How to grow on streaming platforms

You’ve recorded a song, honestly the best work you’ve done since you’ve started making music. The question that follows though is : How do you get your music to perform on streaming platforms?

There exists a variety of methods and techniques that you can use to boost your presence and size on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. These include growing your followers/fanbase, sharing useful marketing links such as landing pages and pre-save links, and advertising your music to the right audiences through the use of social media.

Building a fanbase

A key metric for longevity on streaming platforms is the amount of followers that you have. On Spotify, people who follow you will be the first to listen to your releases in their release radar, generating immediate and organic streams ! In order to grow your fanbase, a few techniques exist.

Landing pages are a very effective way of growing your fanbase. In exchange for a follow on your streaming profiles, fans can unlock exclusive content, which provides value. This will also allow you to bring followers from social media platforms (where you would share your landing page link) over to streaming platforms.

Social media can also be useful in order to grow your fanbase on streaming platforms. Contests requiring a follow in order to win a piece of merch or tickets to your next show generally perform well and will also participate in crossing fans over from social media to streaming platforms.

One of the most effective ways of growing your fanbase organically is by tapping into the fanbase of other established artists. Releasing a remix for an artist with a large following on streaming platforms will make you profit from their release radar, bringing awareness for your music to a whole audience of potential fans. The same goes for collaborations with artists and releases on established artists’ labels.

Using marketing tools

In order to perform to the best of you ability on streaming platforms, you need to make sure that you’re using the right tools to push your music ! This is why landing pages and pre-save links are so important.

Landing pages will allow you, as previously mentioned, to grow your fanbase through exclusive drops. Releese can provide you with professional and easy-to-create landing pages!

Additionally, Releese allows you to generate pre-save links, which can optimize algorithmic streams on your releases. Sharing such a link before your release gives your following the opportunity to be the first to listen to your song, boosting streams on release day.

Advertising your music

Advertising your music online has never been easier ! The digital era has allowed music creators to connect with fans and sell their music directly without needing the backing of large labels for expenses such as physical distribution or traditional marketing (TV, radio, physical ads).

Leveraging your social media can be a very effective tool when promoting your music, as you can create an independent channel through which you can pull listeners through (check out our article on how to grow your social media here!). As an example, with effort and patience, growing a large following on TikTok will allow you to market your music for free to a large audience !

Conventional advertising on social media can also be very effective but requires a budget. With this strategy and using Meta or Tiktok’s ad manager, you can target potential fans that do not follow you yet and appeal to a larger audience.

Third party promotion

Third party promotion is common in the industry ! Independent playlisters and playlist pluggers will offer packages to feature your tracks in their lists. While a number of them are legit and can provide good exposure for your music, make sure you do a background check on their playlists or the playlists they work with, as some of them use bots or playlists that will generate followers with little to no engagement.

Other platforms exist in order to pitch your music to playlisters, influencers, radios and blogs. For a fee, you will be guaranteed a listen and potential feedback from curators after you have pitched your release. While large curators are tough to score on these platforms, your music can always benefit from the extra push ! Here are a few of our favorites :

SubmitHub : https://www.submithub.com/

Groover : https://groover.co

Playlist Push : https://playlistpush.com/

Our best advice would be to follow the previous tips mentioned in this article, to grow slowly but surely and most importantly, to cherish your algorithm and follower count. These metrics will be key to your success on the long term !