When I last wrote about Spotify Showcase, I had effectively sworn it off in favor of Meta ads. I couldn’t target warm audiences, Spotify blew through my budget in the blink of an eye, and the results were mediocre. Instead, I opted for Marquee, but at some point they added a requirement of 5,000 monthly…
Kashie is an online platform that generates quick and dirty lyric video edits for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. With a $20 pro subscription, you can generate 60 videos per month, and it only takes a few minutes. Making videos in Kashie You start by uploading an audio file. You can trim the song…
I’ve spent over $10K on Rise campaigns since 2021. 15K of my 32K followers on Spotify are from Rise, and every one of them automatically pre-saves each of my new releases. That translated to 181K saves when my album came out last month: You can read all about my ongoing Conversion campaign in my 2021…
A couple of months ago, I effectively got out of the e-commerce business. After releasing 13 albums on CD, only one title was still in print, plus a few Collector’s Edition copies of another. The last thing I wanted to do was press another 1000 CDs, but my 14th album was nearing completion and many…
Facebook and Instagram ads, hereafter referred to as Meta ads, are the centerpiece of my music promotion efforts. I recently wrote about two excellent services that create high quality Meta ad campaigns on your behalf: Southworth Media and Members Media. Pricing starts at $750 and $1095 respectively. They’re absolutely worth it, but what if you…
Southworth Media as in Andrew Southworth? Yes. If you don’t already subscribe to Andrew’s YouTube channel, you definitely should. It’s basically what I do here but in video format, with new content every week instead of every… whenever I find the time. When Andrew offered to let me kick the tires on his new service,…
Members Media (formerly Partnered Projects) offers a variety of campaigns to promote your music. Their latest is Facebook & Instagram Ads, which direct listeners to Spotify and Apple Music. Meta ads are a great way to grow your active audience, as opposed to playlist promotion, which builds passive listenership. By sending people directly to your…
A Color Theory fan and fellow artist told me about Digital DJ Pool way back in February of 2022. Since then I’ve been paying a monthly fee to get my new tracks into DJs’ hands on or before release day. Don’t make dance music? Me neither, and I’ve never been a DJ — I don’t…
My promotion has been on autopilot lately, but I do have something to share with you: a warning of sorts. It concerns Meta’s Performance Bonus Program, which you probably haven’t heard of unless you received an email like this: Honestly, I’m surprised I clicked through because it looks super spammy. Rest assured the images did…
I don’t do TikTok. I barely even know how to use the app. When I release a new song, sometimes I’ll post the video I made for Reels, but the text usually gets obscured by TikTok’s interface. Don’t care. That’s not to say I’ve never tried promoting my music there. Back in 2021 I reviewed…
When Spotify launched Marquee two years ago, I was positively giddy. My first post on the subject proclaimed that it was even better than Meta ads. Finally I had a way to reconnect with my listeners on Spotify, or at least those deemed part of my “reachable audience.” That reachable audience quickly climbed from 2.1K…
Showcase is the newest campaign type in Spotify’s promotional arsenal, alongside Marquee and Discovery Mode. It inserts a sponsored recommendation on the home screen of the app, like so: You pay whenever someone clicks on it, typically around $0.30-0.40 depending on your targeting. Spotify reports that users who see the recommendation are 6x more likely…
I’d heard good things about Playlist-Promotion.com before their manager Andi reached out to me in mid-July. He offered me a campaign valued at $350 for the purpose of a review. I knew they could deliver a good number of placements and streams safely (my #1 priority), but I worried they didn’t have enough playlists specific…
Three months of no posts! I’m sorry. But I’ve got a good excuse… Earlier this month I released my 13th studio album, Underneath These Dying Stars. I’ve got a lot to share with you, but I thought I’d start with something relatively painless and uncontroversial. When’s the last time you sat down and actively listened…
By now you’ve likely heard of Spotify Discovery Mode. It’s a relatively new feature, still in beta, that provides more algorithmic exposure for your music. The tracks you opt in will appear more often in two specific contexts: Radio — Algorithmically generated playlists based on any artist, album, or songAutoplay — When a listener reaches…
I’ve been growing my Spotify audience with Facebook and Instagram ads for years. Facebook Ads Manager is pinned in my browser and I check it multiple times a day, sometimes obsessively. I know my way around, but it’s not exactly intuitive. There’s definitely a learning curve, and the platform is constantly evolving. What if there…
Last August, I took Spotify playlist pitching into my own hands using a service called OKTIV.IO (read the gory details here). My efforts resulted in 16 playlist adds, 2K+ streams, and a monster spreadsheet of leads. I deemed the effort worthwhile, but way too much to take on with every release. A new service called…
Playlist Push is a platform that connects independent artists to Spotify playlist curators, boasting over 4000 playlists. It’s a premium service at a premium price, basically a rich man’s SubmitHub or Groover. I first reviewed Playlist Push back in November of 2017 and my results were pretty meh. I gave them another shot in May…
Groover is an online platform that connects artists with playlist curators, blogs, labels, and other music professionals. I mean, you’re not just going to shotgun out cold emails, right? RIGHT? 😅 It’s a lot like SubmitHub, which I last wrote about in 2020, but I’ll save a direct comparison for the end of the post….
I’ve always been skeptical of cryptocurrency. Still am. Early last year when NFTs were at max hype, I sent out an email blast to my fans declaring: I never got around to creating NFTs, and I doubt I ever will. It would by necessity drag you into the crypto space, and I’m convinced that’s not…
Last May I said I’d pick Spotify Marquee over Facebook Ads. Now I’m not so sure. With 28 Marquee campaigns under my belt, I’ve got a lot more data to draw conclusions from. I’ll share all the important metrics and compare them to my current Facebook Ads campaign below. For a detailed explanation of what…
When it comes to Spotify promotion, I’ve tried just about everything short of billboard ads. Here’s a quick and dirty list of ways to promote your music on Spotify, with links to my posts on each topic: You can use Spotify’s own tools, like Marquee and Spotify Ad Studio. You can direct potential fans to…
I’ve been running a Spotify growth campaign through Rise since May of 2021, to the tune of $225 per month. Yessirree, that’s a lot of money! Nearly $4K to date. I first mentioned Rise in this post from September 2021, and have been promising a review ever since. Why the delay? They’ve revamped things significantly…
I last wrote about Spotify playlist pitching back in January, when I detailed my campaign with Playlist Blaster. I’m still getting thousands of streams per month from those placements! As much as I’d love to hire them again, I’m not made of money. So I decided to pitch my single “Crystal” the old-fashioned way: reaching…
That's all, folks!
That's all, folks!