Promoting your music as an independent artist has never been easier. Gone are the days when you had to craft your professional website from scratch, often requiring at least some basic knowledge of web design and HTML. Nowadays, smartlinks have taken over, allowing you to send your audience directly to your streaming & download platforms, merch store and tour dates, and other destinations, too.
Due to its popularity, there are plenty of smartlink tools to choose from, each of them offering additional features and benefits. Therefore, in this article, we are looking at what we think are the 9 best smartlink tools for musicians currently available. Let’s have a look!
What are smartlinks?
Before we dive into the list, some of you may wonder what smartlinks actually are. A smartlink can be defined as a single, short URL that leads to a number of various landing pages, helping one to send their audience directly to their offers. As for musicians and artists, these landing pages may include the digital and download platforms, tour schedule with tickets to purchase, online merch store or any other custom store, social media channels, etc.
Traditionally, the smartlink takes the form of a one-pager which, as a signpost, shows all the destinations the visitor can be redirected to. Very often, smartlink tools also pay attention to design, showing photos of the musicians or the cover of their release and, generally, making the one-pager look appealing and professional.
It’s believed that the concept of smartlink arose from constraints of certain social media platforms that allow for only one link in the bio. This is particularly difficult for content creators and artists as they try to send their fans to a number of destinations - other social media accounts, websites, online stores, an events page, etc. Smartlinks present a solution for that, integrating multiple links into one.
Additionally, smartlinks help you utilize the traffic without wasting it, while making your customer’s journey clear, simple, and enjoyable. Some smartlink tools also enable you to track your traffic, determining who your audience is and where it comes from.
9 best music smartlink tools for musicians
1. Release Pages by iMusician
Price: from free
At iMusician, we’re proud to be the only digital music distributor with a standalone release page. This means that our Release Pages music smart link tool is available to any independent musician, regardless of who distributed their music.
What’s more, at iMusician, we are all about being ‘online forever’. This means that once you create your Release Page, it will stay online forever and its URL will NEVER change. You will also retain access to your Release Page regardless of whether you maintain your current subscription or choose to pause or downgrade.
Would you like to learn more about our Release Pages too? Check out our music smart link tool.
2. Feature.fm
- Price: from free to $199 /month (you can save by paying annually)
Feature.fm is a popular smartlink tool providing services to artists, labels, professional music marketers, and enterprises. As a result of this, there are truly plenty of features that the platform offers as part of its numerous subscription plans. For indie artists and labels specifically, there are three plans to choose from.
Their free plan allows you to promote your work of art with unlimited link integration, simple pre-saves, and 7-day insight data. Suppose you want to have access to additional features including more analytical insights, Spotify growth tools, or no Feature.fm branding. Then, you can upgrade to either Artist or Artist Pro plan.
In that case, however, you have to be prepared for a rather high monthly fee of either $19 /month (for the Artist plan) or $39 /month (for the Artist Pro plan).
3. Linktree
Price: from free to 22€/month (you can save by paying annually)
Despite not being designed specifically for musicians, Linktree is still quite popular among the music community. It’s known for its characteristic clean design that simply lists all the links integrated. Visitors can then click on the link and be sent to where they’re heading. The smartlink tool offers a plethora of features, like different levels of customization, third-party integration, link monetization, link analytics (together with Google Analytics connection), and many others. With their Pro and Premium plans, you can also embed your latest YouTube video or your tweets and show your audience what you, as an artist and creator, have to offer.
Additionally, the pricing is highly favorable, ranging from free to 22€/month. Linktree’s free plan is one of the big reasons why the platform is so popular among musicians, too. That’s particularly because it’s great for any artist who has just started their career. If you further want to unlock additional features such as access to analytics or more control over the link’s customization, you can upgrade to the paid subscriptions at any time.
The biggest drawback of Linktree, especially for musicians and artists, is that it only offers a limited amount of automated music service integrations. If therefore, you’re trying to target fans in regions where local streaming platforms are prevalent, you will not be able to integrate these in your Linktree link. Additionally, the tool provides no streaming data and offers no option for pre-saves.
4. ToneDen
- Price: from free to $1,250/month (depends on social media ad spend)
Just like Linktree, ToneDen, too, is not designed for professionals from the music industry. It started out primarily as a social marketing tool but after it got acquired by Eventbrite in 2020, it became a powerful marketing platform for a variety of creators and marketers. While their focus is still majorly on social media, their purpose has expanded. Nowadays, their customers can choose whether they want to build a loyal following; maximize their ticket sales; or find loyal and repeat customers.
If one of these goals is essential for you and your artist brand, then ToneDen may be a tool to consider. However, just like in the case of Feature.fm, ToneDone also charges pretty high monthly fees. The prices of their subscription plans can range from $50 up to $1,250/month, depending on monthly social media ad spend.
You can go for a Free deal to avoid spending too much money on music promotion but the plan only features access to social unlock, contests, FanLink campaigns, and custom domains. The features that make ToneDen worthwhile are included in the paid subscription. If what you want is to expand your fan base and increase your streams and revenue, other tools, such as our Artist Hub may be a better and definitely cheaper option for you.
5. MusicJet
- Price: from free to $24.99/month (you can save by paying annually)
MusicJet strongly resembles Linktree but unlike Linktree, it has been designed specifically for musicians. As a classic smartlink, MusicJet lets you create fully customizable smart pages that show your bio and send your fans to destinations of your choice - streaming and download stores, social media accounts, custom pages, events section, and more.
The platform offers 3 plans - one free plan and two paid subscriptions, either for $4.99 or $24.99/month, which is more suitable for enterprises. Considering the price, MusicJet is definitely a competitive promotional smartlink tool for musicians.
The only, yet important drawback, is the limitation of music streaming platforms that can be integrated into the smartlink. With iMusician’s Artist Hub Pro or Artist Hub Pro+, you can send your fans to all download and streaming stores to which you’re distributing your music to. With MusicJet, you can only do that with the most generally popular platforms, such as Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, etc.
6. Hypeddit
- Price: from free to $9/month
Hypeddit is one of the most affordable smartlink tools in the market. There are only two plans to choose from - ‘Rookie’ is for free while ‘Pro’ costs only $9/month. Just like the other ones, Hypeddit, too, helps you promote your music with smartlinks, particularly with the aim to grow your audience.
You can use pre-saves and send your fans to various streaming and download platforms. With the Pro plan, you can also link them to your custom domains, benefit from custom branding, collect fan emails or track pixels. Unlike many other tools, however, Hypeddit doesn't offer such a level of customization which definitely may be a drawback for musicians trying to break through the noise.
Something that certainly makes the platform stand out is its focus on sharing downloads or links of your music in return for automatic likes, reposts, comments, and followers. This, again, is to help you gain more ‘real’ fans and so expand your fanbase.
7. Odesli
- Price: unknown
Odesli, owned by Linktree since 2021, is a pretty straightforward tool that targets all various platforms and destinations out there to help you share your music and get it heard. Their basic, free plan, allows you to send your fans to major streaming and download stores, such as Spotify, Deezer, YouTube Music, or Pandora. To create your free smartlink, all you have to do is clone the template on their website and integrate links leading to your music. No customization is possible with the free plan.
If you want to be able to customize the template or create a new smartlink page from scratch, you need to pay for it. In fact, all the additional features including adding links to your website, ticket section, online merch store, or email address, should be monetized based on one-time purchases.
However, Odesli’s website is not very clear about that and doesn’t state any prices. This is definitely something we find discouraging. It’s believed that their pricing changed rapidly in 2021 which is not that long ago. It is therefore possible that their pricing strategy may change again in the future.
8. Soundplate
- Price: from free to $20/month (you can save by paying annually)
Soundplate is known as a British electronic record label and music technology company. However, over the years, it has also developed various music marketing tools, including its Soundplate smartlink tool.
With Soundplate, you can create various landing pages including music smartlinks, artist/label pages, bio links pages, or pre-saves. It all depends on what it is that you, as a DIY musician, really need. While music smartlinks direct your fans to the music platforms of your choice, the artist/label page additionally displays your individual releases, social media accounts, events listings, and much more.
As a user, you can choose between a Free Plan and Pro Unlimited for Artists Plan. With the Free Plan, you can only create two music smartlinks or pre-save campaigns, access geo-targeted event promotion, insert a ‘playlist add’ button, and gain fundamental performance insights. The Pro Unlimited for Artists Plan will also allow you to create artist pages and customize all of your pages, use Google Analytics, enjoy custom branding, and access priority support. All of this for $20/month.
9. ListenTo
- Price: from free to $19/month (+ additional taxes)
The last one on our list is ListenTo. The platform doesn’t offer any special tools or features that wouldn’t already be mentioned in the article. However, what makes it stand out is that it’s clear and understandable and you know exactly what you’re paying for.
As an artist, you can choose between 3 plans. If you’re just getting started with your music, the free plan may be a reasonable choice. However, it’s pretty limited - you can only add unlimited ad-supported links or links to streaming apps. As their website says, ListenTo supports links to 40+ music and podcast streaming services, including Spotify, Pandora, Soundcloud, MixCloud, Amazon Music, and YouTube.
Their paid plans, Basic or Pro, will additionally let you create pre-save campaigns, customize your smartlink pages, collect email addresses, connect a custom domain, or retargeting pixels. What’s also cool is that you can modify or cancel your plan at any time without any additional charges.
Conclusion
As you can see, smartlinks are generally an irreplaceable tool making your music promotion easy, quick, and, sometimes, even fun. In this article, we have listed the 9 best smartlink tools for musicians, each of which offers a slightly different variety of features and pricing plans. The tool you ultimately choose should depend on your needs and goals as an independent musician as well as the price you want to pay for your promotion.
If you’re further interested in music promotion, you can read our article about the must-have apps for promotion in 2023. To learn more about pre-saves, check out our other article about how to use pre-save Spotify to promote your music!