I Tried 16 Different Spotify Promotions. Here's What Happened.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 มิ.ย. 2023
- If you want to dig more into the data....
Here's the detailed blog post version: tinyurl.com/8cmf7x5x
Here's the data in spreadsheet form: tinyurl.com/2s3ntche
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📕 Read my book, How to Promote Indie Music: tinyurl.com/2s3uc68n
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I ran 16 different Spotify promo campaigns with 16 different companies. The results ranged from awful to pretty awesome. In this video, I break it all down.
Companies covered include...
02:59 Music Diffusion
03:53 Musicvertising
05:50 Boost Collective
06:25 Groover
07:28 SubmitLink
08:30 SoundCampaign
09:46 Orion Promotion
10:49 SubmitHub
11:45 Playlist-Promotion
12:57 Omari MC
14:06 Daimoon Media
14:24 Moonstrive Media
15:59 Partnered Projects
16:47 YouGrow Promo
17:35 Playlist Push
18:48 Indie Music Academy - เพลง
Thanks for doing this dude, it's such a dog eat dog industry and this sheds some light
Definitely can be a little confusing out there ha. Glad it's helpful!
Even tho we weren't able to finish your campaign yet, thanks for still mentioning us🙏
FINALLY an objective well researched video about music promotion! Thank You! Liked & Subscribed!
Ha, not gonna lie, I put a lot of time into this one. Glad it's helpful!
Holy Moly. I hit the jackpot finding this video. THANK YOU.
22:52 I don't need specific breakdowns but if you could make a video like this like once a year reviewing all the relevant Playlist Promotion companies that would be dope
Thanks for watching, Mikey. Tbh not sure if I'm up for that... this was more work than I planned. But we'll see.
At least every two years ha.
Love your content ! Thank you for putting this out here, will definitely check out some of them!
This is awesome. So helpful. I wasn't even considering using playlisting until watching this.
Really cool video, I enjoyed watching it! Thanks for doing this.
wow, greatly appreciate the time you spent compiling the data and making this video. up!
Thank you!!!! Just dropped my first track and was comparing all these companies as a lot of them DMed me for their services but when I asked to see their playlists they could not show me. I just subscribed, I'll try out a few myself thank you
Super helpful video. Thanks so much for this. It’s really hard trying to work it all out and you made it so easy to visualise!
For sure. Thanks for watching!
This was a dope video very informative because I've been contemplating on what promotional company that I want to go with because there's so many bots and fake promos out here .Thank you for making this video Appreciate you very much
Excellent video this is exactly what I was looking for. Appreciate you.
Glad it was helpful 🤛
In case you want to dig through the numbers yourself, here's the spreadsheet with all of the campaign data: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1js2eYsqPELP_tBUmiEzGDiAEhzU9ewHeazYMdOS9sA4/edit?usp=sharing
Great video! Thank you for doing this research!
Thanks! Not going to lie, took some effort ha. But glad it's helpful!
my dude, this is really the best video on this topic that I've found on youtube so far - great campaigns, great comparison, great info, I'm really happy to learn from your experience here - I think a lot of people want to see this but for some reason might not be able to find this vid on youtube, would you maybe consider doing a follow up vid sometime soon? maybe an update heading into 2024? rly great content here, thx so much for sharing your insights
Hey, thanks for the kind words! Means a lot.
Yeah, I'll post some sort of follow-up to this at some point. Not exactly sure what it'll look like, though. Tbh, running all these campaigns was way more work than I anticipated, so I was initially planning to wait for another couple of years before doing this again. But I've gotten enough requests that I might give it another shot this spring ha.
This is AMAZING. Thank you so so much!!! More of these videos please. You're doing a great job for indie artists. Is it possible to do a similar video on companies that run ads for you? Like SmartNoise etc.
Very helpful. Thank you for this!
Thanks for doing this work!!
New subscriber because of your dedication. Thank you brother. It's a confusing place when you can't tell the difference between real and fake. Making music is easy. This is the hard part.
Tbh I find a lot of it confusing, too ha. Glad this stuff is helpful and appreciate the encouragement.
@twostorymediamusic honestly this info is gold bro. You tried them all and passed on the info. I respect and appreciate that.
This is really really great info. Thanks for taking the time to put it together
One thing though, I’m starting to put music out seriously and I remember hearing negative things about playlist promotion in the past
Didn’t Spotify itself once say not to use services like playlist push and that it’ll hurt you?
That just has me a little worried about diving in
Thanks for watching!
I think that Spotify generally doesn't like these sorts of services, but they let them run - and they're ridiculously cost-effective in terms of real streams.
In terms of getting hurt by one - if you go with a legit option, it's more about algorithmic impact than it is botted streams. You can definitely dampen your algorithmic potential by getting on low-fit lists, so it's worth being cautious for sure.
Fwiw, I recommend using these as a supplement to other things, like Meta ads.
Amazing video and helpful. Thank you!
Thanks for watching, Otis!
Great video, thank you!
Great information I’m subscribing 👍🏼👍🏼
Glad it was helpful!
Fantastic video!
Thank's for the video, a lot of great insight.
Thank you so much , that was very helpful :)
awesome video man!! Thanks a lot for giving us this insights :))
For sure, thanks for watching!
Amazing video! Thanks a lot :D
Love this, thanks. I would like a video on you grow promo if that's possible
Thanks! And yeah, already done! th-cam.com/video/O2H4u47ALY8/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for the information. your demonstration was great. Thank you again
amazing video, thank you for this
Thanks for watching!
Wow. Was not expecting a review like this to exist. Bravo. Save all of us time and money. Thanks.
Ha, not going to lie, it did take me longer than I expected to get all the campaigns together. Glad it was helpful / thanks for watching!
@@twostorymediamusic Was excellent mate. May I ask-- How would you spend $200 on a moody indie rock single? Thinking to go all in on submit hub or split between submit hub, yougrow and submit link.
thanks for sharing this....as an independent hip hop artist I feel if you are not with a label its difficult to get playlisted...
This was extremely insightful. Thank you.
For sure, thanks for watching!
Wow, this video completely transformed the way I approach Playlist Promotion, The tips and strategies shared here are incredibly practical and easy to implement. Thank you so much for sharing this valuable information.
Interesting channel! Just subscribed! 🙂
Thanks! Very interesting analysis. Two questions spring to mind... could you do this with the same track to make the comparisons as exact as possible? And have very recent announcements by Spotify, which appear to completely outlaw playlist promotion companies had an effect?
Really needed this
Thank you for all the information. Your video is very useful. I would like to ask, as you are experienced with campaigns, when you release an album and specifically promote certain track on Spotify, do you see a small increase in streams for the rest of your tracks?”
Great review ! Thanks A LOT 🙏
Finally a straight forward video 16 different playlist that can get you real traffic
Thanks for watching 🙏 Hope the info helps.
This was amazing! Let me know if you do another artist test i need help lol
Really helpful!! I think if you could tell more about the locations of those streams. Like is it focuses on tier 1, 2 or 3 countries. I mean spending 200 dollars and most of the budget or streams coming from tier 3 countries, is it healthy?
Yeah, good question! So I didn't cover locations in this video, but I did track the top country for each campaign in this spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1js2eYsqPELP_tBUmiEzGDiAEhzU9ewHeazYMdOS9sA4/edit?usp=sharing
Interestingly, most of these campaigns drove streams primarily in Tier 1 countries. Wasn't necessarily expecting that.
this is very helpful, thanks a lot for such intensive research
thanks for watching 🙏
I became a subscriber by the 58th second of this video when you realized you forgot to calculate your budget. Whether that was real or not, it made me laugh Haha. It really gets like that sometimes man, Thanks for that!
That was totally real ha... Went to say a number and then realized I had no idea what it was.
Glad my disorganization won you over haha. Thanks for subscribing!
Needed this
Great video very informative.
Hey! Thanks for your video... What do you think about lmplaylist? or Lyrical Mind?
thank you for this video bro
Massively helpful!! ❤
This is sooo helpful thank you!!
Brilliant video thanks 😎
Thanks for doing this. Are the artist getting paid royalties for the playlist campaigns? Seems like that would be a pretty good metric as well since Spotify would interested in not paying botted list.
Yeah, artists did get paid royalties for these. I don't have access to all of the data, though, and tbh it's kind of hard to parse out which royalties came from playlists, specifically.
Thanks for sharing this 🙏
sort of feel like you should do another playlist promotion campaign to see...if the outlierness holds?
EXCELLENT
Cheers. I've done a few videos on playlist services. Have you used imperium network?
The saves are incredible with yougrow based on your video💯
Yeah, they were definitely one of the better campaigns out of the 16, for sure. I'm a YouGrow fan - had multiple solid campaigns with them.
But also have to say that the song we used for the data I show here was probably the most straightforward pop song out of the 16, and that genre tends to do the best with these SEO-playlist agencies, in my experience.
@@twostorymediamusic I super appreciate you doing this video!! I am always trying to find real listeners and avoid the bots!!
My experience was wishwashy with yougrow, had a super good first campaign and the next 2 were "tiktok playlists" with alot of irrelevant songs and multiple genres...one of my songs hit a good algorithm on the second campaign, then the next campaign my radio plays were destroyed, so it's really really a luck of the draw on them
This was sick bro thank you
Exactly what I needed in my life 😎
Thank you!!
thank
Is it better to Promote your artist profile or your song????? I need help want to know what's overall better ?
Finally, good content about promotion
Make good music first…. thats the key! Thanks for the summary -
Awesome video as normal! Sorry for the off topic question, but I have been having an incredibly hard time with Meta Ads for my music but idk what I'm missing. I'm getting cost per results of $2-3 after around 3-4 days on my firs three attempts. I just started another campaign ($10/day spend on all of these), I'm at my first $9.41 spent and only have 1 conversion. I have my pixel set up on Meta + ToneDen verified with a domain. This latest campaign is just one ad set with three ads as opposed to my previous ones with three ad set with three ads each (9 total ads). I just don't understand what I'm doing so wrong, any help will be greatly appreciated
Thanks for watching!
Tbh it's hard to say what the issue would be without seeing the account / your ads. My first question would be - what's your target look like? Narrower target usually equals higher cost.
Hey dude! I've been running ads and have gotten 0.30 as my usual cost per conversion. However I've found recently my results are at 0.09 -0.1 after switching from toneden to featureFm. You don't need a domain anymore so it's pretty easy to use. I'd have a nice broad audience with one ad set and only a few ads. Don't be hyper-specific in the beginning, target tier 1 and 2 countries, and have good captions (catchy and short).
@@ASHWYN What do you think make that massive CPC difference? I currently use Hypeddit
After a lot of research I decided to go with Moonstrive....just yesterday! :D Had I seen your video before I might have tried with YouGrow again but in the past they said my genre is too niche. So I'm feeling optimistic and curious about Moonstrive. Although, I do need to look a bit deeper into SEO placements to get a better understanding of it. :) Thanks for this video
Moonstrive is solid! They definitely have legit, engaged playlists and you'll definitely see real streams. The risk with SEO-built lists is always that they're broad, so engagement can be a little tougher. But hopefully they're able to find good fits for you.
Do you have a summary on their performance? Very interested!
@@MrKiuto - Unfortunately, I can't remember exact numbers but I was placed on maybe 4 playlists and ended on the low range of streams that they advertise they can achieve. The streams were predominantly from Indonesia. The thing that I didn't really like is that the songs on the playlists were not really in my genre so it didn't really help me in finding an audience...but I suppose these things take one step at a time. The one thing I did like is that one of the playlists still has my song on it...2 months later (not a lot of streams but some). :) After the campaign they offered me a discount if I left a review, which I did... I plan to use their services one more time...just give it another go. In the end, I'm not totally convinced but it wasn't terrible. Remind me again in another two months and I can give you a second update :D
@@twostorymediamusicwhat’s SEO
@@Kudoe_Edney SEO playlists on platforms like Spotify and TH-cam are playlists that are intentionally or unintentionally optimized for search engines. This means when people search for specific types of music or moods, these playlists show up at the top of the search results. Because they are easily found, they attract real people who are actively looking for music to listen to.
When an SEO playlist has a high search volume-meaning many people are searching for the type of music it contains-it gets more traffic. This traffic is made up of real listeners, not bots. These listeners have chosen to play music from the playlist because it matches what they were looking for. So, the more popular the search terms are, the more people find and listen to the playlist, and the more real listeners your music can reach if it's included in such playlists. This is why SEO playlists are very useful for music promotion-they connect songs with audiences that are genuinely interested in that kind of music.
Although playlisting hasn't the greatest engagement rates due to rather passive lister behavior, it is still a safe way to reach real listeners!
Thanks for the research! I’ve read your article and it looks like none of these campaigns trigger DW except for one, does it mean DW cannot be triggered easily, even with a lot of streams?
I've heard it tossed around that you'll trigger DW with 10k streams + a 10% save rate over a 28-day period. Playlists will never get you to a 10% save rate, so that's probably part of it.
(But also, I'm not sure that stat is accurate; I've seen DW triggered with significantly fewer streams, too.)
My song is heading to 100K and the score is over 40, still no DW 😂@@twostorymediamusic I checked out the DW and all the songs for me are over 1M... so no idea how it works really...
You are the man!!!!
como conseguiste las pruebas gratis?? puedes darnos ese dato?
Dear Jon,
We would like to express our appreciation for your extraordinary efforts in offering artists the insights they need to select the most suitable promotion partner. It is great to see that there are services out their for all budgets.
However, we feel it is crucial to stress the significance of securing a position on SEO playlists. Despite certain drawbacks inherent to SEO playlisting, it remains a powerful tool to ensure that artists can engage with genuine audiences. Your endeavors in this area would indeed add immense value to the music community.
Thanks, guys. Definitely see the value of SEO built playlists - they're legit. Just trying to give a balanced perspective.
(Btw, if you ever want to come on the channel and talk through your approach, lmk!)
great info and comment, thx for saying it, very helpful indeed
would love to see this@@twostorymediamusic
How did you get a free trial for some of them?
Jon, here you've done different songs with every placement right? Have you ever done a promotion for a single song the entire time for multiple services? Would you be interested in that case study?
Hey Nic! So I've tried a few different services with one song, yeah. The challenge with using one song for 16 different services is that some services are better geared toward different genres. So to evaluate all of them based on one song wouldn't be as helpful as evaluating each service with a song in its genre sweet spot, in my mind.
man recognized you from your blog. haven't even watched a video yet but i subbing! great guy u are
Ay, appreciate that! Thanks for reading and watching 🙏
Youuuuu brooo thanks really cool i apreciate
🔥
Which of these campaigns shows up as real plays in distrokid
This is a great video! We are trying moonstrive, but even if they gurantee some sort of placement it isn't against spotifys terms of service right? That only applies if you pay a playlist directly or for streams rigth?
Tbh, playlisting in general is a gray area. The issue isn't that they guarantee a specific result (because like you've said, you're not paying for specific playlist directly) - but Spotify does have language in their User Guidelines about not paying to "influence" the content on a playlist, which is pretty open-ended.
In other words, there's an argument to be made that even on the really transparent platforms where you aren't guaranteed any result (i.e., SubmitHub), you're still paying for "influence."
Buuuut also... Spotify is totally aware of Moonstrive / SubmitHub / IMA / Playlist Push / everyone else, and they've let them keep doing their things for years.
TL;DR - Yeah you're fine but it's a weird arena in general.
I'd recommend reading the guidelines for yourself here: www.spotify.com/us/legal/user-guidelines/
@@twostorymediamusic Yea seems like it's a big grey area like you said. I have read their Terms of service many times and watch their video but don't make me any smarter haha. They write in a way it's kinda hard to make something out of it. Except for straight up Payola, there they make themselves very clear, which I think is right. Paying for guranteed streams is not cool.
@@KarlstadDrums Moonstrive Media adheres to Spotify's terms, specializing in ethical SEO playlisting without directly buying streams or placements. Our method, akin to influencer marketing, is about pitching your music for authentic, organic growth. We enhance song visibility to boost reach naturally, not guaranteeing placements but ensuring risk-free service with a full refund if we can't meet your package's needs. This aligns with Spotify's anti-payola policies, focusing on natural discoverability for tracks. Our strong curator relationships enable effective collaboration without forcing song placements. Curators voluntarily choose tracks for their playlists, maintaining playlist integrity and promotional authenticity.
I did this nd got my song removed what do I do
A chart with streams gained after campaign would be interesting. We all want long term followers.
Yeah, I feel that. It's hard to attribute streams to campaigns after campaigns end, because the songs get taken off of the playlists. I tried to note if there was an algorithmic bump in the spreadsheet, but I'd be really hesitant to say that there's direct correlation.
@@twostorymediamusic Wouldn't you say that after taking them off from the "promotion playlist" it is an indicator of the used playlist quality? I mean that is the long goal to find fitting listeners as they found the song on good(!) playlists that triggered real fans.
@@andreashe36 yeah, good playlists definitely *should* lead to better numbers. The challenge is that each playlisting campaigns is only one factor toward a song's longer-term performance - most of the artists I was working with were / are running multiple promotions and have multiple sources providing their streams.
So I saw campaigns that seemed to drive high engagement lead to no algorithmic boost, while I saw campaigns with seemingly abysmal engagement show algorithmic spikes a month after. I did try to note algorithmic activity in the spreadsheet (tinyurl.com/yc3vb57j ), I just think it'd be misleading to say that the after-campaign performance was a direct corollary of the campaign. It'd be like saying, "This 6'5" person drinks milk, so milk makes people tall."
Not a coincidence that all the “free trial” campaigns drove the most streams… definitely think they were pumping the results for free positive publicity.
Not unlikely ha. But it's also worth noting that each company that gave me a free trial has a "guaranteed" number of streams for each package, too, and I was within the range of what they promise. So I don't think they waaaay overshot the norm for me. (With the exception of Playlist-Promotion, obviously.)
@@twostorymediamusic overall props to you for this exposé. Great info for artists looking for guidance in a very convoluted space 🙏🙏🙏
You're doing God's work here. Thanks!
Ha, glad it's helpful, and thanks for watching 🙏
you are a hero😄
Ive used like 3 or 4 of these before
Hey bro, I would love to try this experiment with you! I've been looking for the best campaigns to help me gain streams and would love to work with you.
Hey, thanks for watching! So, after I made this video, I wrapped up the experiment, and I'm not currently running playlisting campaigns. I'll probably do another test sometime in the next year, so feel free to follow along and reach out at that point!
Can you promote like latin songs and reggaeton
How long did you run these campaigns
Good question. You typically don't set a length of time - you just get taken off of the playlists eventually. Most companies / curators left us on for about a month (or until they hit their "guaranteed" number of streams). But some went longer or shorter. Really varies.
I tried to make the red box show where the playlists were active for each campaign, but it's not totally exact. Sometimes streams from playlists trickled in even after I thought we'd been removed.
@@twostorymediamusic would you suggest running two campaigns at once?
@@sportsareforwomen3428 I'd like to hear the answer to this question as well
I write Orchestra Classical Music , WHo in the world do I go to.
Pitch to classical music radio
Please do a vid on Waver AI….I’ve had clients added there and couldn’t understand it
They're so lame ha. I actually did a video on them already: th-cam.com/video/svUNJrbn_Sw/w-d-xo.html
Huh, 311 streams on Boost Collective and it cost you 119$ that's quite a bad look, comparing to some other ones on your spreadsheet w/ data.
What doesn’t actually look good is the save to listener ratio. Targeted FB campaigns usually generate 10-40% save rate. Playlists tend to give you something around 5%. However the majority of the mentioned playlists here don’t even generate 1% which doesn’t look very legit.
Yeah, fair point; save rates for playlisting typically aren't very good, and they definitely suck in comparison to FB ads (which are awesome in terms of save rates).
Curious where you're getting the 5% number, though? That feels about right to me, but in my experience it's not a hard rule or anything.
Partnered projects submit hub or grow?
All are good. SubmitHub's the cheapest / most transparent, but has mostly smaller playlists and no guaranteed results. The other two are fairly comparable - more expensive, bigger playlists, guaranteed results, but not necessarily the best playlist fits.
I'd be super interested in cost per save
Good idea. The challenge with that would be that it's harder to determine attribution. Idk how to tell if saves were coming from a playlist; if an artist gets decent numbers already, they'd be getting saves from other places during the promotion.
Cost / stream was easier because you can see exactly how many streams were from the playlists the company used.
But I could just add "Saves during promo" as a stat and let people take it with a grain of salt.
@@twostorymediamusic I would love to see that for sure
Yes, that's the main number I was really focused on. I know the other ones are important, but my biggest concern is actual fan growth, not just potentially empty plays.
What u think about artists push
Honestly, I'd say stay away.
@@twostorymediamusic what u think about playlist grow
Awesome
Saving us thousands of $$ 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Have you checked out or heard of ViewManiac
I haven't checked them out, but a few people have mentioned them. They're on the radar for next round.
Bro! The main question which plays from which promotion company was payed by Spotify. That will the answer which one is scamed🔥can you say? Or make some video in future! It will be interesting thing. ❤
All plays are paid even bots now...
@@MichaelHaze how you did this?
@LILDW most if not a higher percentage of spotify playlists are 1000 percent bots. They use data centers with dedicated vpns to make there plays more legitimate
I got yougrow and every single city had a major data center which is how bots ultimately work.
@@MichaelHaze I have more 100k plays, and it’s not payed. What promoter do you used? What are I doing that all plays was payed?
Musicvertising is definitely bots I got flagged using them