 So we're all trying to grow these Spotify streams, since that's the game these days. And if you watch my videos, you know that the way you do this, one, getting new potential fans to hear you, and two, strengthening your relationship with fans so they think about you more often. Since if new people are hearing you, this will hopefully lead to people who regularly listen to you. And if you do things that keep you on the mind of those fans, they will keep on thinking of you and come back to your music and form an addiction to it. Well, if that's your plan, I have good news. Since Spotify has just unveiled a new tool that can help you do both of these things without a lot of time or any financial investment. So in this video, I'm gonna tell you about Spotify's new feature that lets you bond with your fans and have them listen to your music alongside your favorite artists for free. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. And this is Muse Formation. So you may be saying, Jesse, what in the goddamn hell? Why hasn't Spotify told me about this crazy new tool? Well, if you listen to podcasts all day, like a total nerd like me, you may have actually heard about it and just not paid a ton of attention to it. The product is called Music and Talk from Anchor, which is a podcast production and distribution company Spotify bought a couple of years ago. But before you freak out and say, God damn it, you podcast-making hipster, I ain't becoming one of you goddamn podcasters. I'm a respectable person and I don't want my in-laws laughing at me that I have a podcast. Hear me out. What Spotify has enabled for you to do here is to make DJ sets, radio shows, talk shows, or those cool companions to your album where you talk in between each song about your record or for that matter, in between your entire discography. Really, Anchor's Music and Talk has a lot of possibilities. So let's talk about them. The first thing that got me excited about this was thinking about one of my favorite ways of promoting music while finding community is to put other similar artists on a playlist from your artist page on Spotify and attack them on social media. This allows you to find similar artists to you whose fans would probably like you and teach the algorithm you're similar to them and have them notice by seeing your support when you tag them on social media to share that you've added them to your playlist by doing it in an Instapost or a tweet. And that can help expose you, your playlist and your music to their audience which should hopefully grow yours since their fan base is similar to you. Now, obviously this is more complicated than this and if you wanna learn more, I highly recommend you watch my video on this which is linked on the screen now or in the cards. So now with music and talk, the artists you find when looking for new songs to add to your playlist, you can now have another eventful thing you can share to engage your fans. The same songs that you added that playlist, you can put in a music and talk DJ set or radio show or talk show. You can talk about these songs and what you like about them or the artists you added and you have another thing that's easy to make, eventful and enjoyable for your audience which you can promote with and grow your audience with. Now there's a bunch of great possibilities here to do and each one will be different depending on who you are as an artist. If you're a big talker doing a talk show where you talk about what's been on your mind while playing the music you're enjoying from time to time is ideal. Much like many of the artists shows on Beats One or Serious FM, you can do the same as them. As well, what I think is really smart is you can invite other musicians on and interview them while playing their music and yours and then get their audiences introduced to your music and personality by doing a little talk show thing and then bringing them on so that they promote it or you can just do a radio type broadcast when you play music you like and chat when you feel like in between the songs. One of the things I would really encourage is after you put out an album a couple of weeks after it's out you should definitely make a version of it where you talk about the songs on the album in between each one. This can be fun for your whole discography and if you have an engaged audience that will listen to it that's exactly what you should do on your discography playlist page and then convert it into a music and talk experience. If you're making an album using the waterfall method this can also be a great accompaniment piece you can keep adding too easily and Anchor's Interface allows you to easily add from past music and talk episodes and continue to add to this. And if you don't know what I'm talking about with the waterfall method I highly recommend you watch my video on it as it is one of the best ways to release music today and it's linked on the screen now or in the description below. And I just want to say I know a lot of you watch this without subscribing or getting notified when I post videos and I'm just saying we can have a lot more fun if you hit that like button get subscribed and notified when I post. Another idea is if you know a lot about music subjects whether it's history or you can show some music as similar to yours you can also do that in a music and talk episode and create a listen that may bring you new fans. A smooth way of doing this can be if your song is a unique subject or trait rarely used you can make a whole show on let's say you have a song about Lava Lamps. Go hit Genius' website look up some other songs that mention Lava Lamps and next thing you know you have a show that you can send to Lava Lamp manufacturers to share on their social media and get a bump. You can even do a deep dive on an artist that's similar to you and talk about what you see in their music and lure their fans into your music. I think of that podcast dissect that goes in on artists like Kanye. Doing those deep dyes but for your favorite artists can definitely get your music some attention from the fans of those artists if you do it right. One of the main reasons to use music and talk is anytime one of the platforms implements a new feature they love to show off the artists who are using it as they want to get more eyes on it and this feature is in that stage as this week they really started pushing it out to labels, distributors and other partners and nerds like me. So if you make these and it goes well Spotify may feature you and expose you to a bigger audience. So many careers have gotten a big boost from getting on the new features of a platform early and getting that little extra push from the platform. So now is definitely the time to go here. They say fools rush in and while that is often the case when it comes to already established platforms doing new features it's always the early bird gets the worm but you may be scared and think this is gonna take you forever but it's actually shockingly easy. Just watch this little demo I made as I do this all with an iPhone voice memo app a web browser and a graphic design program. Okay, so if you're signed up for Anchor you now are at this screen of the dashboard. So let's make our first episode. So you can one capture your recording right from the browser if you have a microphone hooked up you can do it there. I already recorded my audio so that I could make this nice and easy. So what we have here is clicked up load and drag files here. We have this. What's up everybody? This is the in-cell hype beast. And today on the show I'm gonna play you all the songs that keep me not fucking but looking good. Up first we have one of my new favorite songs. It's from an artist named Glave. So as you can hear I do it. You need to put a minute between the files. So you gotta talk for at least a minute. It should be very hard. I will spare you my ridiculous banter here and we'll put this up. So as you can see here there's also this activate sponsorships which means that you can get paid and put ads in as long as the ads are not next to the music you can get paid from it. Great, so we have that in our library. So I'm gonna hit add to episode. So that's now in here but it looks like it's now in twice which I do not want. And then I will go to music and connect to Spotify. Look at that. I can go right in and I can add my favorite song. So if I wanted to put something this is one of my favorite songs right now. It's called Siffle Fossil from Igloo Ghost or Silla Fossil, whatever. And then you just keep doing that. And then you save the episode. You put a title in, you put a description. You say what do you wanna put it in and you upload some art. And that really is the game. You do have to label that issues. And then it kinda comes out like how it would if you put a podcast. So you submit it for review. They're gonna make sure that you don't do anything bad and you don't put in other people's music you're not supposed to. But really cause you have the whole entire catalog of Spotify you really should not be using music that you don't have the right to be using. There's plenty to choose from. So yeah, that's really the game. And then about an hour later they will tell you when your episode is up and you can start linking it to everybody. And you can go on your Spotify for artist page and go find with the ID. You can pin it to your page under the artist pick and have people tune into it when you put it up and get more engagement with your audience. Okay, now that we're through that here are some quick tips from Spotify themselves. Publishing weekly on weekday mornings is ideal but a consistency is most important. Pick a day in time and stick to it. I'd say feel free to go buy a weekly or monthly if that's all you can handle but really it is true that consistency and people knowing what they can expect from you is most important. Create a short trailer that gives context to what you're doing just like a YouTube trailer you wanna let the audience know what they can expect from these things and make that the first thing you post. Alternating between talk and music content has performed the best so far with episodes starting with talk content first. As well, you can't just play music and not speak. A good sweet spot for length is an hour or less but it can vary depending on your content and when your audience would enjoy it. As well, a cool thing you can do with your audience is you can use voice messages as a call in functionally to engage with your listeners and make them feel part of the show. Meaning not only can you use the Apple Voice Memos app on the phone to record your parts but you could also have your listeners email those to you if you wanna engage with them and drop them in the episode. When you do hit publish, the show takes about an hour to go up and once you do that, make sure to pin it to your profile in the artist pick and promote it on your socials. Okay, I'd love to hear of any thoughts you have on what you may do with music and talk as well as any questions you may have in the comments. So please leave a comment, subscribe and get notified for my future videos. If you're looking for ways to promote your music on Spotify, I have a whole playlist linked on the screen now on how to blow up on Spotify in 2021. If you're trying to grow your music's fan base, this is the channel where we discuss the realist, no bullshit ways to do that. So please watch more, there's another playlist on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans on the screen now that will teach you just that. Thanks for watching.