How do I use Spotify's algorithms to grow?

If you run an ad, which sends a person through to listen to one track, one time you'll get one stream. For that stream, you might earn half a penny, on a good day.

Whereas if you get someone to follow you, that means that they're likely to keep getting your songs in their Release Radar playlists. There's the possibility of a stream every time you release something. Plus, listeners are more likely to keep getting your music in other algorithmic playlists. That means you get multiple streams and an ongoing basis.

If someone also saves it to their Library that will increase the number of streams. Then there's also the added impact of training the Spotify Discover Weekly algorithm effectively so that other people get it in their playlists. The impact of following you means there is a possibility for lots of streams, rather than just one.

Follower count is one of the key metrics that artists need to grow. When I was in digital at record labels, I’d be in meetings at Spotify and Apple. There, as well as in conversations with other labels, we heard time and again about the importance of Spotify follower count. It is one of the most important metrics that the editorial teams look at to decide who gets onto Spotify’s own branded playlists. Follower count also has a big influence on the Discover Weekly and Release Radar algorithms.

The other benefit is that, the more followers you have, the more data the algorithm has access to. It can analyse your follower count and the group of say 100 or 1000 people are into this artists’ music. With that it can then go find other people who use Spotify and are likely to be interested in your music. And then those people will be shown your music and your music put in their Discover Weekly playlist etc.

There are lots of these tools which basically list out all the links to the song or album on all the different streaming services it's available on.

The problem with these is that there's a huge drop off rate at each stage. There's various figures that suggest maybe 70- 80% of people stop at the point of clicking on a smartURL and see the different options. So, they won't actually then click through again to Spotify music. You've managed to get people to click on your profile or ad, but because there is then another click, you’ve lost them.

So what Feeds ads try to do is target people that are likely to have a Spotify account and just send them straight to Spotify.

The downside is that people might not have a Spotify account. The upside is that if they do, they'll end up straight into the app already be logged in, and they can listen and follow.

You can try running Spotify growth campaigns on Feed, to help grow your Spotify following further. You can read more about how they work here.