCloud for Spotify's worldwide audience of 70m paid subscribers, getting spin credit for the work is an even bigger perk.