Spotify Streams vs Real Fans
This week's question from our Q&A portal "Francis Freedom Fighters: Ask Roxie + Lucas" was emailed to us by Katherine P:
“How do I get on Spotify playlists to make money from streaming and also get exposed so I can build a fanbase?”
It's a current trend in the music marketing world to try to get on Spotify playlists to grow your fanbase and Spotify streaming income.
But TBH, this is where we see so many musicians not get results after investing a ton of time and money!
Getting on playlists is not best the way to raise your fan numbers and make money.
Why not?
People visit playlists for the playlist itself, not so much to discover individual artists.
You’re not building real fans. Rarely do they click to your individual Spotify page. If they do, it’s even more rare they’ll click to your social and maybe follow you. People don’t like to leave platforms.
The playlist strategy requires a TON of stalking and calling up and convincing people to add your music. And everyone else is hitting them up for limited spots on limited playlists, so now payola is becoming common. Over 90% won’t respond or add. For the ones that do, you’re not in control of where your music will be in the playlist order, or how long it will stay on the playlist. Maybe you get a big bump one month if it lands on a major playlist, and then you’re back to where you were.
The playlist strategy CAN work, but it’s a massive drain of time for low streams, social proof, monetary gain, or fan awareness.
Don’t do it!
Have you found yourself not growing your fanbase, money-making potential and playing it “safe” instead of following your heart and claiming your success?
Another current trend in the music marketing world is to try to run as many Facebook/Instagram ads as possible to get Spotify streaming royalties.
For this strategy to work you have to run ads to tens of millions of people who list your genre and similar artists as interests.
This is a clickbait-style strategy with the goal to get so many clicks at less than half a cent per Spotify stream for 30 seconds that it outweighs the cost per click (CPC) of the ad, which is often higher as ad costs continues to go up.
Yes, you can get fans who start consistently listening to your music on Spotify, but this still requires millions of streams to make any income—especially after you deduct all the money spent on Facebook Ads.
Here’s a breakdown of streaming royalties as of 2020:
Payout Per 1,000 Streams
Spotify: $3.20
Apple Music: $5.60
Google Play: $5.50
Industry average = $.0048 per play
To make $1.00 on Spotify, an artist’s song has to be streamed 312 times.
$10 = 3,000 streams
$100 = 30,000 streams
$1,000 = 300,000 streams
To make $3000 per month ($36K/year), you’d need 900,000 streams a month.
But that’s not counting FB Ads cost.
Then you’d have to repeat this feat every month.
This requires millions of people consistently clicking on your music month-to-month to make minimum wage--before you’ve taken out costs for all the ads.
And for all this attention you’re getting, you’re still not sending them to a place where you’re capturing their info so you can connect with them directly to create the experience you desire and share offers.
And for many artists who are niched down, there simply may not be millions of people in your microgenre and subculture. Plus you need to have quite a bit of music released.
The great news is you don’t need millions of people or a large catalog of released music to run ads and get REAL results!
Rather than focus on getting millions of Spotify streams directly through Spotify as we just showed, it’s time you focus on our IHMV MEGA-FAN Strategy (TM).
Your main goals are to:
Attract and capture fans
Grow your email list
Be in control to contact them
Build a long-term brand with deep know-like-trust factor
Create high-end offers your fans can’t wait to buy
Rely on your ability to sell for the rest of your life
This is what allows you to create a financially thriving long-term career with as few as 100 megafans.
This is what will make you a money-making musician and keep you in business forever.
If you’d like to submit a question, email us at info@iheartmyvoice.com.