Getting your music heard can be hard if you don't know how the Spotify algorithm works and how to make playlist curators place your music in their playlist to give your songs the reach they deserve. That's why we wrote this post to help you figure it all out and start promoting your music.
Spotify Release Strategy
- Release Singles, not Albums because people need to be constantly reminded about you and feel like you're releasing music often.
- Submit every song 4-8 weeks in advance for consideration in Spotify Editorial Playlists to ensure that it gives the Spotify editors enough time to check out your track and see if it fits any of their playlists.
- Make Merchandise based on the Artwork, Artwork based on the song.
- Make a behind the scenes video, music video or lyric video to promote your Spotify.The more content you create around your song, the more chances of people listening to your song. Use digital ads to promote your song and get it the traction it deserves.
- Release almost all songs of the Album as singles before releasing the Album. In earlier days this was not necessary but now this strategy works best.
- Frequency of the release should be once every 30-45 days in order to trigger the Spotify algorithm and make Spotify promote your music organically via their algorithmic playlists.
- For every song make Acoustic Version, an Instrumental Version, a Remix and an Unplugged Version of a song.
- Consistency and Planning is Key.
- Even Remixes can be sent to Editorial Playlists.
- Release Instrumentals too.
- Drive a lot of traffic to Spotify in the first 4 weeks of your release
- The best way to drive huge amounts of targeted traffic to Spotify is through Fb/Ig Ads.
Post from Spotify To IG Stories
- To share a Spotify song link on Instagram stories, find the song on Spotify, click the 3 dots which brings the menu where the last option says ‘ SHARE ‘ Then share to Instagram stories.
- Keep posting your songs via Instagram stories to keep people in touch with your music, old and new.
Use Spotify Insights
- After a bit of popularity, you can see the number of streamers, loyalists and regulars.
- Use the Demographic data of age, gender and location for targeting with Facebook, Instagram Ads and Touring.
- Make sure your most popular songs have music videos.
- Who else they listen to similar Artists show what else they hear, so you can market to fans of those artists.
Artist Pick
- Highlight songs and playlists using the Artists Pick Tool. This features a playlist for 14 days. (Expires in 14 days)
- Make a playlist of all your songs, To do this, create a playlist with your regular profile (not your artist profile) and then share it on your artist profile via your 'Spotify for artists' account by clicking on Home -> Profile -> Edit Profile -> Artist Playlists -> Remove and add a playlist like 'your name's' Greatest Hits / Best of 'your name's' music, etc.
Create & Promote Your Own Spotify Playlists
- Make a playlist of your songs and promote it with Facebook Ads.
- Example : 'Best of Your Name's Music': < Link of Playlist >
- This will grow the followers of your own playlist.
- Sign Up with Indie Mono, make people follow you in exchange for curating a playlist.
- Submit your song on Dailyplaylists.com for free (If your music sounds professional and the curator finds it a good fit for his/her playlist you're chances of being featured increase tremendously).
- Unless you try you will never know. Some Celebrities have really huge playlists and might like your music if it impacts them.
Contact Playlist Curators
- Go to Spotify, in the search bar, type the Genre.
Example: Trap, Country, Electronic , etc. See all. - Visit the profiles of the people who have made these playlists on Spotify and look them up on Facebook / Instagram / Any other platform.
- Message them.
Example: Hey __ , I have been following your playlist. I’m an upcoming Artist and think my music might be a good fit, etc.. It would be awesome if you could check it out. - Caution: Carefully vet each playlist that you submit your music to. You don't want to have bots streaming your music. And you don't want an irrelevant audience that is likely to skip your song.
- Another route is to find Artists similar to you, with similar kind of music and see what playlists they are on and then approach curators of those playlists via their social media pages.
- Sign up on chartmetric.com and find playlist curators or submit your music via submithub.com. Searching for playlist curators can be time consuming but it is an easy way to proactively share your music with people that listen to similar music and might like your music and end up being your fans.
Fb/Ig Ads for Spotify Growth
- Fb & Ig ads is the fastest way to get heard by targeted listeners and build your presence on Spotify. It's best to hire a professional marketer or learn how to do this with an in-depth training so that you don't burn your money. But for the curious readers, here is an outline of how it works:
- Create a Facebook Business account (Facebook Business Manager)
- Create an ad account within your Facebook business manager.
- Crate a conversions campaign with the objective as link clicks, create a pixel for tracking the clicks and improving your results over time (for best results configure your pixel with a Hypeddit smart link)
- Caution: Do not send traffic straight to Spotify otherwise you risk spending a lot of money without seeing results and you also confuse the Spotify algorithm as to which kinds of people it should show your songs to. This can be damaging in the long run.
- Create ad sets targeting potential fans (Some research and flex targeting of interests like 'similar artist' X 'Spotify' X 'Musical Genre' should work well.
- Create video ads with your music and a static video along with the Spotify icon, with the CTA being 'Listen Now'. These video ads can be tested featuring different sections of the song. It is often found that the 'verse' gets a lower CPC than the Chorus, so you never know unless you test these variables.
- Test 5-10 ad sets at low budgets for a week to see which ones perform best. Kill the ones that don't perform well.
- If you're more focussed on getting streams, send your ad traffic to your own playlist. If you're more keen on getting followers, send your traffic to your profile (again, not directly, but via a landing page or a Hypeddit smart link).
- Over the first 2-3 weeks the Facebook AI begins to get some data fed into the pixel and this slowly improves the quality of the fans and streams you get from your ads, which intern gets you an algorithmic push from Spotify as well.
- Once the campaign has been running for 3 weeks you can expect it to slowly keep improving over the next 1-2 weeks and it eventually stabilises there. When done right, ads can be a great investment.