Jose GonzalezIf you’ve been following the Vortex E.G. blog, you may have wondered when we’d tackle Spotify. After all, Spotify accounts for 30% of the music streaming market and boasts 615 million monthly users.
Today, we look at the $14.83-billion-per-year giant and give you some tips to grow your artists’ career with Spotify.
Optimizing a Spotify for Artists’ Profile
Creating and Customizing Your Artist Profile
You’ve uploaded the music and it’s now discoverable, but will the fans get the experience they expect when they find it? The artist profile should use high-quality images and a compelling bio that reflects your artist’s brand. Make sure to include relevant social media links to keep their Spotify audience connected with their events and activities.
Adding Personal Touches
Encourage your artists to push their bio deeper. Artists can use this space to welcome people into their creative process to make themselves appear more relatable and engaging.
Another feature that can help here is Spotify’s Artist’s Pick, which allows artists to highlight specific tracks, playlists, or events right on their profile. This is a great way to draw attention to new releases but you can also feature other artists’ work that influenced their music.
Leveraging Spotify’s Tools for Artist Growth
Spotify Canvas
Before streaming, you may have listened on repeat for hours while your eyes studied the CD booklet for lyrics, stories, and images. Today, you have Spotify Canvas, where artists can create short, looping visuals that accompany each of their tracks.
These visuals enhance the experience and make music more memorable. And when the experience sticks with you, you’re more likely to listen again and share it through playlists and social media.
Spotify Marquee
Spotify Marquee is part of the Campaign Kit. It requires additional payment and certain artist requirements for eligibility, including 1,000 followers and 5,000 streams. When available, however, it enables artists to push new releases to targeted audiences.
Say one of your artists is a band that resonates with fans of Nine Inch Nails and has a new album. With Marquee, a targeted audience of Nine inch Nails fans can receive full screen promotions of the band’s new project. Listeners can tap over to the artist page to listen, bookmark, or download the new album.
Countdown Pages
Another way to boost excitement around a new album is with Countdown Pages. When fans visit an artist profile to listen to music that’s already out, they will see a countdown to their upcoming release.
From that countdown section, artists can add options for fans to listen to clips of songs on the upcoming album, buy merch, and pre-save the album. When the album is released, the pre-saved album is added to the listener’s library.
Spotify Codes
Spotify Codes are a versatile tool that can be used in both physical and digital marketing efforts. The scannable codes make it easy for fans to access your artists’ music and playlists with a simple scan.
Understanding and Utilizing Spotify’s Analytics
Spotify for Artists Dashboard
From the dashboard, your artists can identify listening trends, see their monthly listeners, followers, and stream counts. These metrics are essential for planning future marketing strategies and tour dates.
Audience Segmentation and Targeting
Artists can segment audiences based on demographics, location, and listening habits. They can use this data over time to determine the best time of the year to release new projects and who to push them to when marketing the release.
Real-Time Data Monitoring
With data readily available and in real time, it makes adjusting strategies easy. You can adjust advertising budgets and social media activity on the fly as streaming numbers change. This is a great way to stretch smaller marketing budgets so you’re not spending so much when fans are already listening.
Pitching to Spotify Playlists
Understanding the Spotify Editorial Playlist Process
Despite all the talk of Spotify DJ (Spotify’s AI radio) and algorithms, some things still use a human touch. Per Spotify, editors “use data insights, sharp ears, and an understanding of cultural trends to place content where it’s likely to resonate most with fans around the world.”
To increase your chances of being selected, it’s important to submit your music well in advance and provide a compelling pitch that highlights the unique aspects of your track. Be sure to include key details such as the genre, mood, and any notable collaborations.
You can also turn to your music distribution service for help here. Major distributors like TuneCore and Symphonic Distribution may have connections you can tap into by reaching out to your representative. Others may offer priority pitching services if you pitch through them.
User-Generated Playlists and Algorithmic Playlists
Editorial playlists are not the only human-driven playlists, of course. In fact, user-generated playlists can be more powerful for your artists in the long run. First, by getting on fan playlists, your artists are organically increasing their fan base.
In addition, by encouraging fans to add music to their playlists, artists add points (so to speak) to their algorithm scores. The Spotify algorithm favors tracks that are consistently played, saved, and shared. Your artists can then end up on algorithmic playlists like Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Release Radar.
AI Playlists
Spotify is rolling out the ability for listeners to let the Spotify AI create playlists based on their prompts. The feature is in beta now and only available to customers in the UK and Australia.
Think of a listener getting a few hours of music as their own playlist based on a prompt like, “high-energy 90s and 2000s hip hop tracks for my daily workout.” Spotify’s AI then creates a playlist using the listener’s habits and what Spotify knows of its existing tracks and habits of other customers.
The key to the AI recommending your artists for such a playlist, much like with algorithmic playlists, lies in the music getting shared and liked by large audiences. It will also rely heavily on the metadata of your artists’ tracks being precise so the AI can use them in the right niches.
Monetization Strategies
Understanding Royalties and Payments
Spotify’s royalty system can be complex but it’s important for artists to understand how royalties are calculated and distributed so they can maximize these earnings. A previous Vortex E.G. post already goes into detail about Spotify royalties here.
Direct Fan Support
In the epic words of Brian Molko of Placebo, “A friend in need’s a friend indeed. A friend with weed is better.” One great way to create a lasting bond between artist and fan is to make the fans feel like they’re a part of the artist’s growth to the point of financing their musical efforts. Fan Support encourages artists’ audiences to contribute through tips, donations, or by purchasing merch — generating revenue and strengthening their fan-artist relationships.
Vortex Entertainment Group offers direct-to-fan marketing services to further support your artists by getting in front of their fans.
Merch and Ticketing Integration
Spotify integrates with Shopify and various ticketing platforms to allow artists to sell directly to their fans through the artist profile. Ensure your artists keep their merch and ticket links up to date and highlight key offerings so fans see them without much effort.
Legal Considerations and Best Practices
Understanding Spotify’s Terms and Conditions
Spotify’s terms and conditions are lengthy but artists must pay special attention to the sections on content ownership and distribution rights. Always ensure artists have the necessary licenses for all music you push to Spotify to avoid legal issues.
Protecting Your Music
Unlike YouTube, Spotify does not use a content ID system. However, Spotify is deliberate about protecting artist copyright. Spotify enters into legal licensing agreements with major labels and independent artists, they remove copyrighted material upon reporting, and have an extra layer of protection compared to YouTube and TikTok. The average listener cannot upload their own content to the platform or start an artist account without verification.
Last Words: How to Grow with Spotify
The leader in music streaming can be a daunting name. With so many artists streaming on Spotify, how could your artists stand out above the others? The music should speak for itself once it hits the right ears but you have plenty of tools at your reach. Use them and help your artists grow on Spotify and across all other channels.
Artist managers these days are helping out in many facets of artists’ careers including marketing. We know sometimes you just need an extra pair of hands and as part of our fractional artist management services, we can help out with distribution and marketing on platforms such as Spotify. Contact us today and set up an initial consultation to see how we can help you deliver a project you can be proud to call your own.
