For a long time, music promotion is not limited to only making profiles on streaming platforms and downloading music. To give them a life, artists should put a lot of effort to understand the way platforms like Spotify works and the way artists benefit from streaming platforms.
First of all, let’s agree that Spotify is a social platform. Yes, you heard that right, Spotify is a social media platform. You might not treat it as social media but think of it, it is statistics-driven, you are expanding your followers, you are taking advantage of shareability, you are telling a story about yourself, you are posting links to your other social media therefore Spotify is a social media. Therefore treat it as a social media platform; the same as we want to make more followers on Instagram we are building our fanbase there.
Every social media platform has its own algorithm and Spotify is not an exception, there is an algorithm and we need to dig into it.
Spotify algorithm consists of three parts: number one is language processing. It means that it defines the language that is being sung and then it can put the language you want to listen to in front of you. Sounds obvious but think about how many languages are in the world, how many of them on Spotify? Hmmm?
Number two is raw audio analysis, which means that the algorithm analyses the genre, the tempo, the vibe of the song in order to help it to go to the right playlist. Spotify’s AI tries to understand is that a jolly song or a sad one, or may it is a song for a workout, or for a jogger running early in the morning in the park.
Finally, number three is collaborative filtering which means that Spotify is looking around to find you the best song for your lifestyle, for your habits, your pace.
Spotify’s AI wants you to stay and to listen to the content as long and as much as possible but at the same time, you shouldn’t get bored there. So here is a rule of 30 seconds - you need to keep people on your music for more than 30 seconds. Think about this. What will keep people on the hook for these thirty seconds?
You need to make the algorithm work on your behalf. Remember at the beginning we told that Spotify is a social media? So it has to be treated like your other social media which means that numbers do matter. You need the numbers to trigger the algorithm to make it spike. That means you need to work on your Spotify page. On your bio, your list, your pictures; everything counts. You can even add some podcasts with your stories to track attendance. Understand that Spotify is not a standing-alone platform it should fit into all your social media as a puzzle. And what you do in order to boost your social media? Right, you create value, you add as much data as possible. Arrange your Spotify page so it looks awesome. Your links, your pictures, your tracks, your bio, everything should be there in order and draw attention. That will help to keep people a little bit longer on your page. And from there you start gaining momentum, and momentum is a deal-breaker here.
Another trick is a pre-save. Think of it as a pre-sale: everything is ready to go life all you need to do is just press the button. You understand already that the Spotify algorithm is watching you so show it you are well prepared.
One more tip - always release your music on Friday. That will increase your chance to go into New Music Friday playlist which is quite big and gets updated every week.
Now let’s talk about labelling your track. Are you giving Spotify all the information it needs to think about what this track is and where it fits in the whole world of Spotify? You should include all the information, like genre, mood, tempo, etc. But be careful because if you give wrong information it might drive you down. You should understand that there is positive information and there is negative information on Spotify. What is negative, simple when more and more people start skipping your track. So again be productive in your information but be thoughtful.
