Remember when iTunes was cutting edge music technology? The industry has certainly come a long way since then. However, there is still one clear standout in the digital streaming world. As of January 2022, more people were/are streaming music on Spotify than any other platform. Globally, Spotify accounts for 31% of streams, compared with Apple Music at 15%, Amazon Music at 13%, and YouTube Music with 8% of streams. This amounts to 523.9 million Spotify users worldwide. Spotify accounted for almost 12 billion dollars of revenue in the music business in the U.S. in 2021. Clearly, Spotify is critical for musical success in the industry. In this article, we will discuss how to optimize on these statistics and use Spotify to promote your songs or albums.
First, a word of caution. These statistics may motivate you to rush to find the most streams and plays per song as quickly as possible to reach the full potential of your Spotify experience as an artist. However, this is delicate. The internet knows how important Spotify is and has developed tactics to grab your money and provide you false results. This often comes in the form of bots. Tempting as it may be to pay to buy clicks on your music or buy your way onto a playlist, this is usually a recipe for getting your music taken down. Artificial streams, or bots, or purchased plays, will all result in the same thing according to the Spotify guidelines, removal of all streams and plays on that song, and likely removal of the song or album or playlist. The bottom line is that Spotify is smart enough to detect any fake plays you have, so this is a road best left untraveled.
Now, back to the positives of your music on Spotify with Spotify Ad Studio. This has simple steps to follow and create ads on Spotify:
- Create an Ad Studio account
- Reach your listeners based on demographic info, location, interest, etc.
- Use Spotify resources to create professional-looking ads
- Track and review analytics of the ads you created
Creating ads for your music within Spotify’s own platform is a great way to gain traction and reach more listeners.
Marquee is a tool within Spotify that can help increase your streams and song/album promotion. This helps you take existing listeners and make them into bigger fans. It basically functions as a full-screen ad on the mobile app for U.S. listeners that have shown past interest in your music. This helps to further target, engage, and remarket to your existing listeners. This guides your listener to your new release and has been shown to be successful. Listeners that see a Marque ad are more than twice as likely to save a track and add it to their playlists to continue to listen to. To get approved and start using Marquee ads you must:
- Have at least 15,000 streams in the U.S. over the last 28 days or have more than 2,500 U.S. followers
- Be based in the U.S. and set this as your primary billing country
- Do this by logging into Spotify for Artists and clicking on the “Manage team” then “Billing”
Marquee is a new and effective way to maintain existing fans and keep them as long term fans.
Spotify has over 350 million users and 150 million subscribers. Clearly Spotify is an essential tool in the modern musical artist’s toolbox. That is why it is imperative to use all of Spotify’s features to their fullest and create and maintain long term fans. If you want information on how to get verified on audiomack, how to create and sell merchandise for free, how to submit music to record labels with submithub, how to promote your music on social media, 3 ways to earn more money as a part-time or independent musician, or more check out our free artist resources!
Want to hire a team to market your music for you the right way? Take a look at our artist marketing services or contact our team for more information.