Since its inception, Spotify has required artists to upload their music to the platform through a label or a digital service like Tunecore, creating a barrier for independent artists who often handle the release of their music themselves. Yesterday, the service announced in a blog post that it’s launching a new feature that will allow artists to upload their music directly to Spotify. The tool, which is still in beta testing, will allow artists to “deliver music straight to Spotify and plan for the perfect release day.”

According to Spotify, the tool will also let artists preview exactly how their upload will appear to users before they submit it, and will allow them to edit their own metadata, all for free. The service has already worked with Noname, Michael Brun, VIAA, and Hot Shade on the tool, which it plans to expand to more artists in the coming months.

“We created a pretty simple and fair deal for uploading music where artists receive 50 percent of Spotify’s net revenue, and Spotify also accounts to publishers and collection societies for additional royalties related to the musical composition,” Kene Anoliefo, senior product lead for Spotify’s creator marketplace, told The Verge about artist payouts. “Artists will receive automatic monthly royalty checks. They will be able to view all of that information and check all their data within Spotify for Artists.”

The move is sure to be viewed as a challenge to SoundCloud, which has long catered to rising artists by allowing them to directly upload their own music. Although Spotify’s uploads won’t appear automatically like SoundCloud’s do, the greater flexibility seems designed to get more independent music on Spotify earlier in its lifecycle. Currently, many popular songs on SoundCloud don’t end up on Spotify until after they blow up.

It also comes just a few months after Spotify reportedly began to offer advance payments to independent artists in order to directly license their music. In return, artists receive roughly 50 percent of the revenue generated per stream, slightly lower than what the service pays major labels but much higher than what artists typically receive from their labels. As Spotify matures and attempts to actually turn a profit now that it’s a publicly-traded company, it has been seeking ways to reduce its royalty payment obligation and cut out music industry middle-men.

Read Spotify’s full announcement here.