How to Promote Music 10 Different Ways

How to Promote Music 10 Different Ways

by Music MarketingMusic Promotion

From the outside, it might seem like the music industry is all about creating music: being inspired, writing songs, recording singles, making albums. And, of course, all of this creative stuff is a huge part of it. But music industry insiders, especially record labels, know the real truth: the music industry is all about promotion.

Because it doesn’t matter how earth-shatteringly, groundbreakingly life-changing an artist’s music is if nobody ever hears it. That’s why promotion is so important. For music to achieve everything we love about it, like awakening emotions and telling stories and creating community and making people feel understood, somebody (or more likely a team of somebodies) first has to put lots of very intentional effort into promotion.

To give you a head start in the music promotion game, here are ten different strategies you can use to promote music, whether that be your own or of artists on your record label. 

Keep reading to learn how to promote music, 10 different ways!

1. Go Viral on TikTok

It’s 2020 and we would be absolutely remiss not to mention the major impact TikTok is having on the music industry right now. (For those of you who don’t have any Gen Z-ers in your life, TikTok is a video-based social media platform in which users can make videos up to 1 minute long, and it is huge right now.)

As one of the fastest-growing apps around and a central focus on music as part of its culture, TikTok has a massive ability to give songs a major boost – and that’s not theoretical. TikTok is at least partially (if not mostly) responsible for the chart-topping success of songs such as Doja Cat’s “Say So”, The Weeknd’s: “Blinding Lights”, and Roddy Rich’s “The Box.” It’s so impactful that artists as big as Justin Bieber are creating music with TikTok in mind, hoping to leverage the platform for promotion.

If you want to give it a shot yourself (which you should), you can help increase the chances of a song doing well on TikTok by creating a challenge or dance that go along with the song, encouraging users to create their own videos using your song. If you do it right, you might just get a Billboard number one. But, actually.

2. Send out Emails

Okay, enough with all of that new-fangled stuff. Let’s pivot to a classic digital marketing strategy: email lists. See, email marketing is incredibly common and that’s because it’s effective. Building up an email list of music industry contacts like DJs, journalists, and media outlets allows you to reach exactly the right people when you’re seeking reviews, features, and airtime as part of your music promotional campaign.

With a tool like Promoly, you can easily deliver music to your email list, giving each email recipient the option to directly download your new music to their computer or Dropbox account in whatever file format they prefer, making it easy for them to listen to and promote your new songs.

3. Use Spotify Pre-Saves

Remember when Spotify was once as much a revelation for the music industry as TikTok is now? Today, utilizing music streaming platforms like Spotify as part of music promotion is a must. One great way to do so is to use the pre-save, which helps you build up excitement and hype about your new music among your listener community before its release. This is a great way to ensure that when your music drops, there will immediately be people who listen to it.

Spotify pre-saves are exactly what they sound like: users who opt in will have your song, EP, or album saved and waiting for them the moment it’s released. It’s streaming’s answer to pre-ordering an album. To incentivize users to pre-save your upcoming music, you can run competitions, do giveaways, and offer exclusive content in exchange.

4. Get on Spotify Playlists

Another way to promote your music on Spotify is to get your songs included on the featured playlists that Spotify makes available to all of its nearly 300 million users. As you can imagine, this is a great opportunity for exposure to a new audience.

The best way to do this is to use Spotify for Artists, which allows you to directly submit your unreleased music for consideration for inclusion in Spotify’s playlists. To increase your chances of being chosen, provide as much information as possible about the songs you are submitting, including instruments used, genre, mood, cultures the song or the artist belong to, whether or not it’s a cover, and so on. If your song gets chosen, it will also receive the added benefit of being included in your followers’ weekly Release Radar playlists.

You can also get songs that have already been released added to Spotify playlists, though this isn’t as straightforward a process and requires a lot more promoting your music on social media platforms (see number 10) and maybe even hiring a Spotify promotion company. You can also create your own playlists which, if they are made well, with a good cover image, a compelling title, and quality song choices and order, may be organically found by Spotify users. As long as you include your own music in the playlist, it’ll get heard that way.

5. Take Advantage of Influencer Marketing

Another modern classic of digital marketing is influencer marketing, where you work with people who have large followings on social media to help you promote your music. Influencer marketing is most effective when you do it within certain niches and communities.

Do your research and find influencers who are already making content about music or, even better, your genre of music. That way, them promoting your content will feel natural and not like a forced advertisement, and you’ll know that their audience is already interested in the kind of music you have to offer.

You can do a lot of different types of influencer marketing campaigns, from asking somebody to post a screenshot of them listening to your new song on Spotify on their Snapchat or Instagram story to having somebody create a YouTube video of them reacting as they listen to your song or album for the first time to having a blogger or YouTuber review your new music to asking a dancer to post choreography to your song. The options are endless.

6. Make Videos

Though videos have always been a part of the music industry, they are even more powerful a tool now than ever as video slowly grows to become 82% of all internet traffic. While the decreased popularity of previous cultural juggernauts like MTV and TRL may have changed the landscape of music videos, it certainly hasn’t killed them; a good music video will still get millions and even billions of views online.

In addition to music videos, online video viewers are interested in other types of content from their favorite artists, too, and this is where you can really have fun and be innovative. From tour video diaries to backstage vlogs to workout videos set to your new song, there are a lot of ways that you can promote an artist’s new music – or the artist themselves – through online video.

7. Play at Festivals

Among all this talk of digital marketing, let’s not forget the mainstay of music promotion: playing concerts and touring. Because in order to post backstage videos online, you have to actually get out there and play music first. While every new artist may dream of going on a headlining tour, a good place to start is actually to play music festivals.

Now, obviously we’re not talking about headlining Coachella here, unless your artist is Beyonce or Ariana Grande, in which case – I am honored (and confused) that you are reading this article. But if you’re promoting a newer or smaller artist, a good direction to go is to look into smaller, more genre-based music festivals like the Newport Folk Festival (folk) and Warped Tour (rock) and the Movement Music Festival (electronic). Not only are these easier to get into, but they also give you access to an audience that is already interested in the type of music you’re releasing.

8. Open for a Bigger Artist

Another way to get a smaller or newer artist on the road touring music is to have them open up for a bigger artist. If you can pull this off, you are really hitting the promotional gold, as it exposes you to an audience of music lovers who are in a good mood and primed to enjoy what they’re listening to. You also benefit from the explicit or tacit endorsement of the bigger artist and a lasting association with them.

There is, of course, a caveat here. It’s crucial that there is a good match between you and the artist you’re opening for. If the kind of people who love their music and are willing to buy tickets to their show is not also the kind of people who will love your music, you’re setting yourself up for everything from awkwardness and disappointment to heckling and ruining the vibe of the whole show. Not pretty.

9. Get Reviewed

While news publications may seem kind of old-school, getting a solid review in the press can still be fantastic promotion for an artist. Just think about the reaction to Fiona Apple’s new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters getting Pitchfork’s first 10 rating in nearly ten years; it was huge. So it’s definitely worth your time to try and get music journalists to review your new music.

To pull this off, you have to do some research and find journalists who are reviewing artists like you, whether that’s artists of your size, your genre, your location, or something else. Compile a list of these journalists and their contact information. You can then use Promoly to easily send all of them your new music at once.

10. Use Social Media

Though we could dedicate an entire guide just to ‘how to promote music’ on social media alone, here are some quick tips because, let’s be honest, if you’re not promoting your music on social media in 2020, what are you even doing?

Use hashtags. Hashtagsare a must for social media posts, as they are a free and easy way to get new people to see your post. Make smart choices about which hashtags you use, choosing both popular ones with large audiences and more niche ones where you won’t get lost in the fold. Don’t use too many hashtags per post so as not to seem annoying.

Post outside the box. If you haven’t learned anything from our first tip about TikTok, the most unexpected social media platforms can blow up out of nowhere and make a major impact. So don’t just post on the obvious platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Give other ones like YouTube, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, and Pinterest some love, too.

Be consistent. When it comes to social media platforms, the more you give, the more you get. Audiences want to see consistent content posted frequently. You’ll be rewarded for posting often, as much as multiple times a day for certain platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Engage with fans. It’s not enough just to post on social media and leave it at that. Audiences want you to be a part of their community. So follow people, post comments, ask questions, create new hashtags, and so on. Engagement goes both ways.

Be real. Authenticity is key on social media. Social media users are not interested in content that feels corporate or tryhard or overtly promotional. Instead, they want a sense of real connection. So be jokey, use your voice, and build an authentic brand.

So, there you have it. Ten relevant, effective ‘how to promote music’ strategies for music that you can use to grow as an artist or to help an artist on your label grow. Now, what are you waiting for? Get out there and promote.

How Record Labels Can Leverage Facebook Messenger Bots

How Record Labels Can Leverage Facebook Messenger Bots

by Music Marketing

As a record label, one of your main goals is to promote the musicians on your roster. And throughout the history of the music industry, there have been lots of ways to achieve this goal.

There are the classic “oldie but goodie” options, like getting their music played on the radio. There are the somewhat outdated strategies that aren’t so en vogue anymore, such as the mall concert tour that was so popular in the 80s.

But what we’re here to talk about today is the really cutting edge stuff: the strategies and techniques that take into account how to reach music fans and listeners in the specific era we live in today. That’s right, we’re talking about online. A savvy record label employee knows that digital marketing is a must in today’s market, and has probably been working the social media angle for a while.

But, for some reason, not so many record labels are taking advantage of one of the most effective forms of social media marketing available today: Facebook messenger bots.

In this article, we’ll walk you through what a messenger bot is, why you want to be using them, and how you can get started with marketing with them. Let’s get into it.

What is Messenger?

A lot of focus and attention gets put on the content side of social media: YouTube videos, Instagram stories, Facebook posts, and so on. But what you might be looking over is the part of social media that people are spending a huge portion of their time on: messaging apps.

From WhatsApp to WeChat to Facebook Messenger, 2.5 billion people around the world use messenger applications every day. Just Facebook messenger alone accounts for 1.3 billion of those users.

While Messenger was developed by and integrates with Facebook, it’s actually become a thing of its own, with a separate mobile application. The platform allows users to send and exchange messages in the form of text, photos, videos, stickers, emojis, audio, and files. It also allows voice and video calling, but most users stick to the chatting feature.

If you’ve been around the internet for a while, you can think of Messenger as a modern version of AIM or ICQ.

Why Record Labels Should Be Using Messenger

Facebook Messenger is a powerful tool for connecting to an audience, both for marketing and customer service purposes. We’ve already covered the main reason: Messenger is being widely used. Internet users spend a lot of time on Facebook Messenger. Why not meet them there?

But it also goes beyond that. Using Facebook Messenger can lend your company a sense of trustworthiness. According to a survey, the majority of Americans feel more confident about a brand if they can message with them. This is probably because Facebook Messenger is so easy and user-friendly.

Because, let’s face it, nobody wants to talk on the phone anymore. A lot of people, especially Gen Z, don’t even want to deal with emails. They’re already spending time throughout the day chatting with their friends on Facebook Messenger. If they can receive communication from record labels within that very same app they’re already using, users are way more likely to engage.

If you’re still not convinced, let me give you some more numbers. Traditional email marketing has an open rate of 20%. Facebook Messenger’s open rate? 88%. The numbers don’t lie.

Messenger Marketing Made Easy

Another major advantage of using Facebook Messenger to communicate with your audience is that it’s so easy to automate. Messenger chatbots are a tool specifically created for this purpose. Essentially, they’re little robots that you can teach to communicate with users. You can program the chatbot to know about your record label, answer questions, and chat with Facebook users.

Chatbots can serve a lot of different purposes. The best Facebook messenger bots can be used for customer service, conducting surveys, executing purchases, sharing content with users, and scheduling appointments. That’s the beauty of chatbots: they fulfill a lot of different purposes, and they do so effectively.

How Record Labels Can Utilize Messenger Bots

While every industry is finding creative ways to use Facebook Messenger bots (or at least the savvy ones are), there are some unique opportunities that record labels can take advantage of with this technology.

One option is helping users access new music from their clients. For example, if an artist on your label is releasing a new song or album soon, you can have a Messenger bot send out a Spotify pre save to a list of your current and potential listeners, creating engagement and directing people to stream your music.

The options for Facebook Messenger bot templates are really limitless. Just to list a few: you can send out free songs, tease information about a possible drop date for a new single, send out a tracklist for a new album one song at a time, and so on. The best part is that as you’re engaging with your audience on Messenger, you can build your email list, get your audience to find you on streaming services, and create a funnel to increase sales.

How to Get Started with Bots

Okay, so you’re convinced. Facebook Messenger is a valuable tool and you want to try out a bot for your own record label. How do you do that?

First, don’t be intimidated. Sure, we’re talking about robots here, but it’s not as techy as it sounds. In fact, you don’t even have to build them on your own. Unless, of course, you have some talented developers on your team, in which case, go for it.

But if you don’t want to deal with all of that, you have the option of utilizing one of many different existing chatbot tools. For example, automation agencies like Weighted.io create chatbots that you can customize for your company’s needs with little to no technical skills needed. Best of all, Weighted.io’s chatbots are specifically created for record labels, meaning they know how to meet your particular needs.

Tips for Messenger Bot Success

Of course, you probably know that just using a powerful tool doesn’t guarantee you’ll succeed. You have to do your research and be smart about how you use the tool. After all, trying to hit a nail with the wrong side of a hammer isn’t going to get you very far.

So here are some expert tips you should keep in mind when getting started with using Facebook Messenger chatbots for your record label.

Keep it Human

Yes, chatbots are robots, and your audience is aware of that fact, so there’s no point in trying to hide it. But their experience will still be much better if the conversation feels natural and personal. So don’t be boring. Use humor. Inject in a bit of personality. Make it feel like you actually care. Your Facebook Messenger bot might be a robot, but it doesn’t have to be robotic.

Keep it Easy

One of the main reasons Facebook Messenger marketing is so effective is that it’s convenient. So don’t make your bot interactions more complicated than they have to be. Keep things short and sweet. If you’re doing a survey, stick to simple, yes or no questions as much as you can. Multiple choice and rating things on a scale of 0 to 10 are also decent options, but try to use them sparingly. Do your best to identify and get rid of any unnecessary steps in your chatbot flow, especially when it comes to making sales.

Be Generous

Like we’ve covered above, one of the best ways for a record label to use Facebook Messenger bots is to send users content, like free music or Spotify pre save links. This is a super effective form of marketing, so lean into it. Consider creating a weekly digest of artist updates or even sending exclusive content only to your Facebook Messenger audience. You’ll be able to increase engagement and maybe even acquire new customers.

Know When Enough is Enough

As great as they are, not everything can be done using Facebook Messenger chatbots. To that point, be discerning and smart about when you do – and when you don’t – use your Messenger bot. There are some experiences and certain types of content that aren’t best suited for the messaging format. It’s up to you to do the thoughtful trial-and-error to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Once you do, you’ll be making use of a tremendously powerful and effective online marketing tool. Awesome job.

Supercharge your music promotion and start your free 7 day Promoly trial. Promoly sends music directly to your influencer’s inbox. Track when they open, play, download and leave feedback – watch the results, in real-time.

How to Share a Spotify Song on Your Instagram Story

How to Share a Spotify Song on Your Instagram Story

by Music Marketing

So you’ve found the perfect song on Spotify and you want to share it with all your Instagram followers as soon as possible.

Thanks to a convenient new synergy between these two social apps, you can share a song, album, or playlist to your Instagram story in a few seconds with just a couple of taps.

Gone are the days where you needed to screenshot what you wanted to share and upload it. This streamlined process allows you to post what you want to share easily, quickly, and with a few extra features to boot.

No need to take screenshots that take up space and clutter your phone’s memory. You no longer have to go through the tedious process of sharing links via text, WhatsApp, Messenger or Twitter anymore, either. Just share directly from Spotify to your story for your mates to enjoy links to the music without all the fuss.

Dub a mixtape and share it with your friends, or use the features to soundtrack your life with an astonishing level of convenience. Whatever you decide to do, take a moment to reflect on the fact that just a few short years ago, we were all sharing songs burned on discs or synced onto iPods. Look at how far we’ve come.

Go ahead—be the DJ to your life story and whip up a fire playlist that fits your mood. Spice up the instant videos and images of your life that you post on your stories with a song.

If you stumble across a gem of an artist, spread the word. Have you listened to a great podcast that you need everyone else to listen to as well? With the way that Spotify cooperates with Instagram now, you can share, share away.

How does it work?

In case you aren’t yet convinced that this is the greatest development of all time, wait until you see how easy it is.

It’s virtually foolproof and anyone can figure it out in a few minutes. Since this update from Spotify is all about convenience and saving time, we’ll spare you the trial and error. We doubt it takes even ten seconds to share a story with the new sharing features.

Just follow these five steps and you’ll have Spotify in your stories right away.

Open the Spotify app. Browse through your music. When you’ve found a song, playlist, artist, podcast, or album, or anything at all that you want to share, do the following:

1. Open the menu by tapping the three dots on the top right-hand corner.

2. On that menu, select ‘Share.’

3. In addition to the option to copy links or send messages through WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, choose ‘Instagram Stories.’

4. Once you select that option, Spotify will open up the Instagram Stories editor of your Instagram app. Add stickers, tags, or text to introduce your latest find to your online community.

5. Then share your Story just like you’d share anything else to your Instagram Story.

That’s it. Literally three taps will get something off of Spotify and onto your story. From there, sit back and watch the compliments for your excellent taste in music pour in. Rest easy knowing that you’ve done your duty to share these sweet melodies with your people. If the mood strikes again, feel free to rinse and repeat to your heart’s desire.

According to Instagram, sharing directly from Spotify has some additional benefits, too. When you go through the steps above, Spotify will unlock custom cover art that’s optimized for Instagram for each song, album, playlist or artist that you choose to share. Not only are these new features easy to use, but they’re easy on the eyes, too.

These unique album or song covers will show up in your stories with an embedded link so that people who view your stories can click right through and listen right away. When someone views your story and taps ‘Play on Spotify’ under your Instagram handle, a bubble that says ‘Open Spotify’ will appear, taking them into the Spotify app once they tap it.

Once in the app, they’ll immediately begin listening to whatever you’ve shared in your stories. Thankfully, this saves us the effort of screenshotting recommendations from others to listen to later when we get a chance, if we remember.

Learning how to share Spotify songs to your Instagram stories is virtually idiot-proof thanks to the user-friendly design of this new set of features. With this update, you can also share Spotify selections directly to your feed or via direct message to any of your Instagram friends. Similar process, just share to a place other than your story.

So share your mood with a song or celebrate a night of debauchery with a themed playlist and post it up in your stories so that everyone knows what you’re up to and can revel in trendsetting, taste-making sounds without any real effort. Happy, sad, mellow, or lively, it doesn’t matter—throw a song from Spotify to your story to let everyone know what’s up. There are now more ways than ever to tell a story.

Conclusion

Ditch the screenshots and save the phone space. Move on and level up. Thanks to this update, we’ve made it to the future. Life here is simple and it’s good—well, at least it sounds good.

Excellent job, Spotify. Well done, Instagram. Way to work together to simplify your users’ lives and give us access to intuitive tools that connect us in more efficient ways than ever. If anything, this cooperative move has us feeling inspired and ready to share a tune or two.

Go through these simple steps (it won’t even take 10 seconds to share a song) and let Spotify do the heavy lifting so that you can share what you’re listening to as you’re listening to it. Be creative and let the music speak to your followers.

After all, isn’t that what music does best?

Liked this article? Check out, How Using SoundCloud Tags Increases Song Exposure.

3 Tips for Maintaining Sanity as a Musician Under Quarantine - Our Guide

3 Tips for Maintaining Sanity as a Musician Under Quarantine – Our Guide

by Music Marketing

The community quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic has forced a lot of lifestyle changes for people. Although the strict implementation of the quarantine is to protect the welfare of everyone, it takes a toll on the mental health of people, especially those who rely on social interaction daily.

It sucks you can’t go to your favourite restaurant for your usual order. It’s a bother that you can’t find solace in your usual routine outside your home. However, the quarantine helps ensure you don’t acquire the virus, so it is best to stay indoors.

As a musician, it might be the best time to focus on your music marketing strategies to use your extra time productively. It’s nice to do some de-stressing activities, but filing your whole quarantine schedule with nothing productive is lost time.

Here are some things you can do to maintain your sanity productively during the quarantine.

1) Focus on your music

The best part about the quarantine period is you get plenty of time to hone and polish your craft. Aside from playing your usual instruments, you can practice on your songwriting skills or learn other musical tools. Having diversity and flexibility in the music industry is a huge plus point since you no longer have to rely on others for help. You can surprise your fans with new songs or proudly display the efforts of practising a new instrument.

2) Learn the marketing side of music

Producing music is only a part of the entire journey as an artist. So, it is best to immerse yourself in excellent music marketing strategies so that your music can have a wider audience reach. The business side of the music industry is crucial in ensuring a successful career. However, start slow, and at a pace that you can comfortably consume content. Otherwise, you risk overwhelming yourself with too much information you might give up from the get-go.

Learn music promotions for one marketing platform every two or three days. With this strategy and pacing, you can give yourself the chance to digest and fully understand what you’ve learned. Once you’ve mastered one, you can confidently jump to the other one. Remember to take it slow since there’s no need to learn all of these during the quarantine period. You still have time after the quarantine, after all.

3) Exercise to get your brain moving

If you have an established exercise routine before the coronavirus attack, it is best to continue it at your home. Although at-home workouts may not feel the same as going to the gym, you still reap the same mental and physical benefits.

You can even try exercises you haven’t tried before. Try yoga by watching yoga videos. There are also some fun dance videos you can do to burn some calories while having a ton of fun. Exercising helps provide your brain extra supply of oxygen to make it work better and faster.

Conclusion

The way you handle the quarantine period helps influence your life after the whole chaotic situation. If you decide to invest in your well-being and growth instead of being a couch potato, you will see enormous growth in your career and skills. Learning the dos and don’ts in music promotions can help you in your industry endeavours too.

Are you in need of help with your music PR strategies? Check us out today to learn more about how we can help.

3 Key Elements That a Musician's Marketing Plan Should Have - Our Guide

3 Key Elements That a Musician’s Marketing Plan Should Have – Our Guide

by Music MarketingSoundCloud

With even more artists entering the music industry, the need to stand out as a musician has become as important as ever, especially when it comes to more populated genres.

In the past, the task of standing out as a musician was mostly done through the use of sheer musical skill, which eventually rendered the quest of finding success in music as one that was a survival of the most skilled. Nowadays, however, being skilled and talented as a musician is no longer sufficient to stand out and be heard well enough to develop a fulfilling career.

Attaining success as a musician nowadays boils down to a variety of crucial factors that each have their own significance in turning home musicians into international stars. Although there may be many factors to consider as an aspiring musician, an airtight marketing plan is one particular aspect (aside from talent) that has proven to be essential in attaining success.

Why most musicians end up overlooking the marketing aspects

Admittedly, the main reason musicians end up overlooking their marketing plan is that it doesn’t sound as appealing or impactful as practising, making connections, and performing. A marketing plan, however, holds the key for any artist to go far beyond what they’re currently doing because it gives them the leverage they need to present their content to a bigger audience.

Today, promoting your brand as a musician, getting your music out there, and making your presence known by implementing a marketing plan is essential for attaining immeasurable success.

What you need to consider when building a marketing plan

When it comes to building a marketing plan for your music career, it’s essential to keep in mind that there’s no one solution that works for every musician. A marketing plan can be done in a way that best fits your needs. At the same time, however, it is essential to consider a few key elements when putting an effective marketing strategy together.

If you’re keen on making an effective marketing plan that works, here are a few essential elements to consider throughout the entire building process:

1. A proper introduction about yourself

No matter how hard you work on your Facebook ads or Soundcloud profile content, all your efforts can easily be rendered unusable if you don’t have a proper self-introduction as an artist. With a proper self-introduction, you’ll be able to clearly state who you are, what you do, and why people should listen to you and watch your shows, which is essentially the foundation of your entire marketing plan.

2. A set of realistic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and goals

Accountability is one of the most effective tools that you’ll have as a musician who is trying to make a career and what better way to keep yourself in check than a few KPIs and goals? Setting a few goals to paint a clearer picture of where you see yourself in the next five to ten years will help steer your efforts in the right direction.

3. A clear knowledge of your target audience

Building a marketing plan as a musician without knowing your target audience is like playing darts with a blindfold. You can try as much as you want, but you’re probably not going to hit your target. Clarifying your target audience is an effective way to ensure that you know who you’re making music for, and it is essential that you take the right steps in building your marketing campaigns as well.

Building a marketing plan as a musician with the right set of elements is a guaranteed way to achieve your long-term goals and establish yourself as a musician. By keeping the three key elements mentioned when putting your marketing plan together, you’ll get where you need to be an artist within a shorter amount of time!

If you are looking to improve your music marketing strategies in the United Kingdom, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.

What Spotify’s New ‘Marquee’ Ad Tool Means for Artists and Listeners

What Spotify’s New ‘Marquee’ Ad Tool Means for Artists and Listeners

by Music MarketingSpotify

What’s new on Spotify? Marquee, an advertising initiative that allows music labels and artists to promote their music on the streaming platform – at a price, of course. It’s 55 cents a click, but Spotify recommends a minimum ad buy of $5,000. For that price, you can expect to increase your stream count to at least 9,000 streams, or 9,000 potential listeners, over a seven-day period. At least, that’s what Spotify says.

Does Spotify’s Marquee tool mean that streams are now for sale? What if you don’t have the money for it as a struggling independent artist? How could this change the way listeners engage with the streaming platform? Let’s take a closer look at Marquee and what it means for artists, labels and listeners alike.

What Spotify Marquee offers labels and artists

Launched in 2019, Marquee is an ad system that lets artists and labels spend marketing money to “drive incremental streams” for their music. So how does it work? In a nutshell, you pay, and your music gets some pretty sweet exposure on the platform as full-screen pop-up recommendations for listeners. There’s no upper limit on how much you pay for promotional placements, so you can spend as much as you want.

While Spotify already offers artists and labels in-platform advertising, the streaming service says Marquee is a more effective tool, and early testers have agreed.

Spotify Marquee is said to have a wider reach, which means more listeners. The paid ads are shown not only to free users but subscribers as well. The click-through rate currently stands at 21.7 percent, plus users who receive a Marquee ad were found to stream 17 percent more than those who don’t.

Despite this, Spotify stresses that artists are not paying for streams. Spotify’s Senior Product Marketing Manager, Charleton Lamb, clarifies that listeners have the choice to engage or not.

What it offers listeners

You can expect to listeners to groan at yet another ad from Spotify, but according to Rolling Stone, it doesn’t appear to be that bad – the platform “will not bombard listeners with pop-up ads” each time you open the app. And if you’re more of a classical music listener, you won’t be getting Despacito pop-ups. Hopefully.

According to Spotify, the Marquee recommendations will still be based on a listener’s music taste, so the notifications will only be from artists they follow or frequently listen to. And probably from similar artists, if Marquee really promises a wider reach.

Spotify also puts a limit on the number of ads listers see, such as a single ad in a day or two in a week. The Marquee notifications, captioned “Brand New Music For You,” can be turned off if you’re a premium user and don’t want pop-ups any day of the week.

Concerns about Marquee

Rolling Stone notes two primary concerns about Spotify’s new marquee ad tool. First, Marquee makes the music business more consolidated. If you have the resources – say, the marketing money of the major label you’ve signed with – then you can afford to pay for play and get more listeners.

However, if you’re an independent artist who struggles to even earn $300 from streams, this means your music may have to stay in the background, away from the spotlight paid for by artists with means. Would you be willing to cough up (at least) $5,000 for a song or album promotion on Spotify?

The second concern is about Marquee’s cost-effectiveness. As with other ad tools, Marquee can’t really promise success in terms of getting more long-term listeners, unless everyone that receives the pop-up recommendations becomes instant fans. However, if your goal is simply to create awareness of your music, then Marquee sounds like a good tool for it.

What do you think of Spotify’s new ad tool? Share your thoughts!