A Guide To Promoting Your Music On Pandora
This year Pandora released several useful new marketing tools for use by artists, allowing them to create personalized audio messages, and make discovery by consumers easier, but the information on how to use these tools can be overwhelming to some users, with the result that we've put together this helpful guide.
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Guest post by Astra Dunbar of Symphonic Blog
Pandora has made some pretty cool marketing tools available to its artists this year. Users can create personalized audio messages, and get discovered more easily using featured tracks on Pandora’s Artist Marketing Platform (AMP).
As first-time users, the various video tutorials and instructional documents available on how to use the platform can be pretty overwhelming.
We’ve put together a few tips on how to promote your music on Pandora!
First things first, to even access these tools artists must the criteria:
- Have music spinning on Pandora
- Establish an AMP account with Pandora.
You can claim your AMP profile here. Be sure to claim your AMP profile at least 6-8 weeks in advance of your next release date, since the process can take up to 6 weeks for AMP account creation.
Once you’ve set up your AMP profile, you can begin to create a campaign through your profile. There are two ways in which to market your spinning music: Audio messages (also called *AMPcast) and Featured Tracks.
AMPcast/Audio Messages
If you’re an artist with music spinning on Pandora, you can now target personalized audio messages to your listeners. This effective tool allows your listeners to hear a brief audio message the moment they pull up your Pandora station, or before/after they’ve listened to one of your tracks. Artists can create multiple audio messages as part of a campaign to update fans on upcoming events, releases, tours, and promotions one of your tracks. Messages should be personalized and intimate, giving fans insight into your music.
Check out these detailed instructions on how to get started on your first audio message to your fans.
Creating An Audio Message
- Login in to your Pandora AMP profile
- Click on the blue “+” button that reads “Create Campaign.” A dropdown menu should appear.
- Click on “Artist Message”
- Upload your audio file and Image, follow the instructions and fill out relevant release details and press submit!
Featured Tracks
A featured track aims to speed up the process of your music being discovered on Pandora. They last up to eight weeks from the start date. You’ll be able to view performance metrics for featured tracks like the total number of listeners who’ve heard your track, and total number of times your featured track spun during the eight-week period. There are eligibility requirements for a featured track:
- Release must not have been featured before
- Was first spun on Pandora within the last 365 days.
- The number of spins for the release isn’t already too high (if so, it won’t benefit from being featured
The best time to create a featured track is at the release of new single, a new video, a notable placement, or a tour kickoff. You’ll be able to receive reporting on these featured tracks including thumb ratios (percentage of total thumbs given that were thumbs up) and buy clicks (which show the number of times a listener bought the track during the period the track was featured). For detailed instructions on how to create a feature track, click here.
That’s all for now! Start promoting your music on Pandora today.
*AMPcast is the mobile version of audio messaging, if you’re on-the-go and need to quickly upload through the Pandora App. We highly recommend using the PC version, as it allows more customization for campaign management, scheduling, and better geo-targeting.
