Don’t let your profile and uploaded songs or playlists just sit un-listened to on Spotify. If you are looking to improve your performance and increase your exposure and royalties, you need to be proactive about the metrics that Spotify focuses on for its growth algorithm. It might be counter-intuitive, but you need to focus at the beginning not on organic growth but paid digital marketing. Think about it like this.
Organic Versus Paid Growth
Organic growth is confined to niche areas that allow for cross-platform and natural sharing of content. If no one knows who you are or has any desire to share your music, then why would anyone listen to your stuff? It isn’t a comment on the quality but the fact that if you have no exposure then no one knows to come looking for you. Sure, that movie back in the day said that if you build it that they will come, but obviously they were pretty bored back then.
Instead, you need to physically get your face in front of the algorithms that matter. You need to force your views, likes, shares, plays, followers, and saves to increase to a point where you can finally just rely on natural and organic growth. It doesn’t happen overnight, but you can’t just wait for it to build. Let’s dig in a little deeper.
How Do Spotify Plays Improve Performance?
If you are looking for Spotify to recommend your music or playlist then you need to show the Spotify algorithm that your music is already played by lots of people consistently and that others would enjoy it in the same way. It’s a bit backwards that you need plays to get your music to be played by new people, but life can be unfair. Instead, you need to fight back.
When a free member listens to a song, you might get a small bump. The same for a premium member. Premium listeners are paid members, which means that your royalties will be higher the more premium members listen to your music. Whenever you can, these are the ultimate people you want.
However, what is more important to the Spotify algorithm is that these two types of members are listening not just once and to one song, but rather to all of your music consistently over time. Think about playlists you have made for your favorite artists. Do you just listen to one song once and never again? No way! You may listen to an artist’s entire collection multiple times over the span of a year.
Having listeners that continually play your work and playlists tells Spotify that you have a following. A following means money and we all like money.
Do Followers Matter?
A following based on consistent listening was just describe. This is the basis of the idea of the follower. So, it would make sense that increasing the follower numbers on your artist profile will improve your rankings.
Artist need higher play counts, that is obvious. But you want to show that you as an artist are important and popular. You aren’t going to get this from just play and streaming counts. Instead you need both a higher play count and a higher follower count. Higher follower counts show that you are a significant artist and you deserve exposure. There isn’t anything better than that. So, when you are looking to boost your Spotify rankings, you need to focus on the key Spotify metrics, plays and followers.
How Do I Increase Spotify Streams?
This is great information and all, but how do I actually increase my plays and followers? You do it by focusing on paid digital marketing. Paid digital marketing can take a lot of different forms, but if you want to focus on improving your Spotify metrics you need to pony up and buy Spotify streams. These are real stream and play counts that go directly to your song, album, or playlist. When you purchase these plays, you are paying someone to listen to your music. It is the same basis for paid advertisements, sponsorships, or influencer marketing.
The important part of this type of paid digital marketing is that it is hyper focused on improving the metrics that Spotify needs to show that you are worthy of recommending to other listeners. You can advertise your music and playlists all over the internet, but if the target audience doesn’t convert to a listener then the money is down the drain. Every dollar you spend when you buy Spotify streams is automatically converted into a Spotify metric count. What other method has such a significant and immediate profile improvement?