Practical guides and analysis from Andrew Southworth on guides, 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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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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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...
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The first step to getting people to listen to your music is to release it on all major platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and more. Whether you're a new artist and you want to release your first song, or you've been making music for a while but never finalized it and released it,...
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Many artists have seen their favorite artists using a relatively new release strategy called the waterfall release. However it's not initially clear what the benefits of this strategy are and how you could even do it with your music distributor. In this article i'm going to explain what a water release strategy is, why its...
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I've found Facebook ads to be the most effective way of growing my presence on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. It allows us to show our music to people interested in similar artists / genres and have access to Spotify on the Facebook / Instagram / Messenger ecosystem of placements. For my own...
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Every music marketing campaign should include some type of organic music marketing strategy even if you're utilizing paid methods as well. While organic strategies can be slow they generally compound over time and will typically also improve the result of your paid marketing campaigns. What is organic music marketing? Organic music marketing is a strategy...
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 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...
Read articleI 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...
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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 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...
Read article
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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AI generated artwork has been all the rage this year, largely due to the hype around DALL-E 2. While DALL-E 2 is now open, at first it was a closed beta so I ended up tinkering with Midjourney instead. If you have no idea what i'm talking about, AI generated artwork is SUPER cool. You...
Read articleEvery music marketing campaign should include some type of organic music marketing strategy even if you're utilizing paid methods as well. While organic strategies can be slow they generally compound over time and will typically also improve the result of your paid marketing campaigns. What is organic music marketing? Organic music marketing is a strategy...
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Facebook ads are one of the most effective ways to promote your music as an independent artist, big or small. There are several types of campaigns you can run, but many artists want to use Facebook ads to promote their music on Spotify and other streaming services (and they should, it works incredibly well). One...
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Releasing high quality music on a consistent basis is one of the most important aspects of any music marketing strategy. The rate you release music will not only determine how well you hold your audiences attention, but also how you time your social media, advertising and influencer / curator marketing. Due to this importance many...
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Did you know you can schedule Instagram and Facebook posts, images, videos and stories for free? There are a lot of services that will charge a subscription fee to do this exact task and a lot of artists use them, but for many people it's not necessary. Some of you may be wondering why someone...
Read articleI 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 articleThe first step to getting people to listen to your music is to release it on all major platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and more. Whether you're a new artist and you want to release your first song, or you've been making music for a while but never finalized it and released it,...
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The first time I went to order custom CD's for one of my albums I found the process overwhelming, and I made a lot of mistakes. Now that i've gone through the motions several times I thought i'd document it in the hopes of making your life easier. Here's the summary of the whole process...
Read articleMany artists have seen their favorite artists using a relatively new release strategy called the waterfall release. However it's not initially clear what the benefits of this strategy are and how you could even do it with your music distributor. In this article i'm going to explain what a water release strategy is, why its...
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I'm a big fan of using Facebook ads and YouTube ads to promote my music, but that doesn't mean I don't also take advantage of free music marketing strategies. In fact if you only use paid advertising and do nothing else, thats not good either. Plus many people can't afford to spend money marketing their...
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Spotify's Release Radar is an algorithmic playlist updated every Friday that only includes music released in the past 28 days. Fans that follow you will get your music in their Release Radar, but if your song gets enough traction in the first 28 days Spotify may put your song on Release Radar playlists of listeners...
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There are a LOT of ways to waste your music marketing budget nowadays. As an independent artist you probably aren't work with the biggest budget, so i'm going to share the 7 worst ways to spend your marketing budget as an independent artist. Keep in mind not all of these are necessarily bad as a...
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Even though Spotify is king of the castle at the moment when it comes to online streaming, Apple Music still has over 72 million subscribers. Plus Apple Music pays more on average per stream than Spotify does. But how do you actually market your music on Apple Music? In this post i'm going to go...
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Spotify Marquee is a native advertising format inside of Spotify to premium users and free users. You can show a pop-up message inside the Spotify app showcasing your latest release to people who have engaged with your music, and you only pay for the people who click your ad. This is what it looks like:...
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Spotify for Artists is a required tool for any music artist, so they can see how their music is performing on Spotify. One great feature of Spotify for Artists is the live stream counter, which gives you live stats so you know exactly how your new song is performing. Some people have issues with this...
Read articleI've found Facebook ads to be the most effective way of growing my presence on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. It allows us to show our music to people interested in similar artists / genres and have access to Spotify on the Facebook / Instagram / Messenger ecosystem of placements. For my own...
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If you want to be able to use Facebook ads to run conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify and other music platforms, you need to be able to own a domain name and properly set it up for iOS14. Prior to April 2021 you could run Facebook conversion ads for any website you...
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Last week I was launching the debut single for a new band, and I really wanted to be able to setup our profile and pitch our first song to Spotify editorial playlists before our first release came out. However most music distributors don't allow you to make your Spotify for Artists profile until you have...
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