With Spotify being the leading streaming service for discovering new music, it's not a surprise that almost every band we work with want us to promote their music on Spotify or ask us to help them grow their followers. It seems to be a key priority for artists these days.
Although Spotify isn't a social network, it does have many social elements that enables you to discover and share music & for you - to be discovered. You can listen to your friends playlists, listen to established brands playlists like the NME, Clash Magazine & Kerrang. Not to mention the hundreds of playlists Spotify generates and updates daily helping you discover brand new music from around the world – Signed or unsigned!
We too are working daily to build a following for our very own playlist. Just like you, we have had to learn how to do this and use strategies daily to encourage the growth.
Please find below 16 tips to help you grow your following and increase the amount of listeners for your music on Spotify. Obviously, it goes with out saying that you need to be dedicated to the cause. This won't happen overnight & you will need to work hard to make this a success for you and your music. Good luck!
1. CONTACTING CREATORS OF POPULAR PLAYLISTS
Bands should endeavour to contact curators of popular playlists, for this works like a charm in increasing your Spotify followers. There is no guarantee that your music will be featured, but if you get selected it could have a huge impact for you and your music.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA
Using social media to plug your music on Spotify is probably the best possible way. Already you should have all your social media accounts in place. Concentrate on building your audience and reach and keep telling people that they can find your music on Spotify. Copy and pasting a link creates a nice little 30 second preview for people to have a listen to entice people to listen to more.
Our statistics shows that social media has a great impact on our brand, service & playlist. We actually created a separate brand on social media for our playlist and that grows by the hundreds each month.
Therefore promoting your music on Spotify on social media , such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram should be a main objectve to get Spotify followers and it is probably the best promotional tool any musician can have . If you do not have your social media set-up then maybe you should do this before releasing your music.
Remember: There are plenty of Facebook groups you can share your music in to extend your reach & gain more exposure.
3. ADD A "FOLLOW BUTTON OR WIDGET" TO YOUR WEBSITE
If you are connecting to Spotify for Artists, click on "Tools" to access the "Follow" widget. By placing this code on your website, you create a button that allows visitors to easily follow you on Spotify by clicking a button. This gives visitors a hint that you are on Spotify so they are more likely to follow you. The only drawback with using Spotify as a music player for your website is that they need a Spotify account to listen to. So, maybe think about an alternative so everybody can listen to your music. NOT EVERYONE IS A SUBSCRIBER TO SPOTIFY.
4. SEND AN E-MAIL TO YOUR MAILING LIST
Assuming you've created a mailing list on an online platform like Mailchimp, send an email asking your fans to follow you on Spotify. Again, just ask can be a little boring, so be creative. You can link an incentive like, "If I get x number of followers, I'll release a new song or video for you."
5. PROMOTE IT LIVE
In part of your set, maybe in the middle or towards the end, let the fans know that they can follow you on Spotify if they like what they hear. It takes a couple of seconds to plug it while you have the audiences attention.
6. PLAN YOUR CAMPAIGN AND DO NOT STOP THE CONNECTION
The best way to win new subscribers and listeners is to push as much of your music online as possible, while continually drawing on what's happening on social media. Plan how you will advertise and connect your music in advance and try many ways to win new subscribers. DON'T GIVE UP!
7. ANNOUNCE IT TO YOUR PERSONAL NETWORK
Simply tell your friends in person or promote your music on your personal social media accounts as well as your artist pages. Not everyone will have seen your posts and not everyone uses social media. People close to you are most likely to support you and this is usually a good place to start.
8. REACH READING SITES
Find websites that play playlists like Sound Plate and Playlists.net and submit your music to a network of curators. Playlists.net is connected to the 'Playlist a Day' application, compatible with iPhone and Android. It randomises Spotify playlists and sends users a daily themed playlist. It is also free to download from iTunes and Google Play. This can be a good way to reach thousands of Spotify users if your music is selected to feature on one of them.
9. EXCHANGE SPOTIFY READING LIST
Join the Spotify community! Sign in with your Spotify username / password and post your playlist/music on the Spotify Playlist Exchange with a short description informing other users of the genre, why you created it and whether you will keep it updated or not. Do not forget to label the genres associated with the case where users search for particular music via the exchange of the playlist. You can also rate playlists submitted by other curators, comment on their discussions with your playlist, and encourage them to follow them. 9.
10. ADVERTISING
If you are lucky enough to have a marketing budget then advertising your music on Spotify is another option. You can either market online, radio, TV, print & on other media outputs.
11. CREATE A "FRIENDS OF" PLAYLIST
Creating a playlist with your music as the main focus and "disguise" it as a playlist is a great idea. Add other artists with a similar audience and reach out to them to engage and share. This can be a great way of making contacts and getting your music in the ears of new potential Spotify followers/fans. 12. USE BLOGS AND INFLUENCE
Contact popular music bloggers & publications. Send your music to them for a review or to consider been featured on their site or playlist. Some blogs have a good sized audience and this can be a great way to get your music out there. Make it clear on submission that you are on Spotify, you could even release a track exclusive to Spotify to encourage new followers. 13. PR & MARKETING
If you have the budget, then a good PR company can do most of the above for you & have a huge influence which can result in thousands of new listeners. The right one will also have good contacts for popular Spotify playlists, not to mention national radio and press. All the bands that we work with that have management or a label that uses good PR has had good success using the right PR company. We have witnessed this with our own eyes. But it costs money and again there are no guarantees with it.
14. KEEP CREATING MUSIC
Sounds silly and extremely obvious, but the harder you work on your music, the more music you have to promote and release.
15. PAY FOR SOCIAL MEDIA ADS
It's a more advanced way of getting followers that requires a little more work and it requires having a budget. If you decide to go down this avenue your best bet to get results is to spend it on Facebook and Instagram. To do this effectively, you must plan and be strategic. Personally, as we know how to organically grow an audience on social media, this isn't something we are likely to do to gain more Spotify followers for our own playlist. But we do use Facebook ads to boost posts and it can have a very good impact on something important to you (especially a new release/video) and if you want thousands of people outside your current reach to see it. If Spotify is your main priority then in your post make sure Spotify is either your media preview of if you are using a video for visuals (recommended) then make Spotfiy the first link you share in the post when telling your followers where to find your music.
16. NEVER GIVE UP!
Thousands of followers won't appear over night (unless you have a huge budget and go done the PR route). You need to be committed to the cause. Be consistent, track what works and what doesn't. There are plenty of tools and analytics at your disposal. We only promote our Indie Radar Spotify Playlist on social media. We post one new track daily and then behind the scenes focus on putting that in front of as many people as possible and work on growing our social media following. If all of the above sounds daunting to you and you don't know where to start. Our advice would be to start on social media, build your following and post your Spotify links to your music on there. It's FREE! Good Luck!