Since Spotify has been growing and has become one of the main platforms to listen to music, all artists and record companies have been concerned with one main task, appearing in hundreds or thousands of playlists, in order to generate many streams and with it increase the fan base and the fame of the artist in question. Everybody wants to appear on one of the official Spotify Playlists and become the new Martix Garrix or Ariana Grande from one day to the next.
In the last two years there have even sprung up countless companies around the world specializing in trying to get your songs onto independent playlists with thousands of followers. Paying to appear on an important list is totally prohibited by Spotify and if it is discovered that you have done so, they can even take down your song on their platform or even block your artist so that you cannot upload any more songs to their platform with your name. However, most of these companies only promise to offer your songs to their contact lists so that they can listen to them and if they like to add them to their list. There are more or less reliable companies. You have to be very careful because you never know in which list your songs ends and if they promise you positions and reproductions, it is clear that they work with bots to artificially generate these numbers. You will see that because most of your plays will come from the same place (Buffalo, Atlanta…) You can believe us that only one in 100 that you find in google at most would be serious. With serious companies like Submithub, Playlistpush or MidniteBlaster you can get real results and rankings and we have sometimes used them, however we will explain why we know that it is not the most effective way to promote your music:
1) Their services are quite expensive. For example, for $ 300 you will get at most positions from 30 to 60 smaller or larger lists where your song is added. This could generate you at most between 5,000 and 10,000 streams in a month
2) After a month or two at most your song will be removed from most big playlists. If you have been lucky and they are serious and work with lists of real users (like the above companies), at least you will have achieved 50 or 60 positions in private lists that will give you some other plays in the future.
3) Spotify users who follow those big playlists are usually passive listeners. That is to say while they work, they drive … That means that the minority will entertain themselves in saving your song in their private list unless your song is really good. So do not expect more than a 3% save rate if your song is really good.
4) From those playlists you will generate very few organic followers for the future.
5) For your next song you will have to resend your song to companies like the previous ones and pay a lot again.
So which strategy is much better to promote your music?
From our experience the only thing that works really well to grow your brand in an organic way in the long term exponentially is to pay for effective advertising on social networks. Invest that $ 300 for example in advertising on Facebook and Instagram to attract users really interested in your music to your songs and to your Spotify profile. It is clear that you will not get thousands of first-hour streams, but that should never be your goal, but to generate true fans little by little. Let’s say that $ 300 attracts 900 listeners to your Spotify (It’s a pretty good value $ 0.30 per listener from our experience). Of those, only 90 more people will follow you. But even so, these people have actively arrived (by clicking on your advertising) to your Spotify and they have listened to your song and they like it. That means they will add it to their private playlists and listen to it over and over again for months or years to come. That is, your 1000 plays today will be 3000 in a few months (without having paid more) and the best, when you put out another new song those listeners will listen to the new one, if you invest $ 300 in the new one as well, the chain will repeat itself over and over again. Progressively increasing your listeners and followers over the months.
We have more than proven that this promotion path is much slower but in the long run far much better than the previous one based on paying for Playlist pitching. Spotify algorithms do not like your songs to have a pull of several weeks and then die (Playlists case), however they love to see progressive changes in which your real and interested listeners grow day by day and listen again and again to your songs. In that case, the algorithms will learn from your listeners and will begin to promote your music exponentially on playlists such as Discovery Weekly, Release Radar … The next thing that will happen is that when you send songs to official Spotify playlists, they will go with data that will prioritize them ahead of others (your legion of real listeners who do not stop listening and saving your song). This will ensure your priority in official playlists in the future. We have it more than proven and we have managed to reproduce this path multiple times with various artists with whom we have worked. A normal song save rate for this promotions is 30% (yes this is the typical value in our experience). And the algorithms love that. The next time you’re paying for Playlist pitching, think about whether you really want quick numbers that don’t add up to anything in the long run, or if you really want to grow your artist. Pay attention to us and invest your money in effective advertising on social networks. You will see that even indirectly you grow on all your channels such as YouTube, more comments on your social networks, more reproductions on other platforms such as Apple Music, Amazon music, Deezer …
Try it in the future for a few months and tell us how it has been. If you have some questions just ask down, we are happy to help other artists.
