Spotify is currently one of the best music platforms to publish your music and grow an audience. Whether you are a new or established artist, it is advantageous to create an account on Spotify. The platform is easy to navigate and provides excellent means of keeping track of listeners’ stats once you promote your music on it. The more Spotify plays you have, the broader is your audience reach.

How Does the System of Spotify Plays Work?

Spotify works on a system that pushes your track's visibility further up based on the number of plays it has already received. You can monetize your tracks once you reach 1000 plays, and because of this, artists consider how to boost their music's presence on the site. However, getting your first 1000 Spotify plays naturally can be a complicated process. As per Spotify’s official FAQ, “the live stream count for your new release updates every 2 seconds. This is only available for the first 7 days of your release.” After this, “Streams are counted in Spotify for Artists when a song is streamed for over 30 seconds. Your total streams include all songs where you are credited as a main artist or remixer. Streams for offline music are counted on the day the listener goes online again (which must happen at least once every 30 days).” This makes it challenging for plays to reach the initial 1000 mark.

Ways of Getting More Spotify Plays for Your Music and Growing Tour Audience on Spotify

The following tips can enable you to grow your presence on Spotify organically and bring your music to a bigger audience:

1. Know Your Music
Spotify works on metrics that used keywords. Your music will show up on search and charts when you label them with relevant keywords. For this, you must be confident of what kind of music you are creating. Be clear about your genre and subject matter.

2. Define Your Audience
Actual music speaks to people across age, language, and demographics. At the same time, you must have a focus while creating your content. Ask yourself who your music is primarily for. Research audience behavior about your target audience and make your marketing strategy accordingly. If your music can reach a larger audience than targeted, it is a bonus.

3. Build a Complete Profile
Personalize your Spotify account with photos, an avatar, or any image that would build up your brand. Use the gallery to showcase your stage persona or album covers and concert posters. Fill in the bio section of your profile with relevant information in an engaging and informative manner. Your profile is part of your music persona on Spotify. You must brand yourself carefully and market yourself using this space to your advantage. Whether it is a header image or streamlining your music’s order of appearance, you are in charge here. Let your profile tell your story and be a means of building audience connections. Keep it dynamic and change things around when it’s necessary.

4. Work with Collaborators
The best way to increase your audience reach is to tap into the audience of other artists. Find the right collaborators to build a mutually beneficial presence. Work with other individuals or groups. Be open to sponsorships from production houses, channels, or institutional partners. This will not only help you increase your play count but will also set you up for building long life career-relationships that can generate a profitable outcome for your music and its visibility.

5. Get Yourself Playlisted
If you know your audience, this should follow in sync. Define your genre and scope as a musician. An efficient way to get your music to a larger audience is to get it on playlists. Getting your music featured on Spotify’s most prominent playlists is not easy. These playlists are curated by Spotify’s editorial team or by significant music labels. You will have to strategize how to work your way into these lists. You can begin by getting your music into lists of individual curators. There is a process of submitting your tracks for their consideration. Please submit your music to influencers, bloggers, and music news sites to gather feedback and offer them first previews. If you can get your streams onto curated playlists of musical influencers, you have the chance of drawing a huge listener base.

The more clicks you get from this, the more user-generated playlists you will appear on. It will further likely earn you a spot on the platform’s algorithmic and editorial playlists. You must know your budget and connect with music influencers for this purpose. You could also use services that allow you to connect with bloggers and influencers.



Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

6. Create Your Playlists
This is to showcase your best foot forward. It is not enough to get noticed for one track. You must keep audience engagement alive by consistently putting forward quality music. Creating your playlists lets you put your best tracks together. This serves as your CV for potential collaboration with music houses. Listeners are likely to return to your music if they find your music appealing over several tracks.

You can also create playlists of songs you like by other music artists to give your fans an understanding of what kind of music you like and in which mood. Playlists allow you to connect to your audience at a more human level while offering you a creative way of promoting yourself. Besides, it’ll be helpful to form collaborative playlists with other Spotify users and tap into each other’s fan base this way.

Pin your playlists up on your profile for greater visibility. Remember to keep these playlists organic. Refresh them by adding new tracks. Keep your audience curious and build anticipation for fresh content.

7. Be Active on Spotify
This goes without saying. Do not just create tracks. Engage with the Spotify community. Spotify’s algorithms keep track of your site activity, so you need to listen to others’ music and engage in discussions. Subscribe to their music profiles as this is likely to bring in reciprocal subscriptions from music artists you can follow and learn from. Moreover, followers of the artists are likely to visit and explore your profile out of curiosity. If you are active, your music will find placement in playlists with high-visibility.

If your music resonates, you will find yourself more listeners and subscribers. Attract people by releasing exclusive content periodically.

8. Use the Features of Your Artists Account Wisely
Spotify artists account comes with lots of perks like an instant verification of your profile as authentic. Also, it gives you free tracking of your data analytics. You can keep track of who is listening to you at what time and from where. You can also compare which tracks are receiving the most significant number of plays. Besides, you also get notified when your track gets added to any playlists.

Study the trends in this data to devise your future marketing and content creating plans for Spotify.

Another feature you can use here is putting up an “Artist’s Pick”. As the name suggests, you can use “Artist’s Pick” to highlight a song, stream, or album that you are currently listening to. This could be your work or the music of other artists. By bringing your listeners’ attention to what you are currently listening to, you are letting your audience have a sneak peek into your mood and emotions. It is a means of humanizing yourself as a music brand.

Also, you can integrate your upcoming tour and concert schedules here. Your Artist’s account acts as a dynamic bulletin board for anyone wishing to find out more about the events you are participating in, including the gigs’ location and time.

9. Make Use of Spotify Plug-in
The Spotify plug-in lets others “subscribe” and listen to your music directly. It further places the listener automatically on your follower list and keeps them updated with your activities. If you post tracks or organize gigs, the followers get a notification. This keeps your audience organic as interested parties are likely to turn into returning listeners.

10. Use Spotify Codes
Spotify gives you the ability to generate codes for your profile, individual tracks, playlists, and albums. This code is scannable, almost like a QR code, and can be shared anywhere. Cross-promote your music by using Spotify codes on your official website and social media handles.


Photo by FPVmat A on Unsplash

11. Integrate Spotify Ad Studio
Spotify Ad Studio’s advertising platform is specifically designed to cater to artists looking for a convenient advertising tool for their campaigns. With this feature, you can create audio ads of 30 seconds or less. You can use these as interludes between tracks. You can also be aware of your commercial campaigns’ reach and growth by checking its inbuilt metrics for geography, demographics, and listening trends.

12. Be Socially Active
You are your music’s best promoter. Engage and interact with your fans on all social media handles. Direct your existing followers and friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and your email to your music on Spotify. Use online tools to synchronize your activity over multiple social media handles. Drive traffic to your music with minimal investment by tapping into your existing audience on other virtual platforms.
Besides, remember to be available for your fans. Be responsive to queries and offer shoutouts. Audiences are more likely to receive your music warmly if you are friendly and approachable.

Should You Buy Spotify Plays?

While buying Spotify plays is an excellent idea to promote brand awareness, you must take care to do it wisely. Several services in the market offer to increase your plays organically using campaigns to gain followers and listeners. Services which bring real-time plays are safe to purchase from. It is also good to buy Spotify plays from services that provide listeners from a broader demographic set up.

Using paid organic Spotify social signals can:

• Lead popular labels and channels to discover and recognize your work.

• Push you up on popularity charts and searches.

• Make others interested in following and listening to your music, thus taking up your play counts even further.

• Earn you a verified badge on the site for your music.

If you choose to buy Spotify plays, watch out for service selling bot-counts. Fake clicks are traceable and can get your account suspended if not banned. It is also a good idea not to invest in instant clicks. A sudden leap in play counts can arouse suspicions about your account’s activity and negatively impact your presence on Spotify. Always research the service you are considering your purchase from and verify its credibility before making a transaction.

Conclusion

Now that you have all the essential tips in place, all you need is the confidence to put yourself out there on Spotify. Like on all social platforms, building your visibility up requires time, effort, and planning. You can choose to expedite the process by investing in services that manage your branding and presence on Spotify. You could invest in buying plays and followers or wait to grow yourself up patiently with the minor monetary investment. Both ways of growing audience reach can be successful depending on how much consistency and determination you have to make it on the site. Building your audience and growing a fan base for your music is possible on Spotify as long as you have the push-in you to make it happen.