⁉️ How to promote your track!
Alright, so what is the best way to promote a track on Spotify? There’s obviously not one right answer, but there are definitely a couple of wrong ones. In this post we’re gonna dive deep into Spotify promo and the correlation with Spotify’s editorial and algorithm playlists. Let’s start with some frequently asked questions:
🤷 Q: So is it better to get one big playlist or get multiple smaller playlists?
📣 A: If you get one playlist bringing in 1K streams or 10 playlists bringing in 100 streams each (also 1K total), what’s better? First of all, you’re getting the same amount of streams, so that doesn’t matter. But aside from that there are quite a few advantages to getting multiple smaller playlists over 1 big one:
1️⃣ If your track is in that one playlist and they take it out, you lose all of your streams. If it’s in multiple smaller playlists, you spread your luck.
2️⃣ Spotify looks at the overall buzz for a track. More (different) people including your song usually means more buzz.
3️⃣ It’s important your song is a good fit for the playlist. If you get one big playlist but it’s not a good fit (resulting in more skips for your song and less saves) it can actually hurt your song. Multiple playlists spread that risk too.
🤷 Q: Alright, so are all big playlists bad?
📣 A: Not at all! Big playlists can bring in a lot of streams, so they can help your song a lot. Just be careful when trading / buying spots in any playlist and look at these 3 things:
1️⃣ Is this playlist a good fit for your song genre wise? Do people that listen to this playlist wanna hear your song?
2️⃣ Are the other artists in this playlist legit artists with solid tracks? Are these artists that you’d want to be in your ‘similar artists’ section on your profile?
3️⃣ Does your song get a lot of saves and little skips from this playlist? For example fake playlists usually have a lot of skips, giving you more skips on your song, causing Spotify to think many people don’t like it.
🤷 Q: So what is a ‘skip rate’ and how can I check those ‘skips’?
📣 A: Anytime someone listens to your track and doesn’t listen until the end, but instead skips to the next song, that’s called a skip. The ‘skip rate’ is your average skips. If you get 100 streams and 30 people skip your track, your skip rate would be 30%. The lower your skip rate, the more Spotify will think people will like your song. Because that means they’re listening to the whole song.
ℹ️ Unfortunately Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, etc. don’t show the skip rates on their artist dashboards (yet). ATLAST offers this to all of their artists via our ATLAST Artists Portal over at artists.atlast.fm. There are some other distributors / labels that can get you this data too if you ask for it.
🤷 Q: Okay, so we covered playlists. What about blog promo?
📣 A: Blogs, articles and other coverage can be great for building your brand as an artist and getting more recognitions from other artists and fans alike. So in that sense it could be worth investing into blog coverage from time to time. Blogs and other media will very rarely result into tangible extra streams though. So if you just want to be featured on blogs to get more streams, that would be one of the least cost-effective ways to do it. If you want to build your profile beyond just streams it could be a worthwhile investment.
ℹ️ Pro tip: If you’re gonna pay for blog promo / PR, make sure you have a unique story to tell. As an artist or with that particular track. What makes you different from all the other artists releasing a track that week? Blogs usually only have a certain amount of articles they can write and even if they write about you, their readers will likely only read the most interesting stories. So make sure it’s a good one to increase your chances!
