How to grow your Spotify streams – WITHOUT getting on any playlists
Are you trying to grow your streams and raise your profile on Spotify… but getting on those big playlists is just not working out?
No worries!
Let’s talk about how to grow your Spotify streams… but without getting on any of those big playlists!
There are principally two ways you can use to build your profile and your streaming success on Spotify.
Method one is that you can promote your music directly to get streams.
The second method is that you can promote your music directly to get followers on Spotify… and then let the streams follow organically.
At first glance these may sound similar or maybe related, but they are actually quite different in the way you might approach your music promotion. So let’s break this down and explain some of the pros and cons.
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Spotify Growth Method #1: Promote To Get Streams
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Method number one is promoting your music directly to get streams. This is when you go out and you might run ads to send people directly to stream your music on Spotify.
Or this is when you submit your music to tons and tons of playlists, you’re networking and you’re trying to get on those playlists to have other people feature your music.
Or this is when you link back to your Spotify profile from any other online profile or website you have to get Spotify streams.
Essentially, with this method you do everything to have people click that little play button in Spotify to stream your music.
The upside of this approach and this method is that it can deliver really fast results.
I can launch an ad for my music to get Spotify streams today, and I will see my streams rising today and tomorrow and however long I run the ad. So this method can be really fast and effective at growing your streams.
But there’s a couple of important downsides with this method.
One of the downsides is that if you’re running ads or you’re getting playlists to promote your song, then you’re not building any asset for yourself that you can use further down the road.
Here is what that means:
Let’s say your last track’s streaming promotion is completed. You’re now coming up with your next track and you want to get the same streaming results. If you use the method described above, you’ve got to do all of the same promo activities over again. You’ve got to run an ad again. You have to get on the same playlist again… or maybe on other playlists.
But essentially, with every release you’re repeating the same promotion effort… and it will cost you the same budget, maybe even more.
That’s because what you’re really doing is you’re relying on traffic that you don’t own.
You’re relying on traffic that other people own.
If you run ads, you rely on traffic sold to you by the ad platform. For example, if you’re advertising on Facebook then you’re relying on Facebook’s traffic. If you’re putting your music on playlists, you’re relying on the traffic those playlists get to share some of that with your music.
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Spotify Growth Method #2: Promote To Get Followers
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Now, that second method is to promote your music to grow followers on Spotify.
And here is why this is so interesting: if you grow followers, you will automatically get organic streams down the road because those followers will end up streaming your music as you release more tracks.
So how do you do that? How do you grow followers on Spotify systematically?
It’s really easy if you use a download gate? Hypeddit has a download gate that connects with Spotify. You can basically offer a piece of free music to your fans and folks who discover you online and turns those listeners into your Spotify followers instantly.
They download your music and through the exchange process of the download gate, they end up following you on Spotify automatically. With every download, you’re growing a new follower on Spotify.
(If your new to download gates, check out this video to learn more about how download gates work.)
Now, this method does not give you an instant boost on your streams. That’s because those new fans who downloaded your music from your download gate did not hit the play button in Spotify. Instead, they hit the follow button on your Spotify artist profile.
But once your next release comes out, and the one after that, and the one after that one… that’s when you’re reaping all those streams. Because now Spotify notifies those followers of your new releases and is maybe even putting it in some of their algorithm-curated playlists for them.
That’s how you’re building traction for your music. And that’s where those streams come in organically. You don’t have to pay for those streams. You don’t have to mingle and network and try to get on playlists.
So the big upside here is that you’re building an asset. You’re building a fanbase, and that fanbase has longevity.
Maybe the streams may not be coming in on day one and maybe not on day two, but with the next release, and the next release, and the next release, that’s when those numbers are starting to climb. That’s why this method is so powerful!
Again, you can promote your music for streams directly, but you’ll probably spend the same ad budget over and over again without building much of an asset that you own. That’s because you rely on other people’s traffic.
The moment you’re shifting and you’re building a fanbase instead, and letting that fanbase generate all those streams for you automatically, that’s when you’re building something that you own… because you own that fanbase.
You don’t have to pay for that fanbase again. Once you’ve acquired it, you can put music in front of your fans and it doesn’t cost you anything.
And it gets better: As your fanbase grows from release to release, the more boost and the more exposure you get with every release you put out. Without spending more and more money!
It’s super interesting actually. If you just promote to get streams, and you want more streams release after release, then you probably got to increase your ad budget all the time… spend more money.
But if you want more and more streams through your fanbase, all you’ve got to do is keep growing your fanbase and then the growth in streams will follow automatically.
So we are big fans of that second method: build a fanbase.
Without fans, nothing happens. But with fans, everything is possible.
That’s the path to long term success.
So if you’re new to Hypeddit, join now for free and keep getting more fans for your music!