what's up guys it's tom welcome back to the lab
welcome back to another video welcome back to my
life today i want to tell you the best way to grow your fan base on
spotify now before we get into it i want to give a shout out to
the sponsor for this video distrokid distrokid
is the easiest way for musicians to get music into
spotify itunes amazon title tick tock youtube and more you get
unlimited uploads you get to keep 100 of your royalties and they have more
features than any other distribution platform
features like distributing cover songs legally getting paid when other people
use your music in youtube unlimited backups instant
spotify verified check mark you can get your
credits and lyrics into stores and a whole host of other stuff if you
want to try distrokid if you've used something else you want to make the
switch or if you're releasing music for the first time
hit the link in the description of this video and save yourself seven percent
when you sign up for the first year of your subscription they're great
go do the thing moving on today what i want to do is
share with you the best way to grow your fan base on spotify now there are
several competing philosophies with how to promote your music how to get people
to listen how to get people to your profile how to
get people to follow what i want to do is tell you about the metrics that
actually matter the metrics that will actually
help you grow your profile on spotify and generate
actual long-term revenue and growth as an artist so the first and obvious
thing is streams right everybody cares about
stream count and this is one of the reasons play
listing is such a big deal in such a lucrative market playlisters will
give you metrics about how many streams they've gotten for their clients or
how many followers a playlist might have which is
potential listeners and streams through that playlist and it varies
across multiple platforms websites and offerings there are people who say hey
give me 50 bucks and i'll guarantee you 10 000
streams and there are other people who just have platforms who say pay a
flat rate per submission and you can submit it to playlisters
and it sort of connects the artist with the playlist curator which is
in my opinion the only way that's worth going about it
streams are the big metric that playlisting looks at
how many streams are you getting the next metric that is
very important is listeners how many people are
listening to your songs streams do not equal listeners
and the more streams you have per listener
the better so if somebody comes to your page and listens
one time that is not nearly as effective for your growth as an artist
than if someone comes and listens five times now the next metric beyond that
is followers how many people are following your profile how many people
want to know when you release something new and are coming back for new music
every single time followers is one of the most critical
metrics that you can track for your profile because it tells you
how many genuine fans you're actually earning on the platform
now how do all these metrics interact with one another and where is the
opportunity first of all let me say that just getting streams without multiple
streams per listener or without listeners turning into followers is an
empty metric and is not sustainable you are not going
to earn a long-term revenue and you're probably not even ever going to make any
of your advertising and marketing money back if you're just paying for streams
because if you have a one-to-one listener to stream ratio which means
every person is only listening one time spotify's algorithm is going to
view that as an unsuccessful song the main way to
generate growth for your spotify profile is to
take advantage of their algorithmic playlists
and to take advantage of spotify's intelligent algorithms
that will help deliver your music into the ears and playlists of new listeners
on the platform and the best way to take advantage of the opportunities for those
algorithms is to maximize your streams per listeners and how many listeners are
turning into followers when you pay for playlisting generally
what happens is you get put in a playlist
amongst a ton of different songs that are similar to yours
and someone's going to go to listen to that playlist and they're going to hit
shuffle or just repeat and they're going to listen all the way
through over and over again but they're probably
not paying attention to who the song is by conversely
with the algorithmic playlists playlists like release radar and discover weekly
put your music into the playlists of listeners who
have shown interest in discovering new talent that is similar to yours
so rather than going the route of getting on a curated playlist
it is better to go the route of getting on an algorithmic playlist
let spotify do the work for you now what's the best way to do that the best
way to grow your profile and your following
and your fan base on spotify is with facebook ads with
facebook ads you are going directly to listeners and
pulling them into the platform direct marketing beats the blanket
marketing of playlisting every time what you want to do is go directly to
an individual person this is what facebook ads allows you to do
and this is what spotify's algorithmic playlist allows you to do you're going
directly to your target audience by getting on a playlist
you are throwing a net out into the water
and hoping maybe you catch one fish in that whole big net with facebook ads
and spotify algorithmic playlists you are walking up
to the fish and grabbing it out of the water this
analogy is so ridiculous and that's what you want to do you want
to identify who your potential fans are very specifically and you want to bring
them into your world this is using software to accomplish the same
thing that direct messaging does or having a conversation in the comments or
talking to someone face to face in the real world by using these direct
advertising strategies you're getting very particular about who
you're going for and very particular about how you bring
them into your world that you've made with your music
the reason playlisting is such an attractive option
is because it looks at one metric which is the highest metric which is the
stream count which is the metric that's associated
with income you get paid per stream but you're going to maximize your
streams and your growth in the long term by focusing on
listeners and by focusing on fans if you have a fan driven approach and a
listener driven approach the streams will take care of themselves
by focusing on streams and by focusing on
playlists alone you are basically focusing on the symptoms
and not the root cause of growth by focusing on
fans and listeners you are focusing on the root cause of growth now the reason
playlisting is so popular in addition to focusing on streaming
metrics is that it's easy it's easy to submit to a playlist
it's easy to pay for streams for a lot of these sites like you just
pay 50 bucks and get your streams back like go team of
course that's easy why wouldn't that be attractive
but easier is usually not better usually if it requires more work
that means less people are doing it and that means there is more opportunity
there facebook ads is more complicated than playlisting
for sure and it takes work and effort to figure out how to make it work for you
go watch any of the videos on my channel that i posted recently you will watch me
in progress figuring it out but if you want to have
real genuine long-term growth as an artist
on spotify on any streaming platform you've got to focus on
fans and listeners not streams and the best way to do that is to go directly
with direct-to-consumer marketing with facebook ads that's it for this video
i just wanted to share with you what i've learned these are the things that
i've learned through trial and error i have
tried a lot of playlisting options i have tried a lot of facebook ad
options i have not seen anywhere close to the return on my investment
with playlisting that i have seen on facebook ads i'm going to continue to
explore how to get the most out of ads on my
channel i'm going to continue to share it but i just wanted to
throw out this sort of direct video to say
you really need to pay attention to the metrics that matter on spotify
and not give too much attention to the vanity metrics in the form of
how many streams do i have i hope this helps hope it inspires you to start
learning a bit more about facebook ads if you want to check that out there's a
ton on my channel i'll leave a couple at the end here and
you can give those a look and as always thanks for watching thanks
for being here and i will catch you on the next one
peace you