It seems very few acts today can put out a new record without having some sort of “secret” show happening on the side. Many of these are via Spotify’s Fan First initiative, where top streamers of a particular artist in a particular city will get an invite to an underplay as a reward for their loyalty. Fans First also offers pre-sale access to tickets and exclusive merchandise items from acts – but really the big draw is the secret show.

Grime artist Stormzy, however, took a slightly different route by flying 250 people from the UK to Minorca to stay in a villa to celebrate his 25th birthday. Some were friends, family and artists (notably Lethal Bizzle, Big Shaq, Not3s, Ms Banks, Jaykae and Krept & Konan) but others were his top streamers on Spotify. Except they were only premium subscribers (so those using the adsupported tier did not qualify). Leaving from Stansted airport, they got #MERKYAirways-branded goods like towels, sun cream and shades – and inevitably pictures from the event flooded social media. Stormzy had already hired out Thorpe Park, the theme park in Surrey, two years ago for his birthday and invited fans along, but this was a much bigger undertaking and bankrolled in part by Spotify. And it is the premium streamers part that is most interesting here. This may be a test and a one-off by Spotify, but it could equally become the norm. As it stands, on the Spotify page about Fans First, one of the FAQs asks if you need to be a Spotify Premium user to be eligible. “Nope!” runs the reply. “These offers are open to everyone with a Spotify account.” Maybe not for much longer. The timing is also of huge importance here.

This was a UK-led competition and the Official Charts Company in the UK has only just recalibrated the chart rules so that a premium stream is worth six times what an ad-supported stream is. That means there is a dual emphasis on placing subscriber streams above ad-supported streams (the micropayments are higher and the chart eligibility is greater). In our cover feature this issue, we look at how affiliate payments have helped push Apple Music subscriber numbers up, especially in the US. This is all feeding into a new marketing push where albums might not be held back for a few weeks from free users but those same streamers will maybe be locked out of other incentives. This could become “the new windowing”.