How To Make The Most Of Your Music On Spotify
If your music is on Spotify you can choose to take a passive approach and simply make it available to people who seek it out. But if you want to make the most of being on Spotify, then you'll have to become more actively involved. Hospital Records' Matt Riley recently shared his take on what you can do to build a stronger following on Spotify.
Matt Riley, head of sync & marketing for Hospital Records, has a few tips for making the most of Spotify.
Make The Most Of Your Music On Spotify
"Include Spotify as a destination for your music on all marketing emails and social networks."
Let the people know!
"Create playlists to encourage fans to discover your catalogue."
Playlists are definitely a great way to use Spotify to bring attention to your music. As Riley points out, "you can include music from other labels too, to complement your own."
Chris Robley has a number of creative ways to use Spotify playlists to promote your music.
"Build an app."
Apps are a particularly powerful way to build a presence on Spotify as the recently released Electrospective App demonstrates.
Apps are a worthy marketing expense. Alison Lamb points out that Spotify apps can boost your listens dramatically.
"Don’t hold back."
Riley advocates releasing music on Spotify at the same time it's released for sale pointing to data that shows that the "biggest listenership spikes are right on release."
Not everyone agrees with this position. Mark Mulligan has a well-considered take on such release strategies.
More:
- Is Spotify Paying You Everything You're Owed?
- Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich Exit Spotify In Protest: "New artists get paid fuck all."
- Musicians: Hate Spotify and Pandora? Here's An Alternative Proposal
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
These tips are appreciated. But, I’m still trying to figure what does an independent artist ultimately get out of boosting their listens on Spotify? And how many people use Spotify compared to YouTube, where artists can essentially do the same thing?
In general, being on Spotify is about being accessible wherever one’s listeners might be.
For smaller indie artists I think the idea is to be building for the long term when many assume that most music will be accessed by streaming services.
But I agree that YouTube is where it’s at. They give you more and offer greater potential reach than Spotify.
Hey Matt, sounds great. So I’m sure you’ll take up my challenge as you probably, according to your advice, will make a ton of money off of what you propose. Here’s the simple deal: you (personally or have hospital records) pay for our next recording project. It will cost approximately $80,000 for production and another $50,000 for marketing (a real bargain, but then you are going to handle the easy promotion, right?). We’ll grant you 100% of Spotify royalties and all of the digital sales traceable to Spotify exposure until costs are recovered, and then we’ll split the profits from there.
Great deal right? So are you in??? I hope so because talk is cheap, and I want to believe you are legit. Let us know if you stand behind your convictions.
Hypebot actually cut off half of my post here…
I have some big problems with spotify too
Read – http://blog.midem.com/2013/08/matt-riley-how-to-make-the-most-of-spotify/