Secrets of Promoting Songs on Spotify: How to Be in the Top

Spotify is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and accounts for 1/3 of all listening. In addition, earnings from streaming are growing. Perhaps it’s time to figure out how to promote your work on this platform?

What’s all the hype about Spotify?

Spotify is a cool algorithm for determining taste preferences, thanks to which many new popular musicians have appeared.

Create an artist card in Spotify — high-quality photos, links to your social networks, filling out a biography (preferably in the 3rd person) – in general, do everything cool at once, right down to cool covers of your tracks and albums. This is a very important step.

Develop a strategy. Do not immediately post all the available material, post gradually and regularly. 1 track in 3-4 weeks. This will give your track a better chance of taking off.

Promo track

• Release the track through your distributor — at least 4 weeks before the official release, so that Spotify editors have time to listen to it and add it to various playlists. Wait for the track to appear on the Upcoming tab in Spotify for Artists.
• Send the track for promo via the “Pitch a Song” button. It is important to fill out the application correctly — do not click everything in a row, this will make your track worse. Choose what matches the track: a specific genre, instruments, mood.
• Make a cool description that will help editors put the track in the right playlist, and also describe with which bloggers and on which platforms you plan to promote your track. This is as important a step as a cool artist card design, because Spotify is about algorithms.
• Make your own playlists, since Spotify is exactly about playlists — this way you can also promote yourself if your playlists appeal to your audience.

Pitch your track to independent curators

• Spend a few hours and find popular playlists, contact their authors and let them listen to your track – if they like your work, you can get hundreds and thousands of additional plays.
• Attract an audience to Spotify so that people subscribe – do this through all available social networks.
• Distribute a link to the promoted song in active music communities, blogs and forums that Spotify parses.
• Target on Facebook Ads (Insta + FB) with a link to your track.
• Official advertising through Spotify Ads with the most memorable excerpt of the promoted song up to 30 seconds long.

But the main thing to remember is magic, and content is on schedule. If the track is lame, nothing will help. First, you should make cool music and only then invest time, money and effort in its promotion. Top4SMM – Social Media Boost will always help you with the latter.

Paid promotion — is it possible?

Spotify announced a new system for promoting tracks in recommendations. Despite the obvious benefits for some artists, the system already has two important features. Firstly, the authors will receive less royalties for streaming such compositions. Secondly, the recommendation system, which is considered a strong point of this streaming, risks becoming a selection of advertising, ceasing to reflect the tastes of users.

The new system is called Discovery Mode, it is being tested in the United States. Advertised tracks are mixed into thematic playlists and autoplay. As a kind of payment, streaming cuts royalties for the duration of the promotion campaign. If Spotify finds the mode effective, it will be extended to other countries.

The official blog says: “If the track is liked by listeners, it will remain in the recommendations. If not, we will quickly remove it.” Spotify believes that artists will not lose anything, but on the contrary, they will gain, having received the opportunity to promote their product. In addition, according to Spotify, the user will not be rejected by the innovation either – having heard new music in the selection, he or she can independently return to the artist later. This will allow performers to attract audiences through live auditions.