Streaming is here to stay and as so many people stream Spotify, it’s time to integrate your Spotify Artist Account into your music promotion strategy
The current trend is to send your fans and potential fans to your social media accounts. This is fine but you should add a link to your Spotify artist account in the mix. I’ll explain the value of this in a little more detail.
If you’re not sure how to find the URL of your artist profile, simply search for your artist name on Spotify and click through to the profile page. You should see a ‘share’ link directly under your band name. Click on that and it will bring some options to use to share. Choosing either of those will give you the link you need to use to send your fans to your Spotify artist page.
What’s so important about Spotify?
Spotify is one of the most appealing and popular streaming services on the market due to its features and ease of use. Plus the fact that they have a decent free account option means a lot more people use it. Another nice feature that helps with your music promotion is the Facebook integration.
This means that whatever people listen to on Spotify will show up in their Facebook feed which could be another source of free exposure for your music.
Also, the way Spotify is set up, people can discover your music randomly. When they do this, they tend to either highlight the record or add it to a playlist music so they can check out the song and your Spotify artist account later.
Some musicians moan about the ridiculously low royalty that they receive from the service but that’s not what you should focus. It’s connecting with more fans. The key then is to get these fans unto your mailing list.
Speaking of Spotify playlists
Another one of the features that you can employ to get more exposure once you have your record online, is to create some Spotify playlists. It might seem like a simple idea and not worth doing but you might be surprised with the results.
Once you have a playlist, creating the link to share it with the world works the same way as we explained earlier for finding the link for your Spotify artist account. Just go to the playlist that you’ve created and click the ‘Share’ option to get the URL you can use to promote it.
One thing you will notice though is that the playlist will be from your personal user profile. It is an idea to create another Facebook profile specifically for this including your band name as the first and last name of your profile.
Of course, if you’re a singer/songwriter who goes by your given name anyway, this would not be necessary.
The reason you may want to do this is so that any playlist that you create will have your name in it saying ‘Created by….’, so having your band name there will mean that much more exposure for your brand. You never know how popular hat playlist will become.
A few basic things to keep in mind when you’re creating playlists are that unless you are already very successful, you don’t want to just make playlists of your own music. That would not be very appealing to potential fans for now.
Create playlists using your Spotify artist account that include your influences, other big names in your genre or other hot up and coming acts in your local scene. The fact that your band name will be there as the creator means that sometimes you don’t even have to include your songs at all to benefit from the promotion.
Think of what would be interesting to your fans and try to create a playlist around that. For example, writing a blog post about your favourite songs to listen to while you cook (or order takeaway), while including the playlist could prove to be very appealing to your fans.
You can also think about how you can leverage other online coverage by offering your playlists to other sites. Check out blog posts on other sites and if there’s something that you feel you can create a playlist to, do it and share it with them. Or ask them to share it on their site as part of the original blog posts
There really is no limit to what you can do with playlists and it opens up so many other possibilities as you can utilise other people’s records as well. Let your creative juices flow when thinking about how you can create appealing playlists.
Here is an example of how powerful a playlist can be for promotion. Of course, we don’t have the influence of President Obama, but you get the idea.
Advertising is also an option
It might be a word that you have not yet considered but there is also the option to advertise.
This can be done on Facebook to people who you know have Spotify accounts. All you would need to do is create a Facebook ad that is additionally targeted at users who ‘like’ Spotify.
If you’re not a fan of advertising on Facebook, there is also the chance to advertise on Spotify itself. You might not think it but this can be surprisingly cheap and you may have noticed in your own listening sessions how an element of Spotify advertising is now the standard protocol for all major label releases.
This can take the form of the audio ads that non-premium Spotify users hear between songs or the various banner placements that you see within Spotify. You can learn more about advertising with Spotify here
Although we don’t have direct experience with the promotion offered by Spotify we have heard good things about it. When working with major label acts, they post news to their blog, send newsletters to their 2 million+ subscribers as well as post to their Facebook page. The exposure you can get is huge.
All that being said, at the time of writing this, that level of promotion is generally only available to internationally recognised acts. They do however offer this ‘Platinum promotional package’ to bands that they take a liking to and can see potential in. Remember that Spotify is run by music lovers and they want to be seen to be helping grassroots musicians.
There’s no formula to get them to take an interest in you but with some savvy marketing and some great music, I’m sure they will start paying attention to you soon. Continue to build a presence online and offline with a live following and drive attention to it.
When you can, try and add a little bit of focus to Spotify’s blog and their Facebook page (adding comments where appropriate). Hopefully, somebody will soon take note of you.
That’s not something you can count on though, so your main goals, for now, should be to get your music on Spotify, send your fans to your Spotify Artist Account and creatively promote your music and your scene through playlists.
If you need any help with putting together a solid online marketing plan, we are always here to help.