How to get more streams on your music

Digital streaming has become such an important part of the industry, this is why all indie artist need to know how to get more streams on their music.

Getting plays on Spotify can be challenging, particularly as an unsigned artist who doesn’t have any mega fans who are waiting anxiously for your new music to arrive.

Aside from spending a massive amount of time building a community of people who anxiously await every release, there are some tricks that I can give you to start getting more streams right now on your music with very few fans.

Here’s what I would recommend.

1. Start building up your new release to the fans you have by creating posts on your most active social media page that tell the story of how your music is coming together. Be sure to include details like who’s there with you working on it and when it’s going to be released. Talk about the lyrics, the theme, why you created it, who’s the producer… all these details can be individual posts on social media becoming a story timeline that leads people to anticipate the next single. Don’t forget to get them to signup for the release notification on your streaming platform or via email subscription so you can reach everyone at once when the single drops.
2. Get Verified: 250 is the magic number. That’s the number of followers you need to get your Spotify profile verified. If you have at least 1,000 fans on Facebook and other social media, you should be able to convince your fans to help you get to that goal! Once you are there, your reach will increase and you will be taken more serious by fans, Spotify wanderers, and playlists curators.
3. Get on Playlists: One of the best ways to get noticed and increase your streams is to get on Spotify Playlists. The best way to do this is to find out who creates the playlists, get their contact information and pitch them your music. It’s best to create a pitch email, that way when you’re ready to send it to curators you can use the same one for all curators by simply gearing it to each specific curator. Also, follow up with them! AVA live radio curates playlists and emails them out to other curators: www.avaliveradio.info/airplay
4. SPOTIFY ADS: This is the ONLY Spotify Promotional package that DOES NOT use bots and fake accounts to mimic real plays. Fake plays will get you banned from Spotify. But real authentic marketing to an engaged audience will be impactful. Come see how it works. https://www.avaliveradio.info/featured/music-promo
5. Email: Establish an email list for your most active people to sign up so they can receive the music first. If you are going to do this long term, you should always be collecting contact info for your most avid fans so you can reach them. It’s never good to just notify through social media because you never know when that reach will be taken away. If you are totally lost on this, I have a terrific Mega Fan Base Builder Program that teaches you how to build your email list and market your music effectively using social media. I’m also teaching my students how to make 100k a year with 1k fans. It’s so much easier than you think : check it out here if you want to learn how: https://www.avaliveradio.info/opportunities/megafan
6. Create video: Video taken while you are in the studio doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be 1 minute clips recorded while your music is being made. Think of addressing your audience like you are speaking to 1 friend and telling them the story. Don’t speak to the audience like your trying to impress them, brag or create some kind of fancy marketing ad for your music. Just keep it real. That works way better. Imagine you are speaking to one of your friends then just tell them what’s up.
7. Use Stories to increase traction and open a behind the scenes look of what it’s like to be living the dream as a musician. This is also not an opportunity to show off. Talk about the struggles, the set backs but also the good days and why they are good. When something happens that’s funny or amazing, share that moment on your story either with a video or image. In the moment content goes a long way so start making a habit of using that little record button on your phone and share moments.
8. Arrange press: go to www.avaliveradio.info/airplay and http://indiemusicspin.com/submit-music/ to make your new release an event. You can have the AVA live radio team work up press releases, blog articles and post your music to radio to deepen the reach and help you create a bigger buzz about your new single. There is really no better 1st step promotion for your music than the Spotify Ads program : Check that out here, it’s affordable and fast acting: https://www.avaliveradio.info/featured/music-promo
9. Take all the most amazing content that you pushed out and use that to create an amazing set of emails you can deliver to your fans to set up the new release. Then think about setting that up on automation so it keeps delivering that set of stories to every new subscriber this year. If the story is awesome, it will turn fans into super fans . At the end of every email make sure you have your merchandise product pages linked up so people can buy your merch.
10. Contact everyone 24 hours before the release goes live and tell them how they can get it and exactly what you will be doing to celebrate it so they can join you. This is way easier if you have an email list. As social media only shows your post to less than 1% of your audience, it’s not realistic to use it as your only connection to your audience. A mailing list is a must have for every artist. Start one for free on www.mailchimp.com
11. At the time the release goes live do something special to encourage your fans to celebrate it. Like a live stream, email and don’t forget to play the song for them. Encourage engagement and ask people to share it with their pages. If you are pushing spotify, then ask everyone to follow your page and add your new single to their favorites playlist.
12. Don’t just push your single the day of the release. Keep it going on future posts by reminding them to play it again and recycle older songs so you page doesn’t look like a long running line of spam. Never repeat the same post twice on social media. Always create a unique way of sharing something similar and mix in original new in the moment content in between linked song reminders.

I hope this helps. It should give you tons of ideas but at the end of the day, the Spotify Ads program is THE BEST promotion you can do for yourself. It’s fast, easy and painless because all the work is done for you. Your single runs on an established broadcast with tons of active listeners and you get a team working at promoting your music for you so you can stay focused on creating. (see below)

Jacqueline Jax Radio Personality and Music marketing /Entertainment Branding Specialist

RECOMMEDED MUSIC MARKETING:

Take the next step in launching your music career with Spotify Ads : This is the ONLY Spotify Promotional package that DOES NOT use bots and fake accounts to mimic real plays. Come see how it works. https://www.avaliveradio.info/featured/music-promo