HOW INCREASED MY AUDIENCE ON SPOTIFY MUSIC
Three years ago the northern Virginia conscious hip hop artist Lucidious was struggling to get listeners to his music.
He had about 150 monthly listeners on Spotify (no I didn’t forget a zero) with merely 45 followers, about 1,500 followers on Instagram and Facebook. And was making less than $100 a month from his music.
Fast forward to today, three years later, he now has over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (no my finger didn’t get stuck on the zero key), over 50,000 followers on Spotify, over 200,000 Likes on Facebook, over 100,000 followers on Instagram, he’s getting around 5 million streams a month, has over 100 million total streams across all platforms and is making around $20,000 a month just from his recorded music.
Oh, and he’s got no label, no manager, no publicist, no agent and is on zero official Spotify playlists.But he got this done through the help of ….
I’ll pause as you pick your jaw up from the floor.
These are real fans. Not bots. Human beings.
He showed me his Instagram inbox which is flooded with fans telling him how his music saved their lives. His music focuses on mental health awareness.
So how did he do this?
I tested out his strategies with my project and a bunch of friends’ projects in various genres and it works across the board.
This is not a fluke and this is not because of the kind of music he makes.
Yes, I know, that you’ve probably run Facebook ads in the past and you were less than thrilled with the results. Me too. I’ve WASTED thousands on Facebook ads. The Facebook Ad Manager, though, is not just for Facebook ads. And if you don’t know how to utilize it effectively, it won’t work for you. Period.
So don’t come at me with “Facebook ads don’t work!” You’re both right and wrong. And, to be honest, this strategy is not about running ads on Facebook anymore.
HE ACHIEVED THIS THROUGH THE HELP OF AN EXPERT IN SPOTIFY
But But But, Playlists!
Ok, deep breath. Despite what you might think, you do not want to bet the horse on getting on Spotify playlists. For one, you’re fighting against every label, every distributor, every manager and every artist for coveted playlist slots. There are only so many slots and only so many playlists. We are too obsessed with the playlist game. Playlists are fickle and do not get real FANS into your world. Yes, getting on a few hot playlists can skyrocket your monthly listeners and streaming numbers overnight. But these are not your fans. These are fans of the playlist.
Streams ≠ Fans. Monthly Listeners ≠ Fans
Just because you have a million streams does not mean you have a million fans. Same goes for monthly listeners. We are living in an era where there are artists with millions of streams on Spotify who cannot draw 50 people to their local shows.
These artists are making a solid living off of their Spotify streams, but don’t have any real fans. I’ve heard of artists who were able to quit their day jobs because they got included on a few hot playlists which earned them millions of streams a month (thousands of dollars a month), only to get dropped from those playlists and have to go beg for their job back when their streams dropped to virtually zero.
It’s time to break away from the obsessive playlist mentality!
One of my favorite games to play is to guess the monthly listeners to followers ratio on an artist just by looking at their Spotify profile. Spotify, of course, displays the monthly listeners number loud and proud right there on the artist’s profile. And the number of streams for the top 10 songs. But the actual followers number is quite hidden.
If an artist has no fans, but tons of streams and monthly listeners, it’s because they are on super popular playlists.
