Hack Spotify's Algorithm To Get More Streams
So nowadays the big question is:
“HOW DO I GET MORE PEOPLE TO STREAM MY SONGS?”
And aside from the traditional way of promoting your music in person, or on your social media, a new great way to get your music to new fans is on Spotify playlists. A couple key points to know here is you must own the rights to the music before you can post it to Spotify. I work with some artists who will use beats, or loops that they do not own, or can not profit off of, in which case you would not be able to put your music on Spotify. It is also important that you have a great song that really resonates with people lyrically, and sonically. You don’t want to try and promote a song to playlist curators that doesn’t sound as good as the other songs on the playlist. Listen to some of your favorite songs and compare your songs to them sonically, and if your songs don’t stand up to your favorites, reach out to a professional to help you get them where they need to be. If you have made sure the content you’ve written about is relatable to your target audience, and you take the time to make sure it sounds good, you will greatly increase your odds of having your music listened to. I will be writing this under the assumption that you have already handled these first couple of details so that you can really focus on your release.
So with that said, if you have any questions about anything I just mentioned please reach out to me directly by clicking HERE. If not, keep reading!
1. Get Your Music On Spotify
First things first, you have to get your music on to Spotify and set up an Artist Profile. Getting your music onto Spotify and other streaming platforms is super easy now, and there are quite a few different distributors you can use. If you’re having any difficulty finding a distributor, I’ve made another blog about some of the popular ones, which I will link HERE.
2. Make Your Artist Profile Look Professional
When your music is being considered to be placed on playlists, the Spotify algorithms, and people that select the music are generally going to be scanning your artist profile to check out how professional you look. The better your profile looks, the better chance you have of getting your music selected for playlists. A good thing to do here is to spend a little bit of money, and get some professional pictures taken. Trust me it’s worth it. You can also use the pictures for your social media, and even other ads which could result in more streams, which equals more cash in your pocket! Also make sure your bio is up to date and that all of your social media is linked, and that your social media also looks professional. If you’re having trouble figuring out how your profile should look, take a look at some of your favorite artists profiles and try to match the look and general aesthetic. Even use your own experience. Im sure you know what’s its like to go to someones Instagram and immediately be able to tell if they are professional, or amateur. Use this to your advantage, and match the look of the more professional pages you see.
3. Spotify Mission Form & Algorithmic Placement
There are currently 3 major parts to the Spotify algorithm:
Natural Language Processing - This is how Spotify can tell what language your song is in, and ultimately place it with music with the same language.
Raw Audio Analyzation - This is where Spotify listens to the BPM and Key of your song and can use that information to potentially place your song on a playlist that fists the same vibe, wether it be a slow jam, sad song, or a fast paced song that is maybe good for working out.
Collaborative Filtering - This is where Spotify recommends music to you based off what you like. This is arguably the most important of the 3. The reason for this is because this is really the only one that you have control over.
Collaborative Filtering is also used outside of Spotify for the same exact reason. Most notibly with Netflix. Netflix, for example, will look at things that you have liked after watching, while also watching other people who like the same things you do. When Netflix is looking for something to recommend to you, they look at those other profiles similar to yours, and will recommend things that they have liked to you, since you seem to have similar taste. Spotify does this exact same thing, but with music.
“SO WHY DO I CARE?” you ask?
Well, knowing this, if you can get people to listen to your music on Spotify, or add it to their playlists, it will help get your songs to be noticed by the Collaborative Filtering algorithms and hopefully recommend your music to other people like those you have pushed your music to already. Spotify is also looking at how many people are skipping your song when it comes on, and how long they are listening before they skip. This can do the opposite and down rank your songs in a way where you may NOT be recommended by the algorithms for playlists. This is why it’s so important to make sure you have a GREAT song that catches peoples attention so that they don’t skip your songs when they come on. Our goal is you have a good save/skip ratio which ultimately shows if people are digging your music, or if they hate it.
Pre-Save Links
Another good way to use this to your advantage is by using Pre Save Links to get your fans to show their interest in your music before it even drops. This can also flag your music in a good way, which could result in your songs being recognized by certain algorithms and subsequently added to playlists. At the beginning of the article I linked another blog of mine where I talk about different distributors, one of which being Distrokid. With Distrokid, their second tier package allows you to select a later release date for your music after you upload it. When you do this, it also gives you the option to send out Pre Save Links. Not all distributors do this so you’ll want to make sure you check to see if the one you are working with does. If not, you can use a 3rd party service to create a Pre Save campaign for you, but it’s going to cost money, so as you are looking at different distributors, this is something to think about.
Once you have your Pre Save links set up, you will want to do your best to promote this as much as possible on your social media in the weeks leading up to your release. Now lets be real here, this isn’t going to be easy. When someone posts an advertisement on their Instagram story or Facebook, most of us are more likely to just keep scrolling and ignore that unflattering demand that says “GO SAVE MY SONG BEFORE IT DROPS!”. You are going to have to get creative to get people to actually go to your page, click a link and save your music. You are going to need to provide some kind of value. Again, this is where you need to get creative. Maybe for every person that saves the song and sends you a screenshot can be entered to win a t shirt, or free tickets to your next show. Not even joking - I’ve seen people raffle off CASH doing this exact thing.
“Ill give 2 random people $50 that
send me a screenshot that you pre
saved my song”
Personally, I don’t think that’s the most creative or effective way to do it, but at the very least I’m sure that it works to an extent. Again, giving them some sort of INCENTIVE to pre save your songs is going to be the key here.
The same thing goes for having people follow you on Spotify. Sometimes this can be even harder than getting people to pre save your songs. But again, offering some sort of incentive will help get people to actually follow through. This also makes your profile, in general, look better to the Collaborative Filtering algorithm.
4. Submitting Your Music To Playlists
So outside of the algorithm finding your music and adding it to playlists that way, you should also be submitting your music to playlist curators and websites that may host playlists. One thing I want to point out here is you will come across some playlists that will add you to them for a price, you DO NOT want to pay to be put on to a playlist. This is against Spotify’s Terms and Conditions, and eventually the playlist could get taken down, and your music might be flagged in a negative way by the algorithms.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, one option here would be to actually find user curated playlists that are popular and have a lot of listeners. A lot of the time this is just a regular person who made a public playlist on Spotify and people happened to gravitate towards it. Over time it may gain thousands of monthly listeners. I know this might sound crazy, but what you should do in these instances is try to reach out directly to that person, wether it be via Facebook or other social media sites, and politely ask them to add you to their playlist. Again I want to mention that these are regular people. Likely with regular jobs and families, so it is important to approach this lightly. You don’t want to be rude or pushy, that is the easiest way to get ignored. TRUST ME. I deal with that every day. You’re going to want to dust off your people skills for this one, and be extra nice.
There are also services like SubmitHub that help put you in touch with different blogs and labels. It allows you to submit your music to get reviewed and hopefully picked up by a blog to have an article written about it, and hopefully added to a playlist. Even if certain blogs decide to do a review, but not add you to their playlist, just having an article written about your song is helpful. As long as they made your song sound good in the blog post, you can use it as social proof in the future to anyone else that you submit stuff to.
“Hey look AT ME! I had ‘so and so’ blog write an article about me”
SubmitHub has a free option as well as a paid option, and i highly recommend taking a look at their website. Even if you are not ready to submit anything, at least you can get an idea for what blogs/labels/playlists are on there. You can sort by genre and everything - it’s pretty cool!
Another cool thing to do is submit your music DIRECTLY to Spotify editors. You can do this by first making sure you have uploaded music and selected a FUTURE RELEASE date. You want to make sure it’s at least a week out. Personally I recommend even more for promotional purposes. Once you do that, and also have set up your Spotify Artist Profile, you will notice on the home page of your Spotify profile that it will show you your future release, and will give you the option to submit to Spotify Editors. The next page asks you to fill out information about the song, like the genre and the ‘mood’ of the song. Its important to answer these as accurately as possible to make sure that if you do get selected to be added to a playlist, that you get added to the right one. This is also where the professional look of your Spotify Artist Profile is going to come into play. Once the editors get ahold of your submission, they are likely to look into your profile and listen to your music, so make sure its on point!
5. Get Ready For Your Release
In days leading up to your release, you want to make sure that you are pushing Spotify links extra hard to all of your social media. It is important that when your music drops, it starts to get streamed immediately. Remember those pre save links we talked about? Well this is where those come in handy. Now those that have saved your song will automatically have access to listen to it.
This is basically a ‘rinse and repeat’ type strategy, so my advice is to try to stay consistent putting out music, and use your experience from your previous releases to slightly alter this strategy to your advantage. Maybe try to take feedback that previous blogs may have given you to incorporate into your upcoming music so that its more likely that they will review it next time around.
I personally think it is better to have shorter, but more frequent releases, because people’s attention nowadays is short. For example, instead of releasing a 12 song album once per year, release those 12 songs monthly. It gives people something short to chew on, and leaves them wanting more. It also keeps you ‘top of mind’ which means they are thinking about you! Another benefit to you which having smaller, more frequent releases is it gives you more opportunity throughout the year to get placement on playlists, or write-ups with blogs. It also gives you a lot more experience handing releases and reaching out to blogs etc.
There are a lot of good sources out there if you are wanting to dive a little bit deeper into this stuff yourself. I highly encourage that you do some of your own research and incorporate other peoples information as well. Check out Mark Eckert’s ‘The Release Strategy’ and ‘The Burstimo Music Marketing Channel’ for some great information on the subjects we’ve talked about. Also If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to me HERE.