 So when we last left off making a plan to promote your music in this series, we were talking about what to do on TikTok, Instagram, and all the other social media, like YouTube Shorts. But ultimately, what we really want people to do is to stream your music on Spotify since it has the most potential for growing your fanbase. And you may be thinking, you already know my release plan since it's the cornerstone of what I teach on this channel since we all know The Best Marketing is a great song, but we've never gone over all the details to really blow up on Spotify, which are pretty simple, but you gotta pay attention. So I'm gonna show you how to engage with the platform as effectively as possible over 90 days, and well, it's about that time. So when people ask me why we go so hard on Spotify when there's a million streaming platforms, I always have to remind them that it's really the only platform with effective marketing tools. And since it has the most consumption by far, and by consumption I mean there's one thing to look at, which is where musicians actually get royalties from, because that shows who's actually using it. So since it's so important, what do we do? Okay, so 32 days before your song is released, it's so important that you have your Spotify pitch and your song uploaded to your distributor. It takes a few days after you uploaded your distributor for it to show up in your Spotify for hours upcoming tab, where you will be able to submit your pitch. Now if you're clueless on what to do for this pitch and how to do all of this, luckily I have a full video on this, which is in the description. And yes, it's gonna be one of those videos where I have a video that goes deeper on everything we talk about here. So if you want more information on any of these subjects or you're confused, hit the description so I can spare all of you reminding you that every five minutes in this video. Anyway, let's talk about what else you can do before your song comes out on Spotify. So some of you are special enough, and by that I mean you have enough streams in Spotify that they will allow you the privilege of using their marquee tool to alert people who've listened to you before that you have a new song out. And they can now stream it. Now it's absolutely ridiculous that Spotify charges you, who they already pay very poorly to do a service they should do for you anyway. Absolutely. The fact is of the people I work with who pay for this tool, if the money is in their budget, it's hard to find something to spend money on that grows your fan base more effectively. And for that matter stimulates the algorithm since it targets the people who are most likely to enjoy your song. And really, it all depends on your budget, whether it's worth it or not, or if you're even qualified to use it yet. But I will say this, I have yet to work with an artist who didn't see growth from it. But for those of you who do not get the special privileges on Spotify, well, you can do this next one. So the next two weeks before your release, we're going to share a pre-save link two to four times. And I know this changed up from some stuff I said in the past. So listen up so I can explain. Let's remember these pre-save links miss out on a chance to get attention from new fans, but can do two important things. By getting your most passionate fans to save a song, you can get Spotify falls and get their email address. Now, so many people ask me which pre-save tool is best. And honestly, most of them are the same. Most of your distributors will have a free one that they come with for you like Distro Kids, which I particularly like. But there's tons of others from HypeEdit, LinkFire, pre-save.io, listen.to, and frankly, as long as they allow the pre-save to happen and collect emails, you're good. And if it looks nice and pretty to you, even better. Seriously people, this isn't shopping for a car. Grab one, make sure you can find where to download the emails and let's keep it moving and getting work done instead of trying to decide on this like some of you dorks do with shopping for 12 different tube screamers that sound almost exactly alike. Anyway, you're going to want to do an emotional plea that you're comfortable with to your fans two to four times in the two weeks before your song comes out when sending out that pre-save link. You know, something like our best song is coming out and it helps it get heard by more people if you pre-save it. So if you want to help us and make sure you don't miss it, please do that. If that sounds a little too much like a beggar for you, you can always try. You're not going to want to miss the neopunk anthem of the summer. I bought my mom a bot farm to like her thirst traps. So you better pre-save it now, whatever. This isn't that important. So let's keep going. But I should say by the looks of Spotify's 3.0 presentation that they recently did, pre-saves look like they're going to start to be more important to them. So this may change as it has in the past as Spotify has played around with the importance of this feature a few times in the past. Anyway, so now let's talk another feature. Not all of you have the controversial discovery mode, which allows you to get more exposure in exchange for a lowered royalty rate on the placement of fan first hears the songs you put in discovery mode for them to show it to more people. So some of you have already been offered discovery mode and don't realize it. And while your newest song may not be available in it, if you have one coming out, I highly recommend putting some or all of your catalog that's eligible in it. Since as I often tell you, the best promotion for new songs is old songs. The fact is, there's so many artists I work with that have many songs that are years old that are in discovery mode. And they get those new songs listened to all the time as new fans hear the old songs and then want more and hear the new songs. And as we're about to talk about it a few minutes, so much of driving up your popularity score is getting the people most likely to like your songs to listen to them. And you know who's really likely to like your newest song? Well, it's the people who liked your older songs. In fact, there's no one more likely than that. Now this feature was pretty new when we last discussed it. So I have new information for you. So in my experience from doing hundreds of consulting calls a year, there's a lot of people who discovery mode doesn't do so well for. And those are the people who do a lot of Facebook and Instagram ads and a lot of ads in general and have messed up their algorithm with people who it's not genuine connections with. And this is literally black and white in my finds. And I have a hypothesis that I don't have a ton of proof for yet, but it's that radio and up next functions on Spotify largely rely on recommendations made by profiling other users. And the fact is when you do Instagram and Facebook ads you contaminate your pool of listeners, Spotify sees in their data with the worst listeners possible and then it messes up your algorithmic growth. So yet again, I can't emphasize this enough. Facebook ads are selling you a bad gross strategy instead of a good one like building your through your community, which I have a whole playlist for in the description on how to do. And yes, this is why it's so funny to me when people say to me, I use Facebook's ads to stimulate the algorithm on Spotify. And those are always the people who think they're a genius. Two years later, around consulting calls with me wondering why they never grow past a certain point on Spotify and their growth is stalled and all their fans also like on Spotify aren't like them. And it's cause they ruin the algorithm from recommending them the best possible fans were likely to enjoy their music. You do not stimulate the algorithm with these ads. You make connections to listeners who are not likely to make you more connections in your genre. And instead, the people listen to any crap that has served them and those don't help you grow in the algorithm. But now we're at your release day. It's so many of you don't get this stuff, so listen up. So starting today, we're in a race for the next two weeks and that race is framed around what I was talking about a minute ago. The race is to get as many people who are most likely to like your songs, to hear it and keep away the people who are likely not to like it. So what do I mean by that? Remember what I was talking about collecting emails before? Well, you should be doing that at shows and if you have a website or a link in bio you can trade a rare song, a B-side, a remix, or alternate version that is only available if you sign up for your mailing list. And that way you would give people a reason to sign up for it if you really want to go hard at this. Anyway, at midnight, the minute your song comes out you want to email your fans since they will see this email whenever they decide to read it and see a big all caps new song out now on the subject email from you, a group they were passionate about enough to give an email address to and that they want to hear from again and well, they're very likely to like you. So what those people are most likely to do is to listen repeatedly which drives up your popularity score which then gets you on release radar and discover weekly playlist and into the algorithm which really also commonly drives up your popularity score and gets you new fans. But truly the thing to remember here is we're in a race so that all that promo we talked about in the 60 day plan when people say to me, Jesse, how does posting to your followers get you new fans? You're just talking to the same people over and over again. Easy big fella. I like the hair, I like the shoes but that attitude has to go. When you continually remind the people who like you the most to keep listening to your music if they are indeed rinsing your song that drives up the popularity score and then it gets in the algorithm and gets suggested to more people. So yet again, this is why we try to stimulate those people a lot in the first two weeks particularly on Spotify which is why we don't put up the music video on day one since we want the most people to listen to it Spotify possible, not YouTube. You feel me chief? I know a lot of you then wonder if you should only promote to your fans but no, if you know your community and can get your music on reddits, message boards and discords where your micro genre is most passionate fans hang out well that helps too. Since those people are the most likely to like your music if they hear it and let's be honest a lot of you need help of new listeners and it's also why Spotify auditorial playlist help if you get on them but it can be really bad when you get on playlist that are too diverse or you pay for some Subbit Hub playlist that is rap, EDM and you're a bedroom pop singer since those people aren't likely to like you and it's gonna drive down your popularity score. Since we are in a race to get as many familiar ears to you and I should say this this is why TikTok's so great because if someone jumps from TikTok to listen to you well that person's pretty likely to like your song one might even say passionate to want to hear the full song and are pretty likely to like it and listen to it repeatedly. Is it all making sense yet? Why I say to go so hard on TikTok? But the reason the first two weeks matter is our goal is to get you on an editorial playlist and what me and my friends who study this see is now more than ever Spotify auditorials add songs about two weeks after release when they see the song has a good popularity score and you can see this if you look up a lot of the editorial playlist on Sharp Metric there's a graphic right here that shows you when songs get added and oftentimes it says around two weeks and if you get all those familiar ears to listen the best case is the song gets on an editorial playlist it stays there it continues driving up its popularity score and making connections with listeners who are likely to like it and getting in the algorithm and you blow up and that's how you get your first fans we get how this works now but back to what you do on day one you need to do an artist pick it points to your new song so it calls attention there in case someone's not paying much attention while they're on your page and that's really easy to do in the Spotify for artist back end okay but now we're finally past release day and I have good news when it comes to Spotify you've done most of the work and on release day make sure you have a Spotify canvas up which is just a simple seven second loop of your song and something visual and Spotify showed over and over against statistics that show that these get your songs rids repeatedly more often okay so but right after release day and which you know I usually suggest to do on a Wednesday we have a Friday coming up so the next thing we're gonna do is that the first Friday after your release is out put your new song at the top of a playlist that has a bunch of other songs from your community of artists around it you should find a bunch of artists who are similar to you with 30 to 100,000 monthly listeners that you find to be good and add them and then be sure to tag them on socials that you put them on this playlist and say you added them and hopefully they'll share it and their fans will hear you if not even if you're listeners just listen to it it can make you algorithmically tied to those smaller artists and you'll be likely to get recommended to them in the algorithm since as people listen to those artists and make algorithm connections to the two of you it means that you'll get recommended when people are listening to those other artists and they already have some fans and that is yet again how we build up some of your first fans but basically we're gonna try to update this playlist with a couple artists every two weeks and when you do, make it your artist pick and if you don't do that you can sometimes just do a playlist of your best songs every two weeks alternating so that people get a really good impression of you first and they dig deeper on you okay but on the weeks that you aren't putting up that list on the other Fridays I'm gonna suggest you do a Music Plus Talk podcast through Anchor where you use Spotify's tool through Anchor and you record some banter in between like a radio show and maybe have a musician friend on and talk about fun stuff or you can interview another group whatever but most of all play the songs on that artist playlist that are similar to you and then yet again tag them on socials when you promote it and form more connections to you if listeners then go to them and you're tagging them on Instagram and Twitter and on TikTok it's showing that you are connected to them all those algorithms are gonna start to see you as connected to those artists and recommend you to the fans that interact with both of you this isn't just for Spotify the reason this works is it algorithmically connects you to the people most similar to you that can help build you up but the last thing we haven't talked about of course is pitching users in non-spotify editorial playlists I tend to wait till the song has been out for two weeks hopefully then you can show some momentum to the curator you pitched to that the song is doing well and hopefully it will get added to their playlist it continues to help you find new listeners and drive it your streams but let's also remember getting on user playlists helps to set you up for success with editorial playlists for your next song so if this is happening you build success for future songs and if you want to find these user playlists I highly suggest playlist supply and chart metric if you can afford it and I have videos on that down below but on the seventh week after your song is out if you're familiar with my release strategy you know we sometimes release an alternate version of your song where you sometimes add a feature to a bridge or a verse get a remix make an acoustic version or an orchestrated version of the song or whatever you can even do those sped up or slow down version of your song since those are going off on TikTok right now but on the seventh week your song has been out that would be the day to release it as you could renew interest of the song and give it new life but honestly that's up to you some of you like to highly curate your Spotify page and it's entirely up to you if you want to just put that on YouTube or on social media or if you want to put it here two weeks after that you're on week nine and it's time to start over again and promote another song and keep building with the momentum of each song building up your fan base and building up your algorithmic connections but here's the thing while you just learned this part of the game if you haven't watched my 60 day plan to promote your music you're gonna be clueless so watch it right now since it's on the screen thanks for watching