Spotify Promotion: How to Promote Your Music to Get More Streams and Followers

Spotify has transformed how music is consumed, discovered, promoted, and produced more than any other streaming service. For this reason, artists across all levels and genres should take Spotify seriously and leverage the platform's benefits. This guide on Spotify promotion will take you through ways to market your music, optimize your artist profile, and grow and understand your audience. It will also teach you how to make money on Spotify.

First, we’ll look at strategies for promoting your releases and artist profile using Spotify’s built-in tools. We’ll also address ways to do so on social media and elsewhere. Next, we’ll look under Spotify’s hood to help you understand how the platform works and how you can use it to grow your audience, plays, followers, and monthly listeners.

Finally, we’ll take you through how earning money from Spotify works. We’ll see that it’s not just a question of getting paid for streams but also using the platform to make revenue in the real world. By following a few crucial steps, you can help your music reach the audience and the success it deserves.

Not on Spotify yet? Read our article to learn how to get music on Spotify.

When building a successful release strategy and growing your following as an artist, it’s important to remember that play counts aren’t everything! While followers, monthly listeners, and streams are important, they are not the entire story. Whether you are looking to boost your artist profile or push a forthcoming release, there are plenty of other factors to consider.

Similar to most online platforms, Spotify relies on algorithms to determine what to show its users each time they open the app. Simply put, the algorithms exist to serve users what they 'think' they want. How, then, can independent artists compete with big industry titans and pop superstars?

The answer is ‘engagement’.

Getting your users to engage with your content actively tells the algorithm that it is something they may want to listen to. Each time some saves your release, adds it to a playlist, or shares it with someone, their action counts as engagement (as opposed to the more “passive” activity of just playing it). When a listener hears a track and decides to follow you, it also counts as engagement.

You encounter this match-up between play count and engagement every time you watch a YouTube video. A video might have a million plays, but if no one comments under it, shares it, adds it to their playlist, or likes it, the YouTube algorithm will not assess it as positively as a similar video with a higher ‘engagement to view’ ratio. Ask any YouTuber out there, and they will tell you that the engagement rate is key.

The same rule applies to Spotify promotion: If your material gets people fired up enough to interact with it in some way, it will be rewarded with further attention. What we’re talking about here is not the music itself - though please try hard there, too! It's more about making sure your music and your online persona, both within Spotify and beyond, are as engaging as possible.

In this section, we’ll look at a few ways to boost engagement by using Spotify’s built-in features and how to connect your content to your social media channels.

Let’s talk about promoting your release and your profile within Spotify. These tips apply whether you’re an established artist with a strong following or releasing music to the platform for the first time(s). As previously established, engagement is a critical factor, so our aim is to find ways to get your audience hyped up about your releases and make them want to know more about who you are.

Looking to upload your music to streaming platforms? Find out more about music distribution with iMusician.

Spotify Canvas is a way to bring your releases to life and drive engagement with your artist profile. Canvases are short, looping videos that play in the background when people listen to your tracks on the mobile app. As Spotify explains, they are like “album artwork for the digital age.”

You can upload 3 to 8 seconds of MP4 videos, which loop continuously, or a still JPEG. Ideally, you add a different video or image for each track rather than using the same video for the entire album.

Since these videos are designed for the mobile app, they must be shot, cut, and animated in a ratio of 9:16 (just like Instagram Stories or TikTok videos). Spotify boasts that well-made Canvases can massively increase your track shares, playlist additions, and profile visits, so it’s worth consulting with a video editor to make the most out of this tool. An online video creation platform like Rotor or the paid tools Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe After Effects are also a great place to start.

Spotify’s Pre-Save feature is a powerful tool for Spotify promotion that you can use to promote your music before the official release date. It is the digital equivalent of pre-ordering a physical album. When a Spotify user pre-saves content, it gets immediately added to their saved songs or albums upon release. Not only is this a great way to build momentum, but it also helps feed the algorithm. Once your music is live, the Pre-Save converts to a like, thus showing that people are interested in your music.

Spotify’s Promo Cards allow you to quickly create a custom image for your artist profile, album, or song that can then be shared directly to your social media channels. One bonus is that you can choose image formats that correspond perfectly to different social platforms. For example, you can create a square Promo Card for sharing on Instagram and quickly repeat the process, making a landscape image that works great for a Facebook post.

You can think of the Promo Cards tool as having a graphic designer who helps you customize your material from Spotify. The design options are somewhat limited, but if you are posting your Spotify content regularly (which we recommend you do), this tool is a great way to keep your visual output looking fresh.

Since Spotify hosts ads the same way traditional radio stations do, you can promote a new release as an ad within Spotify itself. Luckily, the platform has its built-in ad creation service called Ad Studio, which gives you all the tools you need to create an ad.

Ad Studio lets you choose between audio, video, and podcast ads, as well as ‘custom experiences’ like ‘sponsored playlists’ and ‘homepage takeovers,’ which are handled on a bespoke basis with the advertisement team.

Spotify lets you pick where the ad appears and what kind of user it will reach (known as ‘targeting’). The pricing for an ad starts at $250. The final costs depend on your location, target audience, campaign duration, and demand from other advertisers.

The more followers you have on your social media channels, the more people you can direct to your Spotify profile. Like all creators in the modern age, musicians can thrive by working hard on their social media to create a following and turn fans into Spotify followers.

Creating great content for your socials could involve anything from live-streaming a jam session, uploading a sneak-peek video of a new project in your DAW, showcasing a music video, or anything and everything in between. We can’t go into all the details, but here are a few tips on how to make Spotify and your social channels synergetic.

With its music promotional tools, including music smart links, iMusician can also help you get started.

Whether it’s a brand new release, a podcast episode, a playlist, or your artist profile, it’s always wise to use Spotify to share your material to your social media channels. The built-in share function is in the menu next to every track, album, playlist, podcast, or artist page.

In its simplest form, this function gives you a link to share via WhatsApp or email and provides an embed code to add to any website. It also allows you to connect your Spotify account directly to social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, to which you can then share your music via Spotify.

This function is powerful because it guarantees the best sharing experience on the social channel of choice, such as Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. Using the built-in options means you are sharing your music the way Spotify wants it to be shared, and you should be able to see the benefits quickly.

We've looked at the importance of engaging with your audience and making sure your material has the best reach possible within Spotify and beyond. Ultimately, however, the aim should be to grow your audience and find ways to boost the three metrics plays, followers, and monthly listeners.

This is because more followers mean more plays, and that’s how you turn your activity on Spotify into income. It’s widely known that making money from Spotify is a matter of getting paid a small amount each time a track is played - or ‘streamed.’

We’ll be looking at the finer points of streaming revenue on Spotify later in this guide. But for now, we’ll focus on how to grow your audience. New followers don’t just mean more income; they’re also a way to build a fanbase to attend your shows and buy your merchandise. And the bigger your audience, the more likely you’ll get the attention of playlist editors and the almighty algorithm.

Your Artist Profile page is the place where you get to tell your story, so make sure you have a strong profile picture that reflects your carefully curated album artwork and a well-written bio. Add links to all essential social channels, so fans can find a way to connect with you outside of Spotify.

Use the Artist Pick feature, shown at the top of your profile, to control what song, album, or playlist appears when people find your profile. What a perfect place to announce your latest release!

By allowing you to add a custom image and any Spotify content, Artist Pick means you can tell all sorts of stories, such as showcasing music from other artists who inspire you or announcing tour dates, which Spotify says will automatically list shows happening near the user’s location.

As you probably know, playlists are one of Spotify’s most influential and attractive features. Spotify offers users both algorithmically created and personally curated playlists. The latter having an especially powerful influence on what music becomes successful.

Spotify allows artists to connect directly with playlist editors via Spotify for Artists. If you have an upcoming, unreleased song, you can pitch the material directly to the editors, which means they can add it to your followers’ Release Radar.

Spotify recommends pitching the new material at least one week before release and providing the team with some info about the release. For more on this, take a look at their help pages on pitching to playlists editors and getting music on Release Radar.

Also, did you know that you can submit your music to our Spotify playlists? Read more about how to get featured on an iMusician playlists!

Your Spotify for Artists profile gives you detailed information about your audience. By looking at this data, you can see demographic information about your fans, like their age or location. These analytics also allow you to deep-dive into your numbers: total streams, followers, most-played tracks, and playlists you’ve been added to. Understanding these numbers gives you great insight into what your fans like most about you, which could be useful when working on upcoming music.

Another helpful feature is seeing what other artists your fans like. This can prove extremely useful when building your audience. As you’ll see in the next section, these details can help you target similar audiences via paid advertising.