 There's so much bad information on how to grow on Spotify all over the internet, but it's someone who spent a lot of time with playlist curators, talked to a lot of people who really know the algorithm, as well as the nerds who helped build it. I now know more about how to build on Spotify than ever, and it's time to spell it all out in this video. And this is important, since Spotify is usually 80-85% of all the audio streams for an artist. It's also the only one of the streaming audio sites that offers extensive work you can do in marketing that can build your fan base. So it's a perfect place to concentrate your effort, which is why you should probably learn to do Spotify better than all your favorite artists, which is what I'm going to teach you right now. Each year at the top of the year I make a video just like this to update you on the latest strategies to get tons of streams on Spotify. Since along with YouTube, if you do what Spotify wants, you can see massive growth. And we now have new tools to understand the algorithm better than ever, so you can grow more than ever, so it's really time to talk about it. But before we get started, the most annoying part of this video, I'm going to refer to a lot of other videos that have much more detail, because if you want to learn more, I've made longer videos already and will tell you how to do that. So if you're curious about any subject, well, hit the description. In fact, there's even a playlist in chronological order where you can watch them all and really become an expert at Spotify. As well, if you're a regular watcher of this channel, well, there's a lot of new stuff in this one, so stay tuned. So the first thing you need to do before anything else is we need to get your house in good order, which is your Spotify for artist profile, since we need to make sure that you're a good citizen of Spotify. And you're probably thinking, what the hell am I talking about with citizenship, since, frankly, it sounds stupid as hell. Startups love talking about their users being quote-unquote, good citizens, meaning that the users of their service are behaving the way they want them to, which will make a good impression on all the listeners that they want to give to you. And what Spotify wants is musicians to do things that engage listeners. Since if Spotify is going to promote that musician, they want them to stick around. This means they want you to take under 30 minutes to just clean up your profile on Spotify using the Spotify for artist portal. And all they want you to do is put up a current presentable picture that are high res and look good when they feature you on the feed or other features on the site. And for that two to three pictures is amazing. But if you have more than that, go for it. Then update your bio with something compelling that would make people want to listen to more of your music or even just something silly. Since I can see now that a lot of the kids try to be just cheeky and not fill these out. And frankly, it seems Spotify just wants something and I mean anything. Because really, you all who fear being called to try hard sure are proving yourselves to be tried not at all. And yet you're still getting streams. So do whatever feels right to you. But I even have a video linked on how to write a pitch that will make people curious to listen to you if they read it, since that can help you get more streams. So once you're done with that, link your social media, enter your latest single or playlist into the artist pick field and regularly update your user playlist, which we'll get more into later in this video. And if you have a Shopify store that sells your merch, be sure to put that up there so you can make some money. And yes, only Shopify stores can connect on Spotify now. But some of you are thinking this has been useless, but let me tell you something. In 2023, Spotify went hard on letting you push merch more and more. It seems like they're going to keep doing that to keep you all quiet about how bad they pay you. And if you want to even collect donations for yourself or a charity, you could also put that as your artist pick. But I'd suggest always point this to your latest track or a playlist that will help strengthen your algorithm, but more about that later. But seriously, what I wouldn't have here most of the time is a playlist that's a good introduction to your music. Since if you have a playlist of a bunch of your best songs in a good order and someone hits play and likes the vibe, it drives up streams and builds a relationship with your music. And fans really do add these playlists to their own library. In fact, I regularly jam the band Honey's one. Since if I go to that playlist, they're always releasing great music that I'm going to love. And I'm always wearing their hat in all these videos so you see it works. The second thing to do is to get your release strategy right. If you missed into one of my most popular videos is if you release music to appeal to Spotify and YouTube's algorithm, in order to make your music spread as far as possible, well, they'll help push you. What this entails is releasing music often enough that you take advantage of your potential fans' attention spans, which is releasing music no more than every 45 days and at the minimum put out a new song every 60 days, which I find to be the sweet spot. But again, watch the video since it's a very complex subject. I have a few videos on how to do it right, all of which are in this playlist that goes along with this video. But if you have a few songs ready for release, you could put out one every six to eight weeks and you could really take advantage of the Spotify algorithm and how it helps promote you. The next step happens 30 days before you want your song to come out, which is to make sure you do everything right to submit to an editorial playlist properly. This means submitting your signal to your distributor 30 days in advance and writing a really good editorial playlist pitch. To make this even more clear, Spotify only allows you to submit one song at a time and they recommend you put it up those 30 days in advance in a minimum of seven days in advance. Otherwise, you lose the greatest chance of having to do very little work to have your song get on Spotify Playlist and start changing your life while you get fans. If you don't know how to make a great editorial playlist pitch, I have one of my most popular videos on how to write one, which has helped tons of musicians. I also want to mention one of the things that works regularly for so many of the artists I do consults with, which is in your pitch to mention the playlist you belong on. And that weren't enough if you're going hard on posting short form video on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts to promote your song to take advantage of the earworm era, which is how most artists blow up these days. Well, 30 days is just about when it starts to work for most artists, so releasing any more often than that is often a fool's game. Damn, is it raining facts around here? I better grab my Apex Twin umbrella. Now, so many of you are going to think that you should just say Rap Caviar or one of the huge playlists that have no artists as small as you want them. But the key to this working is to start with the playlists that add entry-level artists that then grow onto these bigger playlists. I know a bunch of you are thinking, Uh, great Jesse, that sounds good, but how am I supposed to find those playlists? Well chief, the amazing service chart metric, which I go on and on about in all these videos, will show you what's called playlist journeys for any playlist on Spotify. And what I mean by these journeys is if you want to be on some big playlist, it will show you the playlists that artists get on before the big one, or even after the big one. So you can look around and find your goal playlist that you think you should be on that's really big, and then the ones that smaller artists are on first, and put that in your pitch. And the other artists who get on Spotify's editorial playlists are the ones who are on user playlists, and you can now effectively find those super fast by using Playlist Supply's playlist vet feature, which shows you whether the playlist you're looking at pitching makes it regularly onto discovered on sections of artist profiles, which means it actually gets the artists on it fans and isn't a waste of time pitching. While it costs a little money, this feature is a game changer, and you only have to go through it every few months and is super effective. And I made a video on it just a few weeks ago. But this brings me to another point. When you pitch playlists that aren't Spotify editorial playlists, you also want to make sure they are playlists where they are targeted to the exact genre of music and not all over the place, playing all sorts of weird music that you have nothing to do with. And this is probably a good time to make a distinction about how important a word I just used is. Playlist consideration, not paying to be on a playlist. I want you to really listen and take this seriously. There is a big difference between consideration and paying for placement. I do hundreds of calls with musicians a year, and one of the main things I master is, just see, I paid to play on a playlist and I got like thousands of plays because it was uh, bought it, and now Spotify is taking away my fans also like section because I cheat it. And also, I can't get in the algorithm and discover weekly and release radar anymore. Doc, I got bad news. Spotify is really cracking down on fake plays and the people will buy them. I don't want to use the word shadow band because that's embarrassing. But they definitely penalize you if you pay for plays or for that matter, bots are playlists with bots. And in 2024, they've promised to go hard on this and the only reason I believe them because boy is Spotify full of shit a lot is because it actually affects how much money they make and that seems to be the one thing they care about. So again, you can pay for playlist consideration, which is what submit hub has you do but paying to be on a playlist leads to bad, bad things. Really, you don't want to live through the find out part but you're probably wondering what you should be doing now with 30 days to go before your song comes out. And that's to start preparing your videos, your photos and the stories you're going to tell around your music, as well as the short form TikTok reels and YouTube shorts. The time you spend getting these things ready so it's all easy to launch on release day is time to ensure your release goes as smooth as possible and your song blows up as much as possible. And here's why I want to change up one of the rules that we used to discuss back in the day on this channel. One of the things we've seen change with Spotify is it used to be that 99% of the songs added to playlist were released that week but instead we're seeing more songs get added two, three weeks or even now a month later is really common. After they start to get a lot of streams and Spotify sees that people actually like this song which is good news to artists if you ask me. So this to me says, I'm going to rescind my previous advice to never ask your audience to do presaves and instead ask them to save the presave two or four times at max since we really want to have all the tools that are disposable to drive up your song. But I still want you to concentrate most of your effort after the song is out and if you're wondering what I recommend and when to post those things you can get a copy of my 60 day plan to promote your music which is free on my Ko-Fi page and it'll show you when to post those. But really what we're trying to do early on is drive as many streams up as possible since if your song starts to do good and they see the popularity score and some movement there go up you're more likely to get added to a playlist. Since we need to do everything you can to get streams and engagement up on your song so it gets on these editorial playlists and into the algorithm but there's much more to the game than that. One of the things so few people realize till they have some success on Spotify is that getting in the algorithm can generate tons of fans and streams and what I mean by the algorithm is when you achieve a certain popularity score which is the score Spotify gives you to rate how much people like your song that will start to get it recommended in algorithmic playlists and get you lots of other benefits like consideration for editorial playlists and you could look up your song's popularity score for free on the site musicstacks.com and there's a link to that below. Okay let's stop for one second since I taped this video there did become a big discussion that I wanted to bring in here real fast as it's been a few weeks now and I've been seeing a lot of data on this since I first made this video let's talk about these AI playlists Spotify has these are doing huge numbers for a lot of artists but a lot of people are now saying oh well editorial playlists don't matter as much but one of the funny things I see is the songs that get on editorial playlists are really the only ones that are getting on these AI playlists as well for the most part there's a few exceptions but those really are what makes it so that they know what songs to bond together on these AI playlists it seems like and it really does seem like that's still a really important factor so I don't want you all to get caught up in the discussion that a bunch of idiots are having that are saying well look how much bigger AI playlists are in my numbers I don't need to concentrate on editorial when editorial seems to be the gateway and which starts to teach the algorithm who to bond with to do those anyway if you have a popularity score around 20 or above odds are you're going to get and discover a weekly and release radar but it's a little genre dependent since some genres have more competition than others and if you made connections to other artists you'll get on their Spotify radio but more about that later okay I should explain this popularity score thing again a little bit because I know I'm going to get questions it seems to mostly be about plays since most artists get it but if you're getting a lot of saves very few skips and a lot of people adopting it well it seems to shoot up but that's also because it seems to go in the algorithm and get more plays and there's a high correlation the popularity score also gets higher as you get playlisted more and have more people who regularly listen to your music and lots of you find this messed up but this is actually how Spotify democratizes music and I gotta say I think it's one of the few things they do well and what I mean by this is that people who are really small artists the reason they're able to blow up so often now compared to before and this is real since we have so many artists rising up is if a song is really good and people love it and continue to listen well Spotify puts it in the algorithm and if people keep liking it it keeps growing and keeps going on release radar and discover weekly for months to come but after you hit the algorithmic playlist Spotify is basically testing out your song to see if they should really push it and when those people it thinks will like it and hear it and keep rinsing it well it keeps going into more playlists and more people hear it this is also why it's important that you have good algorithmic connections and not the terrible ones Facebook and Instagram ads make and why you don't pitch yourself to terrible playlists with tons of variety since you want the algorithm to link you to artists whose fans are most likely to like you so you can grow at scale so many people argue with me about this and frankly I'm bored because I've proved it so many times over and all the smartest people I know agree with me but what I see over and over is the artists who grow their algorithm organically and properly through doing work in their community are the ones who grow to hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners whereas the people who did all these dumb growth strategies from people they hired off Instagram well they stole out and most of the time they never grow past a certain point because the algorithm is a dead-end for growth for them whereas the people who did it properly the algorithm grows for them all while they sleep so how do you do that organic growth here's the strategy you as many fans are people who like your micro genre to hear your music so it drives up the score since those are the people who are most likely to rinse your song now the best way of doing that is of course to get your community to recommend it to do that you need to know your community and if you want to learn how to do that it's linked below in one of my most important videos but one of the other things that makes your popularity score go up and give you a great algorithm is of course to do my 60-day plan on promoting short form content you're going to get the people who like your micro genre on TikTok spreading around with that earworm and you'll bring in the listeners who are the most avid music listeners and the ones who are listed tons of artists who are just like you so when they listen to you it builds your algorithm to have connections to the other artists that those people listen to which are the best people to be recommended to since Spotify mimics what listeners' habits are and recommends them to other listeners like them this then draws the connections the algorithm needs to put you in release radar discover weekly in Spotify radio and recommend you the people most likely to rinse your music countless times instead of the worst listeners which are even worse than the people who click on ads which are the randos and the influencer who like pulls out their toe cheese on camera that your friends with recommends you to and then your algorithm is all a bunch of freaks who like that stuff well you'd much rather find the people who are really really really into your style of music since they seem to grow and talk about you and bring you around in a way that grows so much faster than any other method and this technique helps you breed the best listeners and drive up your popularity score which is why you see the artists who blow up on TikTok often have such higher numbers on here than the ones who did it through f***ing ads but truly if you want to also train the algorithm I've been shouting this for four to five years despite the fact that so many artists do this so effectively and it really works is make playlists where you have similarities to other artists and put them in your profile regularly but more about that later but we also want to post the song to your community and get the artists you've befriended in your community to post it too if you're thinking that you don't have community well you need to start finding it because honestly there's very few artists who ever grow unless they have an exceptionally great song and the algorithm does all the work unless they have community okay so let's say your song is finally out and we made it to release day let's remember release days are a lot like throwing stones in a lake the bigger the splash you make at first the bigger the ripple is in the pod and the easier it will be to promote your song and this is not to say that you don't need to sustain your promotion which I would argue is much more important than promoting your music on release day but that also is a huge thing that people miss is that both continually promoting your song and doing it on release day are places that people mess up all the time and you need to do both you want to make sure you're in front of your computer on release day responding to comments on YouTube and Instagram talking to people on social media telling stories and getting the song out on message boards since the more people hear it when it's fresh the more chance the algorithms will push it and get seen by others and can spread you should answer any comments on TikTok, Instagram reels or YouTube shorts you haven't answered already so you get put in their algorithm since it's much or likely that you're going to get served to them if you do that type of stuff as well if you get added to playlists be sure to share them on your socials so that playlists are encouraged to keep adding you in the future when you put out more songs while not everyone has Spotify most people do and those who don't are used to looking up songs on other services so I like to link right to Spotify I do these links with presave links a lot of time and since your song is out just link the song and allow people to follow you even when it's out since most Spotify presave links just turn to follow buttons once the song is out also if you let your fellow musicians in your community know you have a new track and they add it to their artist playlist and you do the same for them this is going to increase your chances that your song gets added to quality Spotify editorial playlists so hitting up the people who are similar to you who are small other artists and saying hey friend you should put me on your artist playlist and I'll put you on mine this can really drive up the chances that you're both going to succeed and lift both of you up as each of you grow since the people who are looking for upcoming artists often pool together and that's a great algorithm that haven't built off of as well since your song is now out make sure you upload a Spotify canvas to your song since in Spotify for artists since it's proven to get it more streams and it looks so much better when someone shares it to their Instagram stories and this got much more important this year since Spotify has their ripple off of the TikTok for you feed and you're not going to get these fancy images you're seeing on the screen right now without a canvas and lose out being one of the artists that converts people over on this new feed and drives up streams and just as YouTube's browse page is really popular this Spotify one is increasingly getting more and more streams this feature is becoming more and more important and a bigger driver of streams each month so don't sleep on putting up canvases for your songs since it's so easy to make a canvas and get discovered by more people and now it's probably a good time to talk about Spotify's marquee tool and while I find it this feature totally gross and sleazy that Spotify charges you to alert your fans that you have a new song out nothing triggers the algorithm or drives up streams like putting money into the marquee tool the catch is you need to have a certain amount of listeners per month to use the tool but if you do meet that threshold it's well worth using the marquee tool to drive up your streams to your track and have it spread so it's worth it to budget for the marquee tool and the marketing you could put into it as there's few things that you could spend your money to do better so let's think of this way you're alerting the fans who've already listened to you that your new song is out you're bringing them back into your algorithm and the art is similar to you that they've made connections to start to help you build an algorithm so make sure to not miss out on making that connection since it's really crucial but the good news for those of you who don't have enough fans for the marquee tool is there's a slightly less in your face version the showcase tool which you could pay for if you have a thousand streams in a country and has a longer shelf life than the marquee tool in that you can promote a song well after it's out and will come up on users home page and push them to listen here's the really good news it's much cheaper for impressions with this and it seems to do almost effective results to the marquee tool at times for the money so I really am pretty high on this feature right now and showcase filters out users who stream the song in the past 20 days so it's effective at targeting the people you need to convert who may have missed your song I've seen artists who have a lot of enthusiasm get a 10% listen rate of who sees it which feels like money really well spent to me while this gets less clicks than marquee it's cheaper it does the same algorithmic work so I find it to be a great place to spend your budget while we're in this area let's head on to Spotify artist and see if you have any songs available for discovery mode this will make it so when a new fan hears you through it you'll get a slightly reduced royalty rate because Spotify is the scum of the earth but Spotify will put you in Spotify radio playlist meaning your song is seen as algorithmically connected to another song it will get played when somebody plays a song and then Spotify starts choosing songs for the listener you ever have it play you a bunch of random songs after a song is done well that's Spotify radio tons of people I work with sees tons of growth from this while others see very little it's always worth trying out because you really have to check it out for yourself since no two artists I've seen have the exact same results but as I've talked about a couple of times in this video I want you to make your own artist playlist and if I had small acts in your genre and add them to your artist playlist and then tag them on social media that you added them what I'm talking about is making a playlist of let's say your local scene people in your micro genre artists who have written songs about the same thing whatever creative idea you have if you do this every two weeks and continually update your playlist while using social media to tag who you add you can get fans of similar artists to listen to your music and gain new fans each week especially if they share those posts this is where those techniques that takes a good amount of research to find good artists were the right size with some hustle and it takes time to tag the ones and find who you should continually add to these as they keep putting out new music but it's the best trick I know for finding the right type of fans who really make you good algorithmic connections and if you want to learn more about this you should definitely watch my video on this technique as I'm getting messages from musicians all the time who this is helping them grow their fan base and while it's not necessary this is why playing shows and doing collaborations with artists also helps so much is it strengthens who the algorithm sees you as bonded to and while not necessary it helps you grow faster as the more artists you're similar to the algorithm sees you bonded to the more it will be working while you sleep to show you to other artist fans and this brings me to our last step which is to remember that collaborations, remixes features and split releases are some of the greatest marketing tools to build your Spotify algorithm since not only do you get artist page visibility with their fans who will also see your name on the artist page that they're a fan of but the songs you do with those artists will get put in the artist release radar and get you tied to them algorithmically increasing the chances of you being on their discover weekly or Spotify radio along with countless other benefits that even extend over to TikTok and Instagram and tons of other social media sites this is really where you can do so much damage which is why these features and remixes and collaborations and split releases are so huge and yet so many of you ignore it I made the video on this a while ago and you should really go in on it but really the actual last step is to keep repeating this let's remember this work only works if you're consistent and you sustain it meaning you need to keep doing this for a while and just putting out two or three tracks isn't going to do the trick today instead you have to release a string of songs and sustain it as well as working hard to promote it if you watch who Spotify works best for they're regularly releasing singles and following this technique okay but you should keep learning and you should really learn how to promote on TikTok since this drives Spotify better than anything else and builds the best algorithm possible in 2024 and that video is up on the screen right now and you should click it and keep learning thanks for watching