Let’s debunk some myths and do a quick Q&A:
🤷 Q: Do you need to submit your song to Spotify at least one week prior to get on your fans’ Release Radar?
📣 A: Although we absolutely advice to submit your song to Spotify at least one week before release for editorial consideration, we haven’t noticed any difference in terms of Release Radar.
🤷 Q: If I get more Spotify followers, will I get more Release Radar streams on my next release?
📣 A: In theory: Yes. More followers should give you more Release Radar streams, as Spotify will add it to more of their Release Radar playlists. However, these need to be active Spotify accounts, as they’re not gonna listen to your song otherwise. And they also genuinely need to like your music. Because Release Radar (just like Discover Weekly, Radio, Daily Mix, etc.) is based on Spotify’s algorithm and the more people that listen to it and like it (don’t skip the track and possibly save it), the more people will get the song and your future songs in their Release Radar. So buying followers will absolutely do nothing for you and we’d also advice against gating or otherwise incentivizing people to follow. Asking your social media fans to follow is a good practice though.
🤷 Q: So I can only get as many Release Radar listeners as I have followers right?
📣 A: No, this is not true. Release Radar is based on how many people like the song and Spotify’s algorithm finding similar people. Although you’re more likely to find your song within Release Radar of someone who follows you, you’ll likely not get included in all of your followers’ Release Radar. On the other hand it’s also possible to reach more Release Radar playlists than the amount of followers you have. For example this new artist we released recently had about 20 followers when their second song released, but still got 207 unique listeners via Release Radar. The more people like your song and the less people skip it, the more Release Radar you’ll get on this song AND on future releases.
🤷 Q: Alright, so if I run extra promo on my release or get 3rd party playlists to submit it, do I get more Release Radar streams on that release?
📣 A: Release Radar gets updated on Friday, so most Release Radar listeners will likely come from the first Friday (release day for most people). These listeners will have already received your song in their Release Radar playlist before you run promo. So your promo won’t impact that first Release Radar push at all. It can impact Release Radar for the following weeks if you’re lucky.
However, where it can really make a difference is with your NEXT release. If you promote your song the right way, you’ll get more listeners and hopefully also more people that like your song. So it will be easier for Spotify’s algorithm to find similar people when you release your next song.
🤷 Q: Alright, so promo won’t help my current release in terms of Release Radar. How about getting my fans to pre-save the release?
📣 A: Pre-saving a release won’t help the initial Release Radar push. To understand why that doesn’t work is to understand how pre-saves work. We’ll go into pre-saves a little bit later, but the basic idea is the technology behind ‘pre-saves’ doesn’t actually save the track for your listeners in advance. When people go to the pre-save website, THAT website will save their request in a database and then when the song goes live it will save the song to their Spotify library. Try pre-saving a song yourself and you’ll notice it won’t be in your Spotify library before the release day.
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1August 4, 2021 34.8K 9 2
