Practical guides and analysis from Andrew Southworth on all posts, organized to help you find the most useful next step.
It is 100% feasible for you to get your first 1 million streams on your music in 1 year. All you need is good music, a hard work ethic and ideally some budget. This strategy revolves around 4 core principles: I can hear you cringing at the idea of making social media content already, but...
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In this episode Ben Patterson, president of Downtown Artist & Label Services, and I talk about music marketing, the industry, Spotify's changes and more! Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew and Ben talk about Spotify's Discovery Mode which provides additional visibility for artists, but can reduce royalties. That’s why Downtown Music aggressively...
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There are a seemingly infinite number of Spotify promotion services available online. To save you some time, here are the best Spotify promotion services that i've personally tried on my own music. Each of the companies on this list provide streams from real people, not bots. Results may vary but each of these companies are...
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In this Drip review we cover the best features of Drip and how it's an amazing email marketing platform for music artists. Whether you're a music artist, YouTuber or social media influencer connecting with your fans and building a loyal audience is more important than ever. One of the best ways to do this is...
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Spotify Discovery Mode is a free music marketing tool designed to get you more streams from listeners who like music similar to yours. At the time of writing this Discovery Mode is in early testing and comes with its own set of requirements, and access is limited. However there are ways for you to get...
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DistroKid makes it very easy for you to release cover songs on music distribution platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and the rest. In the past, this could be difficult because you'd have to go and secure the cover license yourself and ensure you kept up to date with your licensing. In this post i'll go...
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I have over 30,000 followers on my network of Spotify playlists, and I grew most of them using Facebook ads. Similar to how you would promote your music on Spotify using Facebook conversion campaigns, you can do the same thing to promote your playlists. Here's the process in a nutshell: Run a Facebook conversion campaign...
Read articleIt is 100% feasible for you to get your first 1 million streams on your music in 1 year. All you need is good music, a hard work ethic and ideally some budget. This strategy revolves around 4 core principles: I can hear you cringing at the idea of making social media content already, but...
Read articleIn this episode Ben Patterson, president of Downtown Artist & Label Services, and I talk about music marketing, the industry, Spotify's changes and more! Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew and Ben talk about Spotify's Discovery Mode which provides additional visibility for artists, but can reduce royalties. That’s why Downtown Music aggressively...
Read articleThere are a seemingly infinite number of Spotify promotion services available online. To save you some time, here are the best Spotify promotion services that i've personally tried on my own music. Each of the companies on this list provide streams from real people, not bots. Results may vary but each of these companies are...
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It is 100% feasible for you to get your first 1 million streams on your music in 1 year. All you need is good music, a hard work ethic and ideally some budget. This strategy revolves around 4 core principles: I can hear you cringing at the idea of making social media content already, but...
Read article
Over the past couple years Spotify has been trying, and failing, to crack down on bot streams on their platform. More artists that have done nothing wrong get their music pulled than artists actually committing artificial streaming. In this post i'll talk about what artificial streaming is, how most artists get caught up in it,...
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Spotify has premium plans and free ad-supported plans. Did you know that the amount of money you get paid per stream on Spotify varies depending on if the user listening is a premium user vs a free user? That's right, not only does the exact value of a stream vary each month, and by country,...
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This is my review of the AZ Studio Workstations Elite Sit-Stand Studio Desk. This is a long one, so TLDR: I would not recommend AZ Studio Workstations because my frame broke within 24 hours, they sent me the wrong color / finish desk and their customer support was awful. The pictures they showed on their...
Read articleIn this episode Ben Patterson, president of Downtown Artist & Label Services, and I talk about music marketing, the industry, Spotify's changes and more! Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew and Ben talk about Spotify's Discovery Mode which provides additional visibility for artists, but can reduce royalties. That’s why Downtown Music aggressively...
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In this episode I spoke with Cassie Petrey, founder of Crowd Surf, who has worked on marketing campaigns for Backstreet Boys, Camila Cabello, Paramore and more! Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew and Cassie discuss focusing on video content over photos to gain exposure and build an audience online. Well-lit, non-pixelated videos tend...
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Spotify is drastically changing their payment model in 2024, taking a harder (albeit still weak) stance against bots and limiting non-music noise content on the platform. Spotify estimates these 3 changes will add $1 Billion to the royalty pool over the near 5 years. This averages to $200 Million per year in additional royalties. As...
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In this episode Anthony Pacheco from Simpl and I talk about using organic social media content and ads to market your music. Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew and Anthony talk about focusing on organic social media marketing first when starting out as an artist, especially if you have a limited budget. Engage authentically...
Read articleThere are a seemingly infinite number of Spotify promotion services available online. To save you some time, here are the best Spotify promotion services that i've personally tried on my own music. Each of the companies on this list provide streams from real people, not bots. Results may vary but each of these companies are...
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In this post I discuss making a six figure income with music, sync licensing, micro licensing and royalty collection with Eric Copeland of Make Music Income and Hello Composers. Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Eric and Andrew both agree that it’s important to have a multiple income streams. Focusing on one initiative like Spotify will...
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Recently I had the chance to review Playlist-Promotion.com's Spotify playlist service. If you're reading this, chances are that you searched for ‘playlist-promotion review' (or something similar), and you're wondering if they're legit. Yes, from the data in this campaign I can say that Playlist Promotion's Spotify playlisting service is safe to use and completely legit....
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In this episode I speak with Tia Tia & Ryan McMahon, who have written songs for Justin Bieber, Walk The Moon, Sabrina Carpenter, The Chainsmokers and more. They've managed to get to 700k monthly listeners on Spotify in about 9 months on their artist projects. Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Ryan and...
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If you're a music artist, band, manager or label owner you need music marketing. The idea that great music will somehow just sell itself is a myth. Great music with no marketing will perform worse than mediocre music with great marketing. I've spent the last 5 years obsessing over music marketing, and i've either tried...
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Distrokid, the awesome music distribution company, has official acquired Bandzoogle, my least favorite website tool. Don't get me wrong, Bandzoogle has great prices, great customer support and lots of templates. I just hate their awful website builder and lack of email automation features. Despite that brutal website builder, Bandzoogle has helped artists make $100M in...
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Deezer is shaking things up with how it pays artists by adapting what they're calling an ‘artist centric' model. This model has some controversy because it comes from the CEO of Universal Music Group Sir Lucian Grainge. Here's what they mean by ‘artist centric‘: The theory is that this will benefit ‘real' artists the most,...
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YouGrow Promo is a digital music marketing agency providing Spotify playlist services, YouTube ad services and TikTok / Instagram influencer services. In this post i'll be reviewing their Spotify playlisting service specifically and showing you my results. Spotify playlisting is one of the riskiest forms of music marketing because you have no idea how the...
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At some point every artist will have to choose which music distribution company they use to distribute their music on streaming services. There are dozens of options out there but most artists ask if they should use CDBaby or DistroKid. In this comparison you'll learn: What CD Baby and DistroKid Have In Common Both CD...
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In this episode I chat with Noir Et Blanc Vie about being a music YouTuber, how to play the YouTube game, how sponsored videos can work, and how to diversify your music income. We also talk about synthesizers and other fun stuff along the way! If you aren't familiar with Noir Et Blanc Vie, he...
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Apple Music has finally added the ability for fans to follow their favorite artists on the platform. They're calling it ‘Favorites' instead of followers, but its the same thing. Favorites When listeners add your artist page to their favorites in Apple Music, the following happens: I think this is an awesome new feature, especially the...
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In this episode Kyle Markland and I talk about marketing your music with Facebook ads, how to get a better cost per conversion, how artists should think about risk, and more! Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew and Kyle are talking about how Facebook Ads Manager treats ToneDen and Hypeddit conversions differently,...
Read articleThe Spotify algorithm is made up of three main parts: Collaborative Filtering Collaborative filtering sounds fancy but its actually quite simple. Imagine if 100 people like Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber, but 10 of those people love Shawn Mendes while the other 90 have never listened to him. It is reasonable to think those 90...
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Evange Livanos and Zack Zarrillo own a full service music management company called Alternate Side that rakes in over 30 million Spotify streams per week. They manage artists like Caveton, Erra, Fit For A King, Chelsea Grin, guccihighwaters and many more. They do a lot more than just streaming, they support their artists. Listen on...
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In this episode of Modern Music Marketing I talk to Chaitha about how he grew his Spotify to 250,000 monthly listeners in only 2 years. We talk about Facebook ads, playlisting and his journey as an artist. Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Taking inspiration from Alex Hormozi Chaitha advised listeners to not...
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Trey Xavier started as a writer at the blog Gear Gods, grew their YouTube channel to 237k subscribers and then purchased the brand from his employer. In this video we talk about that journey, what its like owning a music blog and other music industry secrets. Listen on your favorite Podcast platform Important Points: Andrew...
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