As technology continues to advance, the landscape for music fans worldwide is changing constantly. New technology directly affects how fans discover new music and therewith what music they end up listening to. According to research conducted by RIAA, streaming is, by far, the most popular way of consuming music, as it accounts for 83% of the total revenue in music sales in the U.S. For this reason, developing and growing as an artist on streaming services like Spotify (the most popular streaming service with a 31% market share, according to MIDIA) has become a goal for many who pursue a successful career in the music industry.
However, the competition is overwhelming, as approximately 40,000 new songs are uploaded to the platform every day. And as of 2020, the top 57,000 artists, the elite 0.8 percent ‘Gold Club’ of artists on Spotify, are bringing in 90% of streaming revenue — that is $4.5 billion of the $5 billion — according to calculations by Rolling Stone. Unfortunately, from this large streaming revenue pool from Spotify only 10% — or $0.5 billion — is left for the remaining small- and medium-scale artists in this situation (99.2 percent of Spotify creators outside of the 57,000 top artists, which is around 7 million artists ).
Nonetheless, it is possible to achieve long-term success on Spotify with the right growth strategy. For this reason, our team of experts carried out the research and found the best possible ways of how to increase your followers on Spotify for maximum results in the long run.
How to get more streams on Spotify
You first need to find out where your current streams are coming from. On Spotify for Artists, you can view your “Source of Streams” chart and see if your fans discover you directly from your artist page or from one of their playlists. This way, you can see what is already working for you and invest your time in that area. In short, you must create a Spotify growth strategy.
Most artists focus blindly on playlist marketing — getting their tracks featured in well-known playlists — as this seems like the most logical place to get more streams from.
However, most streams on Spotify are coming from users’ collections and listening recommendations from the algorithm. Therefore, if you are aiming for long-term success as an artist, the ultimate goal is to increase your following on Spotify and get your music saved in listeners’ catalogs forever. This will pay off in the long-term, as opposed to only boosting your streams by getting featured on a popular playlist for a few weeks.
There are many services that claim they can get your songs into these playlists and deliver you streams but you need organic followers for long-term growth. Also, keep in mind, that Spotify deletes fake followers, so in the end, these methods won’t be the best way to invest your hard-earned cash. Therefore, we believe that building a fanbase organically is the best way of achieving success in the long term. In the same manner that creators thrive on any other social media platform, one needs to know the algorithm and play by its rules.
Spotify works in a similar way to other social media platforms like Instagram, as it uses algorithms to rank content in users’ feeds. Instagram does this with images and Spotify roughly does the same with music.
How does the Spotify algorithm work?
Spotify uses a mix of human curation and their computer-generated algorithm. Based on collected data, your interests, tastes, and emotions are guessed.
The algorithm is constantly changing, but we know for sure that the Spotify algorithm favors artists with good engagement. This means that those artists who have their music saved to users’ music collections, or those who simply attain big streaming numbers, will be rewarded with spots in Spotify-generated playlists. If you have many followers, your chances of being in those (often user-personalized) playlists will grow.
Simply put, increasing your Spotify followers is of great value in the long term because your listeners will return to your music eventually. All because your music will be recommended to your followers by Spotify’s algorithmic playlists.But how can you increase your Spotify followers?
Ways to increase your Spotify followers
1. Get your music saved
As people hardly delete music from their collections. People saving your music to their collections benefit your chances of beating the algorithm too, as you will be featured in users’ “Artists”, “Songs” and “Recently Played” collections. If listeners return to your music through these pages, chances are you will show in users’ “Your Daily Mix”, “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” playlists. The weight of these playlists cannot be overlooked, as they generate billions of streams.
Pro Tip: A great strategy to consider using here is running a pre-save campaign for new releases.
Your music is likely to be recommended to users who have saved your music to their collections. In turn, this will increase your chance of gaining followers, as people typically listen to music they can share with friends who have similar tastes.
2. Use Follow-To-Unlock gates
Tools like Fangage offer the possibility for artists to restrict access to specific types of content from their fans. In order to unlock the content (for example, your new radio show episode), your fans will have to follow your Spotify account (or Instagram, Twitter, SoundCloud, etc.). This way, you can easily boost your reach and following on these platforms.
3. Claim your profile with Spotify for Artists
Accessing Spotify for Artists offers many benefits to your artist profile. Firstly, you will receive that blue “verified” checkmark next to your profile. Secondly, you will be able to customize your profile with a bio, images, tour dates, and more. There are many more helpful resources that come with verifying your profile, but most importantly your profile will look professional and this will boost your credibility in the eyes of fans, but also playlist curators, and other music industry professionals.
4. Use Spotify Canvas
As Spotify calls it, Spotify Canvas is “the album cover of the streaming era”. With this relatively new feature, you can add 2D- and 3D graphics, mix media, and video visuals to your music on Spotify. This way, you will be able to give your listeners an extra opportunity to resonate with your music.
5. Promote tracks via a mailing list or other direct communication with fans
Email marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and we advise you to use this channel to your advantage. There are actually many benefits to building a mailing list as a musician.
If fans have given you their permission to mail them, they’re basically telling you they want to hear about your career. Since they already expressed their interest in you as an artist, you should definitely email these close fans, and tell them about your new music, share pre-save links and get people to follow you on Spotify. You can even use it to sell products like new merchandise drops.
6. Share links everywhere
There are many ways to share your Spotify links through other channels nowadays. You can, and you should, leave links on your social media channels and emails. Nowadays, there are many options to share links to your Spotify account, an example is sharing through Instagram Stories.
Another relatively new way of sharing links is by using Spotify’s QR codes. Get creative and test it out when you’re having a performance.
7. Make your own playlist
As discussed earlier, for long-term success on Spotify you will need followers. But a great way of attracting those, together with creating an identity for yourself as an artist, is by making your own playlist (or several). Include your own music, but also feature music that fits well with the emotion you’re trying to bring across with the playlist. Make sure it is a great branded piece of work where you present yourself as an artist, but also share what kind of music had a big influence on you or inspired you, with your followers. This is a great way for your fans to engage with you and get to know your personality. This also lends you yet another opportunity to share something valuable on social media, which might acquire some new listeners.
Conclusion
Let’s put this up front: your Spotify followers aren’t everything when your ambition is a career in music, as you will need to focus on lots of other marketing efforts to cultivate a loyal listener base.
But if you have a significant follower base on Spotify and get your music saved in people’s music catalogs forever, chances are the algorithms will be in your favor in the long term. The algorithms will recognize your engagement and get you featured in more and more Spotify-generated playlists, building a loyal listener base on Spotify in the long run almost automatically.
If you are looking for a tool to capture fan data, and use follow-to-unlock to grow on Spotify, check out Fangage. Fangage will help you release gated content, capture (and own 100% of) your fan data, directly communicate with fans through mail or SMS texts, and much more.
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