You don't need luck and you definitely don't need a record label to get 5,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. I'm going to show you how I did it in five actionable steps in the next 5 minutes. The last one also is probably one of the most overlooked and ignored things that I see musicians and friends do.
So, make sure you stick around for that one. These are steps that I personally used myself. Let's get into it.
Step one, submit your songs to playlist curators on platforms like Submit Hub, Groover, or Playlist Push. This is a nice way just to get your music in playlist with other artists and it's going to give your monthly listenership a nice little healthy boost. So I would actually put about 25% of my marketing budget into playlisting campaigns for Submit Hub, Groover or Playlist Push.
I usually just do Submit Hub and this would maybe be anywhere from $15 to $25 worth of spend. I think this would be a good amount of money just to make sure you can get some good results from these actual playlist campaigns. Secondly, I would recommend you get out into your local scene.
Whether that means going to an open mic once or twice a week or organizing a show with your band or potentially asking other bands if you can open for them. I highly recommend doing this just because there's nothing as powerful as word of mouth or real people actually being around you. And if people like what you're doing and your recordings are good, too, you're going to slowly slowly grow and I promise you, you're going to reach this goal.
So, for me, a good example of actually getting out into your scene and actually seeing really good results is my friend Linda, who I actually did a song with. Check out May I Please Destress My Head Upon Your Shoulder. Now, she has really been getting out into Amsterdam, into the Netherlands, playing as many different shows as possible.
And she was actually selected for this national tour called Pop Ronda. Now, because of this, she's actually got so much exposure playing at a whole lot of new venues all around the Netherlands. And along with that, this Poronda, this specific Dutch tour, has actually got some unique Spotify playlist, some Spotify editorials, but a lot of the venues that she's been playing at even have their own playlists.
So, these places organically add you to their own playlists. And over the last few months, her average listenership has actually just gone up and up since she's joined this tour. along with that that excludes all the people that are actually at these shows watching her.
So, I suppose this just really emphasizes how you can grow in this way. Next, I would create a playlist on Spotify and then I would send $50 worth of meta ads to promote this playlist, promoting it on Instagram and Facebook. I've done loads of videos talking about this on this channel and the goal would be to get the Spotify's algorithm working in your favor by promoting your own music within this playlist.
Next, I would do more meta ads, $50, too. But basically, this time, I would send traffic directly to a song, an EP, or an album, not to a playlist. Again, what we'd be trying to do is teach the Spotify algorithm so that it can recommend you, and your monthly listenership is going to only grow and grow.
Now, when you're actually running these meta ads direct to song or into Spotify playlists, make sure that you're doing conversion campaigns and that you're not just doing boosted posts on Instagram or traffic campaigns. If you don't know what a meta conversion campaign is, make sure you watch some other videos. I've done a bunch of this, but there are so many videos on YouTube.
Also, some Instagrammers have spoken about this. Make sure you do this campaign correctly and that you're not just burning your money on random ads. Lastly, and probably the most overlooked one and ignored one by us musicians, is to actually make great music.
I've definitely said this before on the channel, but there are too many times when people want to start spending money sending their music to playlist curators or spending money on ads when they haven't actually taken the time to get the music to the level that it needs to be. Now, a good way to measure this is put your music in a playlist next to five or 10 other artists that you admire or you think your music fits with. If your song sounds 80% as good as those, then yeah, I would recommend try give it a push.
Do the steps that I'm recommending. If not, then honestly, I would say go back to the drawing board, try and work on your arrangement, work on your production, work on your mix. Once those things are sounding much better, then it actually becomes promotable.
And this is such a crucial step that so many people miss. All right. Now, I promise you, if you do these exact steps, you are going to go to 5K monthly listeners, no problem at all.
In fact, I'm sitting at over 15K thanks to these steps at the time of filming this video. Now, these steps will definitely get you there. However, if you want to sustain this in the long run, I do have some bonus tips for that, too.
And I actually put these bonus tips on my Patreon. Four more bonus tips. Now, they're not going to be available here on YouTube, but if you want to see these, head over to the Patreon uh just below.
If not, thank you so much for watching this video, and I hope to see you at the next one. All right, goodbye.
