A lot of the money spent on a career as an artist can be expensed on yearly taxes. As a platform, Stem is not only focused on revenue transparency for artists but also helping them use their earnings to fund upcoming releases and creative endeavors. While we are neither CPAs nor providing set advice, below are five recommendations of items to discuss with a personal tax consultant when it comes time to evaluate your tax expenses as an artist.

If you’ve been to the Stem office, then you’re familiar with the ever blaring Sonos blasting the music we love made by the artists we adore. Releasing well over 50,000 tracks this year, our team has been blessed with endless content to score the soundtrack of our workdays. We’ve compiled a list of 100 of our team’s favorite tracks of 2018 below & hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

With the holidays fast approaching and holiday tunes playing all around, it’s a time of year where artists can add their own twists on classic holiday hits. While it may seem simple to record and release your own version of “Let It Snow”, there are a few specifics to keep in mind prior to distributing a cover song. Stem wants to make sure you follow all appropriate guidelines. Read on to learn the nuances of covering a holiday song.

We take our job of getting your music out into the world & making sure you get paid seriously; we want to help artists build and further their careers by creating a new standard in back-office tools for managing your business independently.

In order to create the best experience possible for our users, we don’t accept everyone on Stem. Here is what we look for in a user.

Planning for new releases is typically the focus of most artists and their teams. However, there’s great value in celebrating an artist’s existing catalog, too. To help jump-start promoting previous releases, we’ve compiled five tips to help revive your music catalog. These tricks aim at increasing album streams, using your discography as evergreen music promotion and reaching your fans throughout their music discovery.

Public Relations always lands high on the list of needs for many artists.  Publicity is a realm that helps amplify a creator’s voice and increase awareness about his or her art through a strategic set of skills. Stem synced with Lauren Camp of On Record PR for her 5 tips to consider prior to working with a publicist.

YouTube is not only a valuable platform for musicians to host their music but for marketing it as well. In this post, we’ll guide you through how to grow your YouTube channel as well as use it as content with other marketing efforts to nurture your current audience and reach new fans.

As an artist, Spotify verification opens the door to additional features and profile control. Read on to learn more about how to get verified on Spotify after you’ve distributed your music through a service like Stem. Having a blue check mark next to your artist name is an important milestone for artists on social media and on the streaming platforms. This provides an added level of notoriety and legitimacy for artists when fans search for their profiles to stream their music.

From Drake pairing up with gaming personality Tyler “Ninja” Blevins for epic games of Fortnite, to Universal Music launching an official “Gaming Hip-Hop Playlist” with e-sports organization Luminosity, to Grand Theft Auto licensing hundreds of tracks across hip-hop, rock, pop, country and reggae over the last 15 years for its in-game radio stations, music’s role in video games and in the wider gaming community has a rich and valuable history. It makes perfect sense that Twitch, one of the leading video game live-streaming platforms in the world, is increasingly investing in its in-house music strategy.

In 2018, playlists have become a primary method of music discovery for listeners. Getting your song added to a playlist on any platform is the icing on the cake to a great marketing plan, which should include strategy around social media, email, publicity and more. To help artists supplement their marketing plans, Spotify recently made a move that democratizes pitching to playlist editors by building a submission form into Spotify for Artists.