what's up guys it's Tom welcome back to the lab welcome back to my life welcome
to the first video of 2020 what it's a brand new year y'all new year I got
blisters all big big goes first video 2020 or come out of the gates strong I
have had a lot of requests for a follow up video so what is easily my most
popular video of 2019 which was the results of using playlist push
apparently this struck a chord with a lot of people people were interested in
using the platform obviously interested in getting their own music on the
playlist trying to make a little bit of money and I guess that video was helpful
enough that people wanted to know more about my journey with the content from
that video now in that video I talked about using playlist push to upload my
song upload and try to get it onto playlist that video came out in like
April in 2019 and fast forward now to January 2020 and I'm gonna do a
follow-up about what has happened since that video and what I have learned not
just through that song but about paying for play listing period through all of
2019 alright so I spent $1,000 in 2019 on playlist promotion
I used first of all the website playlist push I used a website called submit hub
another platform called Spotify another platform called sound plate it's hard to
do that many fingers like that it's weird I don't know why I started
with my thumb I used a platform called Indy mono and then I used a website
called clang spot number 6 so I used six different avenues to try to get my music
onto playlists specifically on Spotify playlist push submit hub spot a fly and
sound plate are all platforms to connect playlists curators with musicians making
music indie mono and clang spot are companies and websites that have their
own playlists that you can go to their website and submit for their playlist so
slightly different variation there and I want to clarify that now let's get into
the super nerdy part 4 let's get into the math these are the
songs that I pushed for play listing with the exception of loss with me which
we'll get to in a minute the first song a release was called glitch that was a
single then upload the fuzz and to the wolves I released all for those through
an app called amis then I released a song called all I wanted as a single
through district kid a song called surface which was on an EP in song
called the blur which was on another EP but those are the two songs I picked as
singles from each of those EPS and then the song lost with me is a song i
co-wrote with my friends and nicotine and I own a third of so I got some back
end off of that in-district it as well the way that district kid and amuse
report your data is different on amuse I could get specific amounts earned for
like per song whereas in district kid I can only find just the one chunk of
money that I've made all total added up together rather than individually by
song so what I did is I kind of reverse engineered some math for district yet
based on the numbers I got off of amuse also it's only reported through October
at this point so I did a little bit of math to sort of end up with a pretty
close ballpark annual income from all of my streaming so I'm getting into the
numbers here in this column see we've got the actual earnings for the four
songs I did through Muse using that I was able to do the math with the number
of streams I got which is in column B divide that and get a per stream amount
which I've been averaged here which is point zero zero three three that's how
much you make per stream on Spotify on average or at least I did
ivenn to read the numbers between point zero zero three and point zero zero four
so this seems like it's probably a pretty good representation of that I
used this figure to go back and calculate the perceived earnings of the
other three singles that I have promoted for play listing and then added all that
up along with my third of lost with me which clearly did better than us and my
songs and came up with an income of a hundred and ninety five dollars and 53
cents that's how much money I made off of streaming in 2019 I'm going to take a
pause and talk about talk about what I bought with that
all the stuff I can buy so much stuff I'm rolling in it you know so just don't
start sending mediums to ask them for money cuz obviously I've got it
allocated very specifically as a lot that's how much money I made now I'm
sure you're looking at this spreadsheet and going alright what are these other
numbers well here are the platforms that cost money to use let's start with
playlist push because my guess is that's probably what most of you are interested
in seeing I promoted three songs on playlist push upload which was the first
song I used playlist foot playlist push for the single right after that the fuzz
and then later on my single surface now it's important to note that none of
these songs I promoted on playlist push have vocals and they are all very
instrumental kind of weird tracks so take this for what it's worth
upload was easily the most successful song for me last year it has to date
thirty thousand four hundred streams compared to the next closest one of mine
which is 66 hundred which is surfaced so blue everything else out of the water I
spent two hundred forty seven dollars and fifty cents on that on playlist push
and I got at it to six playlists the most important thing here is that it
tripped the discover weekly algorithm on Spotify that's the biggest deal out of
all of this stuff that I can tell you the thing that was the coolest thing
that happened which is the thing I think is the point of using these services is
tripping that algorithm because when that algorithm trip the discover weekly
algorithm on Spotify that was when my streams skyrocket on that song it was
very helpful to have the playlist adds but the playlists directly are not what
drove 30 thousands of dreams for that song it was tripping that algorithm and
then getting pushed to everybody else on Spotify I spent to 81 on the fuzz and
got added to two playlists which cumulatively
came to five hundred streams go team and then I spent two hundred ninety five
dollars and 31 cents on surface which got added to two playlists and went up
to 6,600 streams as of today moving on to other platforms I spend one hundred
and eighteen dollars total on submit hub and got added two two three six seven
playlists across the board there I spent one hundred and forty four dollars on
Spotify and got added to eight playlists therefore of each it's interesting to
note on Spotify I think two or three of the four playlists I got attitude for
both songs were the exact same playlist I don't know if that means anything I
don't know if it just gets pushed to the same playlist through that platform or
what I'm not speaking to that I have no idea it could just be coincidental
because the songs were similar but I just thought that was interesting to
note then sound plate is free so that's cool
but it takes a lot more time to like submit to playlist so you don't just
like pay 250 bucks and then it just sends it out for you have to do every
single one individually so what's worth more to you your time or your money if
your money's worth more and you have the time sound plates a good option though
there are fewer high volume playlists on there but I did get four ads off of that
all told I spent one thousand eighty five dollars and 81 cents I made a
hundred and ninety five dollars and fifty three cents which brings you to a
grand net total loss of eight hundred and ninety dollars and twenty eight
cents for twenty nineteen there you have it I lost a boatload of money trying to
promote my music using playlist platforms no way around it that's what
happened I did get 43 followers on Spotify out of it which is cool and I
ended up with almost a hundred thousand streams which is tight and at the
highest I ended up with around nine thousand average monthly listeners when
that discover weekly algorithm got tripped on Spotify what's the takeaway
from all this obviously I lost money why do it at all well play listing is not
the whole game it is part of the game I think it's an important part of the game
but there are couple things to know about this one out of all these
platforms playlists push though by far the most expensive did get me the most
streams technically speaking however it is not a platform that allows you to
create relationships at all there is no instant messaging direct
messaging back and forth with curators and musicians there's no integration for
that it is just pay your money send it out they pick the playlist they submit
you for you don't and you just wait for the results you can hit pay dirt I kind
of do upload but other than that it's kind of
a crapshoot submit hub on the other hand allows you to cultivate relationships by
the end of the year there were a few different curators who I had submitted
to several times so I ended up kind of being on a friendly basis with like
jokes back and forth and the dm's like I felt like I'd established some
relationship there the argument could be made that the more musical release and
the more eye contact these people the stronger those relationship those
relationships will become and the better it will be for everybody moving forward
now the thing that I think is the most important takeaway of this for me is
that if you're not making popular music if I'm not making popular music things
that you might potentially hear on the radio or that have hooks and melodies
and cash to them if you're making weird ethereal music which is what I did in
2019 these services probably aren't the best thing for trying to generate a
steady income off of streaming by and large I think that Wow I did lose a lot
of money the information I gained as a result of it is extremely helpful so for
you watching take my loss and use it to your advantage don't spend a thousand
dollars to learn this exact same lesson listen to what I have learned and then
when you do decide to spend it on playlist push or submit hub or whatever
you can do it a little bit more thoughtfully making sure that you're
picking the right genres and have a song that you believe is worthy of being
within popular music then you're probably going to end up with better
results more than anything using these platforms to try to get onto playlists
is just one of many many necessary pieces to building a career and building
a steady income as an artist and as a musician it is by no means the only
place to go and it's certainly not the entire strategy the end goal ultimately
is to build a fan base not just get money from streaming as you can see with
my numbers my fan base didn't necessarily hold up its feet and then it
trough so I didn't build enough real fans
I just got listeners for the moment and the goal is to build real fans so use
Play listing use these services if you want but just
it's just a piece of your strategy there's a lot of other things you need
to do as well that's it for this video the first video of 2020 if you liked
this hit the like button if you want to see more like it hit the subscribe
button I'm gonna be coming in hot all year taking everything I learned in 2019
and applying it in 2020 to try to help give you guys insight into how to
continue to build as an artist and create a living making music so that's
it thanks for watching and I will catch you next time peace
you