How to Get More Spotify Listeners

Don't be a hater when someone your friend's music starts blowing up on Spotify. Chances are, their music is not really better than yours, they're just better at marketing and promotion. If you've found this article while looking for how to get more Spotify listeners or "streams," I'll start from the basics and walk you through some of the simple ways you can grown your Spotify listener base.

1. Share your music on social channels

 This may seem like a given to you, but you'd be surprised at how many artists are missing this simple method. And it’s so easy to share your music on FB, IG, Twitter:

• On Facebook, you can copy song, album, or playlist links right into status fields.
• On Twitter, sharing a Spotify song link creates a custom, playable audio card.
• On Instagram stories, you and your fans can share Spotify albums, tracks, artists, and playlists that link to the Spotify app.

Here are some key social media tips and tricks for Spotify too:

• Be sure to add Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and/or Wikipedia links to the About section on your Spotify artist profile.
• Encourage fans to save music in their own playlists and share it. Call out and profile those that do to encourage it further.
• Copy and paste one of your Spotify links into the Twitter search bar to find Spotify listeners who’ve shared your music, then like / reply to their tweets.
• Share playlists that feature your music over direct links, since playlists drive the maximum amount of streams per listening session.
• Use Spotify Codes on visual media such as posters, flyers, merch, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

• Update YouTube descriptions to contain links to your Spotify. Do this retroactively to old videos too.
• Talk about other people’s music. Ask your fans who you should check out and add their suggestions to your own playlists. This is useful between shows/releases when you're looking for ways to keep your fans engaged.
• Host ‘listening parties’. Tell your fans you'll be online at a certain day/time and invite them to join you. You can all hit play at once to listen to and discuss your music in real time. Use Facebook and Twitter’s free analytics tools to help you decide the best time.
• Both Facebook and Twitter let you to schedule posts in advance. This is good for anniversaries, e.g. you could recreate the setlist from your first headline show in a playlist, share key memories and photos, or talk about the day you released your debut single.
• Use popular hashtags across Instagram, Twitter & Facebook e.g. #NewMusicFriday #MondayMotivation #ThrowbackThursday #FridayFeeling etc. Share songs or playlists around these themes to reach a wider audience.

2. Collab with other Spotify Artists
Put your music on DistroKid.
You can list up to 3 primary artists per release. Your release will show up on each artists' pages, in stores & streaming services.

To specify a collaboration, just use a ampersand ("&") in your artist name. DistroKid will automatically detect this, and ask you if it's a band name, or a collaboration. Select collaboration.