My Journey to 2.5 Million Music Streams
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- This is the story of how I went from zero to 2.5 million music streams between Spotify and Apple Music in the past few years as an independent artist. In 2019 I decided to commit to music marketing and I tried every music promotion service I could think of, leading me to today where I mostly use Facebook ads for music marketing.
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►► My detailed course on how to use Facebook ads to market your music on Spotify: learn.generastudios.com/spotify-growth-machine
Hi Andrew, you mentioned iOS14 in your course, I have iOS15 for both iPhone and iPad - will it be a problem?
Hey! Can you explain what daily budget will actually make this happen? 3 years ago 5$ a day got me tons of streams, now I'm having trouble getting any streams from this while spending way more than that. Conversions aren't really working and traffic isn't either, even though I think my visuals for the ad are really cinematic and eye-catching. Any advice on what would help would be amazing!! Thanks!
Your story is probably the realest form of inspiration possible. Thank you Andrew
We love Andrew he the goat
Hey Ari thanks so much, I appreciate that!
@@AndrewSouthworthongg Youu the goat fr, and the most down to earth content creator and marketer out there.. you’ve helped me soo much learning from ya in the last 2 weeks.. u put out Soo muchh real and true information and marketing tactics to help indie artist for free, appreciate it gang🤞🏽🎯
Nice one bro. Went from 0 streams in july this year to over 300,000 total streams on spotify now and still counting.
How did you do it
great job. mine is about the similar number around 280k streams following andrews steps
You're the first person I've found who talks about music promotion in a real way! Every other channel I've come across on this subject is insufferable. Subscribed my dude! Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much!
Really love you being vulnerable and telling your story, it's super encouraging!
Thanks Brad I appreciate that!
This is inspirational and you are always very transparent in your other videos about budget but we need to be clear it costs a lot of money to get these numbers which is never recouped in streams. I understand all signed bands throughout history have a marketing budget thrown at their work but invariably the hope was that eventually there would be a return for the label. Yes, we can definitely get people to listen to our music and on occasion we can get engaged listeners that become our organic listeners and a potential source of referrals in the future but we are paying for people to listen to our music. I'm not naive as I understand this is a market reality for unknown artists in this new world order of domination by the streaming companies but it's just a shame. It's incredibly difficult to achieve but being put on a big and genuinely engaged playlist for free by someone who just loves your genre and your music is still the most gratifying organic growth. I hope you don't delete this post Andrew as both your channel and courses provide a great service to the community but I just want us to be realistic about what we are doing here.
You make very good points. But another perspective to keep in mind is that the music industry spends billions of dollars to promote, market and advertise their releases. Independent artists are competing with that and every other content creator for eyes and ears. We can't expect to publish our content and capture those eyes and ears without engaging in some level of promotion, marketing and advertising ourselves. And most of those activities are not free.
@@Leemanuel05 I do take your point but my comment was written with that perspective in mind as I accept that as independent artists there is a marketing spend if we are to stand a chance of getting our work to the ears of a potentially receptive audience. It's just not always viable for artists to spend thousands of dollars on year round Facebook campaigns which ultimately is never recouped. Of course you could have written the next Bohemian Rhapsody or Blinding Light to use a more contemporary reference in which case you blow up go viral and move to a Mansion in LA... so the Ad spend worked out! 😎🤣
@@handheldhalodatalogging1711 life is about choices. If you're serious about your music, you'll find a way to budget for promotion. It is what it is.
@@TheClearMediaContent That feels like a very neat but naive and simplistic summation. Not all independent artist's have TH-cam Channels or highly paid jobs to fund the luxury of a 4 figure Ad Campaign that can often end up being nothing more than a vanity project. There's a balance that each artist must find for themselves, particularly those with families and a poorly paid job. A £100 Ad campaign may have to suffice as a £1k one is simply not an option.
@@HandHeldHalo pay with time or pay with money- you're gonna pay one way or another. Seems like maybe you're in "excuses" stage of why you aren't promoting your music. I've been there. Know that it's your choice- you can wait for something to happen, or you can make something happen. I'm not here to sugar coat shit.
It’s awesome to know you’re a mechanical engineer working on music. I’m also a mechanical engineer that is transitioning to doing music full time.
Thanks for all the help and sharing your journey, I too studied mechanical engineering and I spent a year studying the game and how to get my music to more people. It sounds like we hit a lot of the same hurdles trying to figure it out. Learning that it was all part of the process. Seems like it’s just like the weed out classes in college cuz those who make it past that usually succeed. Here’s to more plaques on the wall
This is the same path I’ve been on. Love this energy and your videos!
Appreciate the content mate respect. Very fundamentally transparent the technicals are overrated and also part of the consultancy thing I would imagine either way much appreciated
Thanks!!
Thank you, Andrew, sounds like you did a home work for all musicians work form home. Great advice!
Thanks Elena!!
Great content as usual!, you really inspired me to get things going in a different direction with my music.
Bro, your screams on "Nothing's Over" are ... so good. Chester bennington style!! I must check out your screaming tutorials now!
Thanks George I appreciate that!
Congrats man!! Been a huge help to me! Also your music is great dude keep it up!!
Thanks Griffin!
With Facebook Ads I always get 1000 conversions and 1 play on Spotify. Nothing helps... It's frustrating...
Good vid, but I was hoping you would go into EXACTLY how much you have spent in total to get 2.5 mill.
Like to show if it is profitable in the end or not
I’m very happy for your success Andrew. The information on your channel on music marketing is gold. Thank you.
You should do a tutorial on vocal processing. Your vocals are really good. So is your music. Great job man. 👍
Thanks for posting content like this - very uplifting to see!
You’ve helped me a lot. Really appreciate your time. This video helps I am on a similar journey. Slow and steady for the win!!
Hey Andrew! Just wanted to say thank you so much for all your helpful vids.
I currently have three FB ads running that lead people directly to a song on Spotify. I set this up before learning how to use the pixel/conversion process. I decided to leave them running for a few days and so far the CPC is something insane like .1 cent average for each click. I wonder if you might be able to tell me, are these likely mostly bots and/or clicks that likely aren’t even leading to streams? I was excited at first but now I’m skeptical.
Thanks for taking the time to read!
Andrew, great video!!!! Ive been following you on and off for awhile. My question is - do you still use Toneden? I had some success with it but I believe i ditched it too early.
Thanks! I use ToneDen's landing pages but I don't use any of their paid features.
Thank you very much for sharing your story! And also thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience! Means much to me and others. Keep on going. Greetings from The Netherlands.
Thank you bro, you’re a true inspiration 🙏🏾❤️
This so real, it hurts! Thank you for sharing your journey
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!!
Thanks Andrew, it’s refreshing to get real life experience from a musician rather than someone who is a pure marketing person🤙
Thanks for posting this, it gives us independent artist a more realistic approach when it comes to marketing our art
I think it would be great to know exact or close amount of budget spent on ads and campaign lengths for achieving this in a year? Would that be possible?
Yeah I came here to write this. Because I think a decent amount of us don't really have 1000s of dollars to spend on campaigns
Hey Andrew,
Thank you for the videos! I've been doing this what felt alone when really I wasn't haha. Keep it up and you got my support!
Love your story! God bless🙏🏽🎶
Watching this video for the 3rd time now, very inspiring! Great work Andrew!
Thanks so much! Glad you dig it.
he is just trying to sell his course this artists is full of bots
Congrats. I feel like everything you talk about is similar to my own success. I was running ads on Facebook til one of my songs took off on discover weekly. Now that song has over 1.3 million streams and I have another song about to cross 1 million. Keep it up.
Hey how much did you spend before discover weekly kicked in?
Did you pitch any of the songs to spotify playlists?
@@AS-qu7wz probably around a thousand dollars
@@Ofego i pitched all of my songs but none of them made it to an editorial playlist yet
@@therobbdrew what was your daily budget set at for your song that made it to the discover playlist? Congrats btw!
Interesting stuff dude, thanks for your work :)
Hey Andrew , Its Ajit here. I am a Singer/Songwriter/Producer From India. i have been watching your videos from the past few days. they are really helpful to understand. Just wanted to ask if you could make a Video of how can an Artist like me can Market our Song which are majorly in Hindi , which kind of put us on a step down while promoting. How can we Get heard if we keep India as the Target Audience.
Love From India.
Congrats Andrew!!! Very inspiring stuff
you just got about 6 views, and a new sub just from this video from me
Thank you for this🙏🏼
Hey thanks so much! Glad you liked the video.
you are an inspiration andrew. mine is about 280k streams on spotify. my apple
music is not working as well
as yours too. did you target apple music as well
in ur ads?
thank you so much for all the helpful videos that you post bro , invaluable knowledge on a subject that is often neglected. i hope that you are successful in your goals man
Amazing. I really liked hearing your non music background too before you started taking music more seriously. Are you still working in engineering too? I'm still trying to find the balance between music and my day job (degree in medicine)
Thanks for being so real and giving real life experiences. This is really inspiring and helpful. 🤗
I relate to this so much
Is playlist push suspect? You kind of implied it but I thought the two more reputable ones were playlist push and submit hub?
Its basically just as reputable / legit as SubmitHub. The issue I have with it is that they pay curators 2-10X more on PP as SH for doing the same work, so for artists you get the same end result for much more money. I also feel like SubmitHub puts more care into curator quality than PlaylistPush.
SubmitHub is better than PlaylistPush in every single way I can think of which is why i've only used PlaylistPush once and i've used SubmitHub dozens of times as an artist.
This is a great insight, I usually struggle thinking of a budget per single for my Facebook ads, what is your rough budget for them?
thank you so much for sharing these information .
Man keep going I love your stuff fr
Loved so much the song "Nothing's Over"! Really enjoyed Linkin Park vibes!
I'm a big fan. I am going to hire you for a consulting session. So I am releasing a song a day on year through Spotify. It started on September 4. I have a collaborator on each track. I want advice on a marketing plan. I've worked with the Blossom Agency and Indie Academy. I have a team member using Submit Hub. I have worked with Playlist Push. I'm thinking Toneden might be a really good way to go. I looked into Burstimo but I don't have confidence in them. I am distributed by Symphonic but I'll likely switch to Ingrooves. I just got a new manager. I really respect you and have watched a ton of your videos. I'm promoting posts on Instagram and responding to every comment and like - and that seems to be growing a base but not translating to Spotify.
I really like you! Thank you. God bless you
Thanks for sharing your story!
Hey Andrew! Love your videos! I have a quick question for you. Do you have any idea why some of my ad sets are highlighted green on my ad manager screen? I’ve done my own research and I can’t seem to figure out why.
Thanks! My initial guess is you’re probably talking about ads that are in draft. If something isn’t published it will be in draft, and usually be tinted green.
Yes!! Finally proof that it doesn't matter if your music is good or not, it all depends on how much you spend. Spending good money marketing is key, not the song.
Well that explains a lot of the top music in the charts, that are done with synth drums and vocals with autotune. Thank you for this proof that spending money gets everyone heard.
Now, what is my return =ratio. You mentioned you spent a couple of hundred dollars on Facebook ads. were these couple of hundreds spent, once a week, once a month. Will it take me 2 years as well to get 1 million streams?
Also like i said what is the ratio. Every 100 dollars I give Facebook, I will make 5, 10, 20 dollars back from Spotify and Apple? what's the ratio?
The quality of the music actually matters a LOT. Remember these are real people deciding to click on your ads or not, so the better the song the more easily people will click. But at the same time, “good” is relative and genre dependent, and you don’t need a perfect song for people to love it.
The fact that spending money gets you heard is obvious. But getting a bad song heard won’t really do much long term for the artist.
Return can vary a lot. I’ve had several songs actually profit considerably from this. I’ve also had songs lose most of the money I put in. If profit is your goal with Spotify promotion you’re thinking about it wrong though, it’s top of funnel fan acquisition. You can make money but it’s a long term game.
@@AndrewSouthworth not sure about that, I had about a year when I didn't make any money at all on Spotify, but then I'll have to do was tell my personal people in my Facebook the song and where was released and it made money long-term not sure more views at one time for sure will just make you more money, but as far as the good quality I know what you mean but just basic mastery we're not talking about the actual song, the song could be irrelevant, the mastering just to make sure it's equal to good release loudness quality that's basic, would sell sometimes just the song itself, so if it's a good song or a bad song just put money behind it, and you should definitely advertise it, but again what was the ratio percentage?
The song quality definitely matters a lot. But remember song quality is subjective, so the quality relative to your audience is what matters most. You can get results with mediocre music but it won't perform nearly as well if the song is actually great, and matches the audience you're targeting well.
The ratio percentage depends a lot. I've had several songs profit, one gave me a 3X ROAS. Other songs only have a 0.5 ROAS, others have 1 ROAS, some have 0.2 ROAS. It depends on the song and at what time period you look.
Great method! I'm having trouble getting my music noticed as well but I've had minimal success. Have you done a video covering getting your music noticed on TH-cam?
I've noticed with us at least that doing ads for Spotify have inadvertently grown our TH-cam channel as well. If people like you they seem to seek you out on all platforms.
Make an official video for a song you feel people would like and run youtube ad for it.
Hey Andrew, did you verify your business manager ? cause im wondering how you can consistently run Ads without getting disabled, i heard that verifying your business manager Gets you more trust from Facebook. Could you please make a video about it 🙏🏾!
We love you bro
Hey Andrew! Thanks for the video. Do you know how long someone needs to listen before Spotify counts it as a stream?
Hey! It’s 30 seconds.
@@AndrewSouthworth So, I'm seeing something different. I just released a new song and I tested the live counter by playing my song from my own Spotify account. The live counter stream count only went up 1 when I was 3/4 of the way through the song at (3:05).
No matter how hard I try. I get 0 streams on my spotify using Facebook ads. I have spent more than $400 on it. But results are nothing. I saw your last video about fixing the issue. I did it all and seems to be working for me. Andrew will you run a campaign for me?
Hot tip. Your music has to be relatively good to begin with, or this won’t work.
@@MaximusWhyman that's not the case bruh. There must be some technical issues with Facebook or my tracking. When I promote my track organically it get streams but when I use fb ads just don't perform at all. I will use google ads in the next month
@@VishalPawarMusic Ok, brah….. let’s say your music is good, your targeting is off. Maybe try and ask your fans what comparable artists you sound like.
@@MaximusWhyman I know my music it's in tropical house niche. That's not the case. I received over 2500 conversions but zero streams. That's something problem thing. I have been digital marketer since 2012. I have sold tons of products online using fb ads for my clients but zero streams are not Diagestable after receiving 2500 conversions on my landing page. There must be some technical issue with Facebook or my landing page.
curious: do u play shows?
I haven't played shows since I was in high school. Always loved studio work and writing much more than performing, so the idea of doing things online only has always appealed to me. Not saying i'll never do them, but at the moment I have no desire to.
You mentioned your budget for Neutron was $150-200 - was that the whole budget, or a monthly budget? Thanks!
It was the total budget
@@AndrewSouthworth so - you ran it for a month or so?
how much money is a healthy budget?
I feel this!
dope!!
Are you ditching albums to focus on single releasing?
did you use Instagram video ads to promote you music?
Technically yes. I use Facebook ads but on FB ads I choose Instagram placements.
@@AndrewSouthworth cuz for my online music essay, I'm writing about Instagram ads, and my teacher wante me to find an example of a musician who used Instagram video ad successfully, would you be able to tell me how instagram video ads helped your music? :)
How do you get a Spotify artist radio
How can I hire you
My first 25k on spotify 😎
Bro but honestly, 2.5M streams is like 10k dollars at best. You can't even live off that. Is this worth it or what ?
For most people streaming isn’t their full income or even the biggest income source. It’s often just a gateway for gaining fans and everything else in the artists funnel focuses on monetization.
I had that 100 streams in the first year aswell haha
Yo Andrew get back to me man I feel as if I’m just wasting hundreds of dollars running these conversion ads and traffic ads to Spotify I’m getting clicks and conversions but nothing is showing on Spotify please help before I lose more money 💯
👌👌
Personally I discoverer a lot of great artists when they’d follow then unfollow
that's super cool but I don't like the fact that you are selling courses, Im out
Well thats just silly.