Are you stuck at X0,000 monthly listeners?
Many artists hit a plateau around 20,000 to 30,000 monthly listeners where growth stalls despite regular releases and promotion. Understanding why this happens and exploring new marketing strategies can help break through this common barrier.
By Andrew Southworth
Happy Monday!
Today we’re going to talk about getting stuck at X0,000 monthly listeners, and how to push through plateaus.
I do a lot of one-on-one calls with artists and recently i’ve helped several artists go from less than 1,000 monthly listeners up to around 20,000 to 30,000 monthly listeners in a couple months solely by running ads.
Many people don’t know this but it’s actually super common for artists to get stuck at certain numbers. The first of which is the dreaded 20k-30k range. But why is this?
Why do people get stuck
You might expect that going from 20k to 40k monthly listeners should be the same as going from 0 to 20k. But it’s very much not the case.
Even if you’re dropping music regularly and promoting each song with continuously good results, you can reach an equilibrium point where the amount of new listeners you’re gaining equals the amount of people that stop listening to you each month.
Promoting with ads or organic methods give you a nice tail on your streams, resulting in growth on the song months or years after the marketing ends. But people will eventually stop listening to your song.
Another situation is that you’re gaining new listeners from your marketing efforts, but your algorithmic playlists are dropping off. Look at this screenshot:
In this graph the green line is the artist’s ‘listeners on playlists and library’ category, which is essentially their existing fans re-listening. The purple line is radio & autoplay.
Their fans haven’t stopped listening at all, that has stayed quite constant. However their radio & autoplay decreased by 80%. This is the downside of the algorithm. It’s amazing because it gives you so much for free on Spotify, but you have minimal control over how much of a push you get in the algorithm.
Artists that get stuck in a certain range of monthly listeners will find that sometimes they ‘spike’ up to a higher number but they keep falling back down to where their base number is.
Getting unstuck
Often pushing through this ‘barrier’ involves doing something new. It could be as simple as having a song pop off in the algorithm or do amazing in your ads. But since you can’t control that directly I usually recommend adding in another marketing method to the equation or changing something about how you release or market.
You can’t expect different results doing the same thing over and over again. If you’re stuck and you keeping doing the same thing, you’ll likely stay stuck.
Here are just a few things you can try if you’re stuck:
If you’re only posting on social media 1 day per week, try posting 5 times per week
Analyze your video content and find ways to make it better
Change your release schedule and/or pacing
Try spending your ad budgets faster or slower
Collaborate with some artists in your size range
Emphasize connecting 1-on-1 with as many fans as possible so they stick around
Play shows / tour with artists in your genre
If you’re stagnant you need to either do what you’re currently doing better and/or add new fan growth sources. This could even mean writing better music, improving your production process and other creative endeavors.
New Content
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Spotify has rolled out another wave of it's new pre-save feature, and if it comes to all artists it could change the way we market our music.
In this video I talk to Forest Slater about how he grew from zero to 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify with a modest ad budget.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency. Forbid Media specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.
1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or Alex Bochel here.
My Links:
🌍 MusicFunnels - Best website / store / funnels for music artists (get your 14-day FREE trial!)
💿 Partnered Projects - the best Spotify playlist service
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