So you want to get more people streaming your music on Spotify?
Well… there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it.
Getting organic streams can be fairly time-intensive, so a lot of musicians turn to paid streams to accelerate the process.
There are some instances when paying for streams actually can work and help you get more fans, but there’s definitely a wrong way to go about it too. And if you do it the wrong wav, you could get your account shut down! So let’s talk quickly about the wrong way to buy streams.
You’ve probably come across some services that are offering X number of streams for X dollars. $10 for 1,000 plays for example. That's a terrible idea!
Not only does Spotify obviously want to avoid paying out bogus royalties for fake streams, they also want to be sure that their users are having a good experience.
One of the reasons many people listen to Spotify is to discover new music. Spotify’s algorithm determines what music individuals are most likely to enjoy based on a number of factors. One of those factors is how many streams a track is getting from other users. If those streams are fake, it could screw up the effectiveness of Spotify’s algorithm. Spotify could start pushing tracks to the wrong audience, and that will have a negative impact on user experience. So that’s part of the reason why Spotify doesn’t like when you buy fake streams.
Spotify's algorithm is improving every day, which means it’s getting better at detecting fake streams. The penalty is often times getting your account shut down, so don’t buy bogus streams
Now does that mean that you can’t pay money to get a little boost?
Actually, it is possible to pay to be featured on legitimate playlists, which results in completely organic streams from real listeners; however, that’s a little bit of a Payola grey area. I’m not an attorney, so I’m not going to necessarily recommend that you do that. But if you want to roll the dice on that, or you have a good entertainment attorney, you can find plenty of options to pay to be featured on playlists with a simple Google search.
One thing that I can certainly recommend is submitting your music for free to playlist curators. Playlist curators like to keep their playlist fresh, so they update them all the time and are constantly on the lookout for new music to feature. Click Here for a list of playlist curators that you can submit your music to for free.
Getting your music featured on popular playlists can get your songs a lot of exposure to a whole new audience, and those streams (unlike most paid streams) will actually help you get more fans and grow your following on Spotify.
Avoid sites that offer to let you pay for streams. Instead, focus on getting your music onto playlists that will help you get more streams organically and grow your following.
If you’re interested some more tips on how you can get your music featured on Spotify playlists, you can click here to check out a video that I posted recently that gets into that in more detail.
And if you’re interested in a complete music marketing strategy, be sure to grab your free copy of The Music Promotion Blueprint right here
