Did you ever notice how most people teaching music marketing online aren't actually music artists themselves? My name is Andrew Southworth and i'm an actual music artist. releasing music through several projects. On this channel I share all of the music marketing strategies that I use to promote my own music.
From using Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify, to RU-vid ads to market your next music video, to how to get streams organically or how to grow your mailing list and sell merch - I talk about it all on this channel.
If that sounds like it's for you, subscribe and ring that bell to join me on the journey.
If the re release has a new different Spotify link i don't think it's good for triggering the algorithms for that song, it will be the same song in spotify for artist but the re release will probably have a new spotify link, so basicly 2 different links for the same song
I must be too old, for me the waterfall release approach was just a few singles leading to an EP or an album. I understand how this newer version of the waterfall strategy will work better specifically on Spotify but it also makes your music catalog look spammy.
DistroKid sucks for cover song waterfall releases. Their recurring cover song licensing fees suck and you have to pay again every time you reupload it. DistroKid sucks in general for cover songs but that's another story. It is great for originals and original waterfall releases though.
I tried a waterfall release and my monthly listeners significantly dropped. I was getting good traction on a song algorithmically, and decided to re-release it with a new song, then set meta ads to the new release. What I didn’t realise is the ‘popularity’ metric is reset for this new version of the original song. I’m not sure why but the new song never really took off and my monthly listeners dropped by half. Anyone experienced something similar?
One thing I've noted though is that each release (even with the same codes and such) has a unique popularity score; they don't combine. There could be an argument made that it waters down the score if people can listen to the same track multiple places
whoa, thats a really big deal. dw and rr algorithms are supposedly correlated with popularity score. this could absolutely destroy your chances of getting on algorithmic playlists. andrew can you please investigate/address this? might require an entire video tbh
I dont really understand what you are saying. You only have one popularity score per song, no matter how many times you release it, there's only one score for that one song, how can it be diluted
@@Darknives that’s correct, popularity score is per track. this is a bit confusing honestly. it seems that OP is saying that each EP has its own popularity score?
@@bryanmarin955so I’ve released an EP where all the songs where singles, and on musicstax and tunebat and all that, it shows two separate songs with different popularity scores. But the songs still did well interestingly enough. So maybe it says it’s separate but it’s really just one score?
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I think Distrokid can actually be SUPER expensive these days with all the extras…a few of them sound like a MUST too…maybe I shouldn’t be paying for “Leave a Legacy”…thoughts?
hello pls help i dont see any music pixel id on my events manager tab even after clicking data sources, when i click on data sources, everything is empty
as a canaidan. I can confirm the grant system in Canada is great ! but for full disclosure the programs are COMPETITVE... you have to make a case of why the govt should invest in you. music, strategic plan still need to be on point. no one is giving money at free will
Yeah thats what i've heard too. Seems like the larger your project is the more likely you are to win the larger grants, but also the larger the amount the more BS you have to deal with. For example, certain grants have to be used for certain things or in a certain way, and require certain paperwork. I've had a client where one grant could be used however he wanted. Then the next he could only use it to hire a 3rd party ad agency, he couldn't run the ads himself. Then one year regular invoices were fine, but the next year the invoices had to be much more meticulous and organized for him to get them paid.
I wish RU-vid allowed for pictures to be added to user comments because I could literally show everyone how I reached 55K+ monthly listeners in 4 months with zero social media ads and little to no content creation surrounding the music! The goal isn’t to just reach that many listeners or to retain them, the goal is to get them to REPLAY your songs and you can almost ONLY do so through promoting your own playlists that features your single multiple times on multiple playlists that also features the latest singles by artists you want your single to be “organically” (algorithmically) played amongst. Literally, you have to tell Spotify what to do with your music and then they’ll just repeat what you’re already doing on a larger scale considering they have more access to their own systems and user base than you’ll ever have!
If you want to email me some images and your story / methods, maybe i'll make a video about it! andrew@generastudios.com Sounds like it worked great for you, maybe it will work for other people too.
It depends. This is $0.50 per click in the USA, which is a super expensive country to advertise in. Additionally if you use DistroKid you get 30% off Marquee and Showcase campaigns. Overall I feel that Marquee and Showcase is priced almost perfectly. If it's too good it becomes and infinite money machine which means it will die out pretty quick. If its too bad nobody uses it and it dies out pretty quick. Overall ads are much better in almost every case, but I do use Marquee / Showcase very regularly. Especially when songs are performing very expensive in ads, or they're doing great but not doing great in expensive Tier 1 markets.
haha thanks. I used to have a super bad stutter, and went to speech classes as a kid to fix it. Nobody would have ever expected i'd end up being someone thats on camera regularly, interviewing people etc.
Andrew, on Spotify is a Massive flood of " simillar artists " list on every small artist profile , it used to be 10 in the past now is 40 ! Half of them are fake AI profiles with AI generated noises, with only 50 - 100 monthly listeners.. I have around 40 k monthly listeners and used to be associated with other artists with 5 k - 25 k m listeners... now I am associated with 40 fake profiles under 0.5 k monthly listeners... Big artists are protected but we small artist are in a Dillution schemme with AI fake shit , to grab streams and attention from us to them ! And for sure most of these fake AI artists are Owned by Spotify and big labels ...Also , in the " related songs list based on the song I listen ( from my songs ) the suggestions are half AI fake generated songs, it used to be real artist untill last week.... that is happening Only for artists under 1 M listeners per month, they throw us in a big soup of fake dirty AI noise...
Hmm i've never seen this before. Typically artists in your similar artist section will be around your size, so if you're 40k they'll all be 5k to 100k for the most part. Not sure why you'd have a flood of AI artists popping up there randomly. Are you sure they're AI?
l had a question Andrew, let's say i want to make RNB music and I have my top 5 artist who I sound like/ my music has their kind of vibe in that particular lane. When I am creating my Facebook ads and am trying to attack certain cities, should l target the top cities of the artists? So, for example, PartyNextDoor's top 5 locations he's most played in are London, GB Toronto, CA Los Angeles, US New York City, US Sydney, AU Bryson Tiller's top 5 are London, GB Los Angeles, US Sydney, AU New York City, US Chicago, US How would you go about targeting this on Facebook Ads? Can I target certain cities or is it best to just target United States, London, Australia etc?
I deleted my Tik Tok accounts 8 months ago. I think the only involvement with music that Tik Tok wants is your money for Boosts and other bs. 4 years ago it was great, now it's a money grubbing QVC type app. 🤘🤘
Iv sent a song to spotfy and tiktok via cloudrop but it only shows on spotfy. When I try to add a song on tiktok and search for it, it doesnt fint it. However, if I upload my video with the song in it, it gets muted for copright lol
I imagine Sesac is trying to protect their artists and try to monetize their music in a fair way, so it's not a corporation against corporation battle. Probably yt offers a horrible deal and the're opposing it. Usually PROs work to help their songwriters. Anyway thanks for the great content Andrew.
If TikTok promised an algorithm boost for it's artist, i think we'd all have switched over. They have to power to make hits. Spotify playlist use to make hits but now they only promote songs that are already Hits. And Drake lol when he drops an album Spotify damn near forces you to listen to it.
Pretty sure they do, look at their music distributor SoundOn. Once you green flag, they push it to content creators etc. uploaded 1 song w them and not a great experience so far. (2-3weeks)
You forgot to mention that spotify was reaching out to content curators to post their RU-vid videos on their platform this is from Bloomberg Spotify Looks to Pay Video Creators to Put Shows on Platform.
I dont think there's anything "B.S." about expecting Spotify to follow the same laws as everyone else. The Canadian govt wants to promote Canadian artists in Canada. Not sure how that hurts independent canadian artists, it just sounds like it makes a company slightly annoyed.
These laws are BS entirely, and ideally no company would be bound by them. They're designed to take money from modern formats as a way to propel giant corporations in legacy media formats like radio and television. When they were imposing these laws on RU-vid, many Canadian content creators came out against the law because it definitively hurt their potential on the platform.
@AndrewSouthworth they're basically just extensions of the same laws that have bound Canadian media for years. The same grants you're referring to are funded by those fees and taxes, and the requirement for Canadian content on airwaves and now streaming are why a ton of independent Canadian artists even have careers to begin with (thinking the Tragically Hip, Arcade Fire, Metric, Broken Social Scene, etc), rather than being pushed out by oversaturation of US media exports. These are the same laws updated for the new streaming landscape. Spotify isn't associated with a Canadian broadcaster, so it's going to get restrictions and the digital equivalent of import taxes, as it's harder to regulate content requirements on a streaming service than a traditional broadcaster like radio. Realistically I think a country's elected government should regulate its commerce more than the whims of a Swedish tech giant, but hey, I guess I'm a dreamer.
All good points. But I think it can be true that these new laws are both bad and good. I've seen info that suggests these laws tend to benefit massive companies on Canada much more than they benefit individuals in Canada. Overall I personally would much rather let the market do what its gonna do than have any government dictating what must happen. The only exception being in cases where someone else's rights are being violated, or a monopolistic situation.
whenever anyone claims being the "killer of something" it goes real bad for them. Just look at Ruben Patterson who claimed to be the "kobe killer" and how that turned out for him lol.
Tik Tok might have gotten their hair in the machine, Spotify has avoided at all cost to be defined as a social media platform for years, must be a money thing. Regarding the AI playlist generator, maybe the system don't have enough data yet, so it requires extended use before it can find smaller artists.. maybe even on the GPT side.
my update on promo : Meta Ads are better than spotify showcase and marquee, simply because you get A LOT more saves and playlist adds which is one of the leading cause and effect of algorithms. Meta Ads works better because the person seeing the ad gets way more obsessed than in spotify (pretty weird anyway). Tik Tok is really good for free Promo. Just work on it, I show my face and post funny and mundane things and some videos get me 100 listeners from my country in a day. I post in my country's language, cos I already have a good audience outside my country. My country is a small market. Will slowly switch to English Tik Tok. Also Meta Ads get you insta and fb followers and streams on other services, I got tons on apple music and itunes + yt music , deezer etc. , which showcase and marquee don't.
really good tutorial, thank you!! Just one question: when you release the old songs in a new album, whats happening with the artwork of the previous single songs?
So if distrokid doesnt provide the spotify uri, i can email spotify with the upc number and songtitle to get access to the profile? Thank you for the video!
