Hi Andrew. I just wanted to let you know we got on discover weekly today with a popularity score of 26. Thank you so so much for your content and help. We couldn’t have done it without you!!!
Are there any of these songs that you are net positive on the return of investment? And if so, how long does it take for you to go positive after investing in these add campaigns?
Just a few days after watching this video, my track got on discover weekly. BUT: it only had 2500 streams (high save rate) and a popularity of 7%. So there is that. :P
@@AndrewSouthworth honestly. It can really happen whenever too if it starts to gain traction. Also update for release radar. my latest song is at 28% popularity and did not get on release radar on week 3
@@AndrewSouthworth Update: my most recent song that’s been out for 5 weeks has been consistently at 31-33% popularity. It has not gotten on discover weekly at all and got release radar for 2 weeks only, so there’s definitely more to it than that.
Is the popularity score based on comparison of your other songs? I put out a new song while the previous one was still doing well - the newer song hasn't had the kind of algorithmic plays I expected
Hmm I don't think so actually. I work with some larger artists with big followings and it seems to be directly correlated to how many streams and how much engagement the song has gotten in the past 28 days. In other words their popularity score is higher than mine, even if the song in question is doing badly for them.
So there are two popularity scores one for the song and one for the artist. Popularity is solely based on listening numbers, nothing to do with saves and skips. The artist popularity score is calculated on an weighted average of all your songs. So if you have one massive hit but your other 100 songs had zero streams then your artist popularity score wont be that high.
@@vxd If that were true, then you could easily get into Discover Weekly with just playlisting and getting lots of streams, but everybody who has tried that knows it doesn't work. And we also know that the follower numbers are a factor, but not in the way you are explaining. Andrew has worked with artists with less than 100 followers and with many songs on the profile that have done poorly who still got a Release Radar push through Facebook advertising after having 100s of engaged listeners the first week of release. The artist had zero popularity before the release. The proportion of engaged listeners to followers the first week of release also seems to be a factor. The more followers you have, the lower the % it will be with the same level of advertising. It seems to be easier to trigger a Release Radar push for an unpopular artist (with a highly successful Facebook ad campaign), not harder.
Hey Andrew, is discover weekly similar to release radar where your song can only get placed within 4 weeks of the release? Or can you get on discover weekly after a month? Thanks for this video!
@@ThaGhostDawg yeah that’s what I was thinking but I wanted to know like a ball park figure for algorithmic trip. I think Tom says around 2000 but wasn’t sure if Andrew had a figure.
This is an important video and I agree with what your saying about song popularity of 30 being a trigger for DW, however you are not guaranteed to get on it the first Monday, it might take two or even three Mondays before your on it, so the pressure is sometimes on to keep that score high. I completely disagree about 20 being a trigger point for release radar though , my latest song "Good thing" didn't even have a 10% popularity but it got over 1000 streams from the algorithmic release radar. So with RR there are other factors other than popularity. Popularity simply refers to stream numbers and not those other factors like saves, skips etc.
There are two levels of Release Radar. One is when you get on your own follower's Release Radar. It's not automatic. You have to reach some threshold of engaged listeners that includes saves and repeat listens to even get to your own followers' Release Radar the Friday after release because they are likely following other artists that also have releases and there are only 30 slots. The "Release Radar Push" is something else. That's when you get pushed to the Release Radars beyond your own followers. Your song can go to 10,000 Release Radars even if you only have 50 followers. The goal here is to get the extra Release Radar push. The theory is that the threshold to go from just your followers to an extra push beyond is the popularity score. The push often gets you to the level of popularity (because you need a lot of streams in a short time to get over 30%) where you can enter Discover Weekly. Our song right now with the highest popularity score does not have the highest total number of streams, but it does have the highest 28-day streams as well as the highest save rate. If only streams mattered, then people could get into Discover Weekly through playlisting, but we know that doesn't work.
@@vxd Tom Dupree has a video where he tracks the popularity score daily (on the developer site, not Musicstax) the first week and his songs that have been over 20% have gotten the big Release Radar push. We are going to track it next week for our next release. Some have said their songs with 20%+ got the push and some have said theirs didn't. It's just one more thing to track to see if it makes a difference. I'm guessing that the ratio of followers to engaged listeners the first week is also a factor, but I haven't seen anyone track it. Maybe it only matters when the ratio is over 100%.
@@onyxxproductions8187 well my most recent song barely scraped 10% popularity and got a RR algorithmic push on week 2 and 3. More than 1000 streams just RR and less then 1000 nonRR. Decent save rate nothing special though. The only thing I did different was better targeting with my ads.
Fun fact, my 22 minute long prog rock epic Mycelium Days got on Discover Weekly yesterday with 10% popularity and 25% saverate (last 28 days). Only 2 listeners and 4 streams though... AIs work in mysterious ways :-D Thanks for teaching me how to promote it!
Yeah, we had this mysterious 2 listeners show up on Discover Weekly also on the second Monday with a popularity score well below 30%. It was very odd because it didn't show up in the playlist section until Friday. My guess is that it was put on a few DW as a test and the people didn't listen to it until later in the week. Someone on Reddit had this same thing happen. Just 2 listeners.
@@onyxxproductions8187 Interesting, yeah, mine got 7 listeners and 15 streams by the end of the week, then nothing the next, so I guess the algo decided it wasn't popular enough to push for another week...
Thanks for sharing, this is super helpful! I released a song about a month ago and it was my first time using fb ads. The campaign wasn't all that successful cost-wise but even with a popularity score of 12% I still got a SLIGHT Release Radar boost a couple weeks after release. Excited to try it all again when I release my next song!
just promoted a single with $200 budget and after 2 weeks got a popularity score of 20 and listener/save ratio of 70%. and a listener/stream ratio of 6 and didn't get into Release Radar or other algorithmic streams whatsoever.
What day of the week did you release your song? Also how early did you upload it and pitch it. Someone said that uploading a song 1-2 weeks prior is good for RR, so that Spotify is able to gather your data. However, may also depend on your distributor but I'm not quite that sure about it
I had a song with a 90% save ratio and tiny RR boost. Save ratio is not the most important factor from what I can see, but you don't want your save rate to be too low. Other factors like high skip rates could potentially be a factor or even how many playlists it's on and the type of playlists. If all the people who listened to your track also listened to the same artists then its likely that the algo puts you on the RR of someone who is not following you who also likes that artist. If there is no similar artist then possibly Spotify doesn't find the right people to send it to.
Your videos helped me a lot, thanks man. I'm just wondering what you think about targeting only the US/Canada vs. all Spotify countries? Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on one place?
@@AndrewSouthworth I wouldn't mind doing a consultation call with you if that's open... I've seen some algorithimic boost but nothing near what you have achieved. My last release is at 8k streams from 1.9k listeners with a 45% save rate. All I got is a little bit of radio and a small amount of release radar. My top performing song is at 33k streams w/ 5.7k listeners and 44% save rate. I got about 1.4k release radar, 900 radio, 900 discover weekly. Not sure what else I can do, Have successfully done a few ads at 15-30ish cents per conversion (depending on geography).
Three weeks ago I launched a new psych rock project, last week I got release radar with 110 streams 88 listeners so far and last Monday I got discover weekly with 22 streams and listeners. Song was at 12 popularity score last Thursday and is currently at 16. Currently at 1.3k streams, my cpc is fluctuating all over from 1.30 to 21 day to day. Weird numbers and outcome over here
That's the first I've heard of a song getting DW with such a low popularity score, possibly its having very strong performance in other areas such as save and skip rates.
Recently found out about “popularity score”. Here’s a question for you: If the overall popularity score is low, does this make it harder for a new song to grow algorythmically ? Thanks in advance. I’m just wondering if dropping a song under my old name with a bunch of tracks uploaded already or try starting a new artist page.
From what I’ve seen, if anything having a low popularity score will make a song with a high score more likely to do better. If Taylor swift drops a song and it only gets a 40 in a week then it’s a fail, if we drop one and it’s a 40 in a week it’s a massive success.
@@AndrewSouthworth so no point of creating another artist page and starting all over with better produced material? Also would you recommend to mix genres and languages with one artist profile or is it better to create different projects for each genre and each language? Algorithmically. Would love to know what you think. Thank you.
Hey Andrew, it's friday right now and one of my songs has a 35% popularity rate? I'm running facebook ads but do you have any guideline of how much extra daily budget would be smart to spend to give it a good boost for a potential discover weekly push on monday? I can understand nothing is guaranteed but I wonder if you experienced any link between a daily budget and the popularity rate! Kind regards, Lucas
Hi Andrew, I noticed that the same song (same ISRC) has different popularity scores depending on the release that it's on. I used the waterfall strategy, therefore the same song is on various releases. Now I am afraid that they take away the popularity from itself, because the listeners are spread out on the different releases. Is this a real disadvantage of the waterfall strategy?
In our experience, if you get a push, it can stay drop off after a week but to a lower number, not completely. Most of our releases have gotten on some Release Radars every Friday, but people may not listen to it for days, so you can see new listeners every day. I track the Release Radar numbers every day to keep on eye on this. After our 2.8k Release Radar push (2.8k over a week's time), we only got 43 new Release Radar listeners the next Friday. If you go on the playlist tab in Spotify for Artists, you can see the total number of Release Radar listeners. You have to check it every day to see how many new ones you got. They show up the day after the listener streams your song.
How can my new single release have 243 saves BUT only 220 listeners?? I don’t get that, have some clicked to Spotify and saved my song for later but haven’t listened to it yet maybe?
@@cru313 I once had a similar save rate in the high 90s but the song got hardly any RR algorithmic push, so potentially they could be bots and spotify knows that.
Is toneden down for you today too? It's not working at all and sometimes loading once after page refresh. Of course all smart links are down as well... What a joke.
The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/andrewsouthworth04211
Thanks a lot for sharing
Hi Andrew. I just wanted to let you know we got on discover weekly today with a popularity score of 26. Thank you so so much for your content and help. We couldn’t have done it without you!!!
Congrats on the sponsor!
Thanks!
I watched Tom’s video a while ago and yours really cemented that info in my head. You both are crushing it. Thank you for sharing it.
which one is it exactly
could you link it
My track Memphis just reached 30% of popularity index. I curious if I get a discover weakly hm :)
Are there any of these songs that you are net positive on the return of investment? And if so, how long does it take for you to go positive after investing in these add campaigns?
just followed you and i do apprecciate your videos about ad campains. Very helpful, thank you for this🙏🏼
Just a few days after watching this video, my track got on discover weekly. BUT: it only had 2500 streams (high save rate) and a popularity of 7%. So there is that. :P
yea its just weird, i usually get when my song gets 35%
Sounds about right. The only song of mine that’s at 33% has been on discover weekly literally every week since September
Its crazy how long songs can stay on DW. One of my side projects has had a song on it for 18 months haha.
@@AndrewSouthworth I have a song that was in it for 3+ years, dropped out after that but has now started returning again
@@AndrewSouthworth honestly. It can really happen whenever too if it starts to gain traction. Also update for release radar. my latest song is at 28% popularity and did not get on release radar on week 3
@@AndrewSouthworth Update: my most recent song that’s been out for 5 weeks has been consistently at 31-33% popularity. It has not gotten on discover weekly at all and got release radar for 2 weeks only, so there’s definitely more to it than that.
Great vid, very interesting to see the stats and how it impacts the Spotify algorithm
Is the popularity score based on comparison of your other songs? I put out a new song while the previous one was still doing well - the newer song hasn't had the kind of algorithmic plays I expected
Hmm I don't think so actually. I work with some larger artists with big followings and it seems to be directly correlated to how many streams and how much engagement the song has gotten in the past 28 days. In other words their popularity score is higher than mine, even if the song in question is doing badly for them.
So there are two popularity scores one for the song and one for the artist. Popularity is solely based on listening numbers, nothing to do with saves and skips. The artist popularity score is calculated on an weighted average of all your songs. So if you have one massive hit but your other 100 songs had zero streams then your artist popularity score wont be that high.
@@vxd If that were true, then you could easily get into Discover Weekly with just playlisting and getting lots of streams, but everybody who has tried that knows it doesn't work. And we also know that the follower numbers are a factor, but not in the way you are explaining. Andrew has worked with artists with less than 100 followers and with many songs on the profile that have done poorly who still got a Release Radar push through Facebook advertising after having 100s of engaged listeners the first week of release. The artist had zero popularity before the release. The proportion of engaged listeners to followers the first week of release also seems to be a factor. The more followers you have, the lower the % it will be with the same level of advertising. It seems to be easier to trigger a Release Radar push for an unpopular artist (with a highly successful Facebook ad campaign), not harder.
@@onyxxproductions8187 this is true in my experience to get DW you need not only 30 + popularity but strong save and low skip numbers.
Yay sponsor
Hey Andrew, is discover weekly similar to release radar where your song can only get placed within 4 weeks of the release? Or can you get on discover weekly after a month? Thanks for this video!
Discover weekly can happen anytime!
Does the streams on the song come into play? Or does it entirely depend on the popularity?
my guess on it is that it all goes hand in hand, a mix of everything
@@ThaGhostDawg yeah that’s what I was thinking but I wanted to know like a ball park figure for algorithmic trip. I think Tom says around 2000 but wasn’t sure if Andrew had a figure.
This is an important video and I agree with what your saying about song popularity of 30 being a trigger for DW, however you are not guaranteed to get on it the first Monday, it might take two or even three Mondays before your on it, so the pressure is sometimes on to keep that score high. I completely disagree about 20 being a trigger point for release radar though , my latest song "Good thing" didn't even have a 10% popularity but it got over 1000 streams from the algorithmic release radar. So with RR there are other factors other than popularity. Popularity simply refers to stream numbers and not those other factors like saves, skips etc.
There are two levels of Release Radar. One is when you get on your own follower's Release Radar. It's not automatic. You have to reach some threshold of engaged listeners that includes saves and repeat listens to even get to your own followers' Release Radar the Friday after release because they are likely following other artists that also have releases and there are only 30 slots.
The "Release Radar Push" is something else. That's when you get pushed to the Release Radars beyond your own followers. Your song can go to 10,000 Release Radars even if you only have 50 followers. The goal here is to get the extra Release Radar push. The theory is that the threshold to go from just your followers to an extra push beyond is the popularity score. The push often gets you to the level of popularity (because you need a lot of streams in a short time to get over 30%) where you can enter Discover Weekly.
Our song right now with the highest popularity score does not have the highest total number of streams, but it does have the highest 28-day streams as well as the highest save rate. If only streams mattered, then people could get into Discover Weekly through playlisting, but we know that doesn't work.
@@onyxxproductions8187 popularity score is about number of streams over time. RR push is not related to popularity score based on my own experience.
@@vxd Tom Dupree has a video where he tracks the popularity score daily (on the developer site, not Musicstax) the first week and his songs that have been over 20% have gotten the big Release Radar push. We are going to track it next week for our next release. Some have said their songs with 20%+ got the push and some have said theirs didn't. It's just one more thing to track to see if it makes a difference. I'm guessing that the ratio of followers to engaged listeners the first week is also a factor, but I haven't seen anyone track it. Maybe it only matters when the ratio is over 100%.
@@onyxxproductions8187 well my most recent song barely scraped 10% popularity and got a RR algorithmic push on week 2 and 3. More than 1000 streams just RR and less then 1000 nonRR. Decent save rate nothing special though. The only thing I did different was better targeting with my ads.
Fun fact, my 22 minute long prog rock epic Mycelium Days got on Discover Weekly yesterday with 10% popularity and 25% saverate (last 28 days). Only 2 listeners and 4 streams though... AIs work in mysterious ways :-D
Thanks for teaching me how to promote it!
Yeah, we had this mysterious 2 listeners show up on Discover Weekly also on the second Monday with a popularity score well below 30%. It was very odd because it didn't show up in the playlist section until Friday. My guess is that it was put on a few DW as a test and the people didn't listen to it until later in the week. Someone on Reddit had this same thing happen. Just 2 listeners.
@@onyxxproductions8187 Interesting, yeah, mine got 7 listeners and 15 streams by the end of the week, then nothing the next, so I guess the algo decided it wasn't popular enough to push for another week...
Thanks for sharing, this is super helpful! I released a song about a month ago and it was my first time using fb ads. The campaign wasn't all that successful cost-wise but even with a popularity score of 12% I still got a SLIGHT Release Radar boost a couple weeks after release. Excited to try it all again when I release my next song!
just promoted a single with $200 budget and after 2 weeks got a popularity score of 20 and listener/save ratio of 70%. and a listener/stream ratio of 6 and didn't get into Release Radar or other algorithmic streams whatsoever.
What day of the week did you release your song? Also how early did you upload it and pitch it. Someone said that uploading a song 1-2 weeks prior is good for RR, so that Spotify is able to gather your data. However, may also depend on your distributor but I'm not quite that sure about it
I had a song with a 90% save ratio and tiny RR boost. Save ratio is not the most important factor from what I can see, but you don't want your save rate to be too low. Other factors like high skip rates could potentially be a factor or even how many playlists it's on and the type of playlists. If all the people who listened to your track also listened to the same artists then its likely that the algo puts you on the RR of someone who is not following you who also likes that artist. If there is no similar artist then possibly Spotify doesn't find the right people to send it to.
Your videos helped me a lot, thanks man. I'm just wondering what you think about targeting only the US/Canada vs. all Spotify countries? Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on one place?
You are just such an awesome guy Andrew. I have been really enjoying your content as well as your music :))
Thanks to you seeing the best results since toneden pre IOS update! Thanksyou!
How can I have a meeting with you I’m looking to hire iyou if possible
Just so people know I got my first push on Radar with 765 streams in a week ..then another push the following Friday.
Nice, congrats!
I was hoping you’d cover this. Thank you
Where is the video discussing how u can get details such as save rate repeat listens etc?
Save rate is just saves / listeners and repeat listen is just streams / listeners.
@@AndrewSouthworth I wouldn't mind doing a consultation call with you if that's open... I've seen some algorithimic boost but nothing near what you have achieved. My last release is at 8k streams from 1.9k listeners with a 45% save rate. All I got is a little bit of radio and a small amount of release radar. My top performing song is at 33k streams w/ 5.7k listeners and 44% save rate. I got about 1.4k release radar, 900 radio, 900 discover weekly. Not sure what else I can do, Have successfully done a few ads at 15-30ish cents per conversion (depending on geography).
Three weeks ago I launched a new psych rock project, last week I got release radar with 110 streams 88 listeners so far and last Monday I got discover weekly with 22 streams and listeners. Song was at 12 popularity score last Thursday and is currently at 16. Currently at 1.3k streams, my cpc is fluctuating all over from 1.30 to 21 day to day. Weird numbers and outcome over here
That's the first I've heard of a song getting DW with such a low popularity score, possibly its having very strong performance in other areas such as save and skip rates.
@@vxd Not sure how to figure my skip rate, my current sfa stats are streams:1.5k, listeners: 545, views: 460, saves:336, - since 3/26/21
HI Andrew, may be a silly question but how can i find the song id please?
Recently found out about “popularity score”.
Here’s a question for you:
If the overall popularity score is low, does this make it harder for a new song to grow algorythmically ?
Thanks in advance. I’m just wondering if dropping a song under my old name with a bunch of tracks uploaded already or try starting a new artist page.
From what I’ve seen, if anything having a low popularity score will make a song with a high score more likely to do better. If Taylor swift drops a song and it only gets a 40 in a week then it’s a fail, if we drop one and it’s a 40 in a week it’s a massive success.
@@AndrewSouthworth so the old material with low popularity score will not affect new songs algorithmic growth?
Thank you Andrew 🙏🏻
@@AndrewSouthworth so no point of creating another artist page and starting all over with better produced material? Also would you recommend to mix genres and languages with one artist profile or is it better to create different projects for each genre and each language? Algorithmically.
Would love to know what you think. Thank you.
Hey Andrew, it's friday right now and one of my songs has a 35% popularity rate? I'm running facebook ads but do you have any guideline of how much extra daily budget would be smart to spend to give it a good boost for a potential discover weekly push on monday? I can understand nothing is guaranteed but I wonder if you experienced any link between a daily budget and the popularity rate! Kind regards,
Lucas
Hey is there any way you can make a toneden landing page for more than one song?
wow very useful information. thank you Sir
So it’s been two weeks and my popularity score is at a 14. So it’s going up basically 1% per day. Am I in a good track?
🙌🙏❤️
Do bot streams increase pop score? Not that I use bots. Great video btw. subbed
I would assume yes but it would depend on how they engage with the song in addition to streams.
any word on hypeddit and FB adds?
Hi Andrew, I noticed that the same song (same ISRC) has different popularity scores depending on the release that it's on. I used the waterfall strategy, therefore the same song is on various releases. Now I am afraid that they take away the popularity from itself, because the listeners are spread out on the different releases. Is this a real disadvantage of the waterfall strategy?
No it’s the same fluctuating stats that updates daily
Is it possible to get on release radar more then one time for a single release within a month after release
In our experience, if you get a push, it can stay drop off after a week but to a lower number, not completely. Most of our releases have gotten on some Release Radars every Friday, but people may not listen to it for days, so you can see new listeners every day. I track the Release Radar numbers every day to keep on eye on this. After our 2.8k Release Radar push (2.8k over a week's time), we only got 43 new Release Radar listeners the next Friday. If you go on the playlist tab in Spotify for Artists, you can see the total number of Release Radar listeners. You have to check it every day to see how many new ones you got. They show up the day after the listener streams your song.
How can my new single release have 243 saves BUT only 220 listeners?? I don’t get that, have some clicked to Spotify and saved my song for later but haven’t listened to it yet maybe?
Yeah probably. Since people might not be in a position to listen to a song they might save it for later
@@AndrewSouthworth well my save rate is “above” 100% then I guess that’s good 😂
@@cru313 I once had a similar save rate in the high 90s but the song got hardly any RR algorithmic push, so potentially they could be bots and spotify knows that.
My song Vybe by Lemmyboi has a pop score of 35
1 week into my releaese i have over a 75% save rate but only an 8 popularity score
Maybe give it some time to update, could be up to 2 days to see the real numbers =)
Is toneden down for you today too? It's not working at all and sometimes loading once after page refresh. Of course all smart links are down as well... What a joke.
My song has a popularity score of 65 😢
anyone having major issues with ads rn or is it just me? 0_o
what issues are you having?
Most popular song with 3% lol