Spotify acquired a minority stake in music company DistroKid as part of a partnership which will allow artists who upload songs directly to the streaming service to distribute their work on other platforms as well.

In a blog post, Spotify noted DistroKid “has been a trusted and reliable partner to Spotify, which is why they’re a natural choice to enhance the experience for artists using our beta upload feature”. It added it has taken a “passive minority investment in DistroKid”, but did not disclose the financial details of the transaction.

However, a source told TechCrunch Spotify’s investment does not get it a seat on DistroKid’s board, nor will have it be able to see data from other digital service providers.

Last month Spotify introduced a new beta feature that enables independent artists to upload their music directly to the platform.

Some observers criticised the move, stating distributing songs to one platform rather than several, including Tidal, Apple Music and YouTube, was not in the best interest of musicians.

The investment in DistroKid, which serves more than 250,000 artists, may be one way of dealing with the backlash. Spotify said the new integration with DistroKid will roll out “in the near future”.