How to get 1 million streams in 2026

This is exactly how you can go from 0 to 1 million streams in 2026, with specific actions you can take and examples from my experience as a music artist.

This is based off the fact my band Every Waking Moment got over 300k streams in 10 months, with out 6 songs, in our first year releasing music. This made me think what an artist could do to hit 1 million streams in their first year releasing music.

Here’s a breakdown of the strategy:

• Drop a song every 4-6 weeks for a total of 9 song releases in a year
• Post 10-20 social media posts per song, across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok
• Release 2-4 YouTube videos per song (music video, lyric video, visualizer etc)
• Spend $500 per song on Meta ads, spend less on bad performing songs and more on great performing songs

Here’s my video going through the details of this strategy, and showing how to setup the ad campaigns I mentioned.

If you’re budget is larger, you can totally spend more than $500 per song. I’d say the minimum budget that’s worth it is $10/day, or $300 per month.

If you’re looking to hire someone to run your ad campaigns for you, my agency Southworth Media can help. We’ve driven hundreds of millions of streams with our ad campaigns, and we’ve helped thousands of artists grow their music further than they ever have before.

If you’d rather learn how to run campaigns like this yourself, check out my course Spotify Growth Machine.