Insights & Trends - page 6

If your label is moving to a new music distributor, the risk sits in the catalog. Deliver a release the wrong way and Spotify reads it as a new recording: the play count starts from zero, playlist placements drop, and your artists come to you asking where their streams went.

If you run a label, one artist's fake streams land on your account. Spotify charges the label or distributor that delivered the track, and distributors pass the fee on to the account the track came from. On a label account, that's you.

Our partner’s channel tells the stories of Old Hollywood: star marriages, long-lost love stories, the golden era retold in short episodes. From April to June 2026, the channel published 50 videos instead of the usual 99. Each of those videos got 77% more views, 98% more watch time, and 86% more revenue than a video from the quarter before.

On September 23, YouTube announced more than 30 updates at Made on YouTube, from live auto-dubbing to AI feedback on draft videos. Some already work, and others arrive later in 2026 or in 2027. Two changes affect every channel right now: the public view counter counts every play, and YouTube can label undisclosed sponsorships on its own. Here's each update, plus two from Instagram, with its status and what it means for your channel.