Because of this, we’ve seen artists actively pull all their music from Spotify, with many more wondering if they should do the same.

What actually happens if you remove your catalog from Spotify? Can you still sustain a career without your music on the biggest music streaming platform in the world?

The short answer is yes, but it’s not without consequences.

In this blog, I’ll cover what impact taking your music off Spotify can have on your career and what steps you should take if you decide to go through with it.

What You Actually Lose Without Spotify

1. Streaming Revenue From the Largest Platform

This one’s obvious. Spotify is the biggest streaming platform globally, so pulling your music means losing a nice chunk of your streaming revenue. There’s no exact percentage, as it will vary between artists, but you can expect to lose out on at least a third of your streaming royalties. This is a rough estimate based on how much market share Spotify has for the U.S., but it can be more depending on the country your listeners are in and what platforms they use.

For example, Spotify represents around 41% of the streaming royalties for one artist I work with. 62% of their fan base is in the U.S., while 38% account for the rest of the world, including top countries like the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany and other European countries.

For some artists, this is not going to matter much. Streaming already pays so little that their real income comes from shows, merch, brand deals or direct fan support. In those cases, Spotify revenue feels more expendable.

For other artists, every dollar matters, especially those who are fully independent. There are some who need their streaming royalties to survive, feed their families and continue to create the art they’ve been fortunate to live off of.

Before making any decision, you need to take a good look at your numbers and know how much Spotify contributes to your monthly or yearly income. Everyone’s situation is different, so see if you can afford to live without Spotify.

2. Spotify’s Discovery Engine

One of the big benefits of Spotify is its discovery engine. Their algorithmic playlists, like Discover Weekly, Radio and Mixes, help introduce your music to new listeners.

There’s also Discovery Mode, where artists can opt in specific songs to let Spotify push certain tracks more heavily in exchange for a 30% cut of royalties on those streams. It’s controversial for being pay-to-play (payola), but for some artists, it helps to drive more streams.

That said, if you’re a newer or developing artist without much of an existing listenership and catalog, losing Spotify’s algorithm won’t really affect you.

The good news is you still have access to other powerful discovery engines on social media, like Instagram and TikTok. As long as you’re posting regularly and engaging with fans on social media, you’ll do fine.

3. Listener and Music Data

Spotify for Artists provides a lot of useful data about your listeners and your music releases. For example, you can learn what the top cities and countries your fans are listening in, age groups, gender, types of listeners, individual song performance and even the source of streams.

This type of information can be used to make important business decisions for artists. One of the most popular use cases is for routing tours and booking shows based on the number of listeners in each city.

If you leave Spotify, you’ll still have data from other DSPs and social platforms. However, since Spotify is the largest, you’re losing access to one of the biggest pools of listener data available for your business.

4. Spotify Followers To Notify About New Releases

When you drop new music on Spotify, your followers will find it on their Release Radar playlist. That’s a built-in way to share new music with your listeners and fans without doing anything extra.

If you pull out from Spotify, you lose your followers and the ability to push new releases to them.

This is not a big deal because Spotify followers are siloed. You have no way to see who your followers are or message them directly. Similarly with social media, you don’t actually own that relationship either. But at least you can see who follows you on platforms like Instagram and TikTok while having the ability to communicate with them through comments or direct messages.

If you already have an email list or you’re active on social media, losing Spotify followers isn’t the end of the world. You have plenty of other channels for updating fans on new releases.

5. Show Promotion (Bandsintown Integration)

Spotify’s Bandsintown integration is genuinely useful for touring artists. When you list shows on Bandsintown, it automatically appears on your Spotify profile.Spotify also sends emails and app notifications to followers when you’re playing a show in their city.

This helps to promote your upcoming shows to fans who may not be tracking you on Bandsintown, which is a big plus.

However, if you don’t play many shows or tour regularly, this feature won’t impact you much. And if your fans are already tracking you on Bandsintown, you’re still covered. Just make sure you have a link to your Bandsintown schedule in your link-in-bio page and on your website.

6. Shopify Merch Integration

If you use Shopify to sell merch on your website, Spotify lets you display your products directly on your artist profile< You can even link specific merch items to your releases so fans see them while listening.

In my experience, we’ll occasionally see merch orders come in from Spotify, but it’s nothing substantial. But of course, this will vary by artist.

If you don’t sell much merch or don’t use Shopify, this integration won’t matter for you. It’s a neat feature for artists who use Shopify, but not game-changing.

7. Editorial Playlist Pitching

Once you’re off Spotify and no longer push new releases to the platform, you lose the ability to pitch a new song to Spotify’s editorial team.

Getting a track on an editorial playlist can provide a nice bump in streams, discovery, and revenue, but it’s rarely something that makes or breaks a career. Not to mention,the odds of landing on an editorial Spotify playlist are already extremely low, considering over 100,000 songs are uploaded every day.

You can also pitch new releases for Amazon Music playlists, but it’s likely not going to have the same impact as on Spotify.

Pitching to Spotify editorial playlists is a nice feature, especially since it’s free, but it’s not essential for independent artists.

Should You Leave Spotify? Factors to Consider

The big question is, should you actually do it?

This is where things get personal. I fully understand that no amount of money or reach matters if it conflicts with your morals or ethics. At the same time, this is also a business decision. Streaming platforms may not pay well, but some independent artists rely on that income to get by. When a decision affects your livelihood, you owe it to yourself to be fully informed.

Ask yourself honestly:

• How financially dependent am I on Spotify?
• How strong is my direct-to-fan ecosystem?
• How loyal is my fanbase?
• What stage of my career am I in?
• What are my long-term goals?

Don’t let pressure from fans or other artists dictate your move. Some artists leave for moral reasons and to set an example. Others stay because they need the money to keep their business operating. There’s no judgment either way, so do only what makes sense for you and your family first.

If You Do Decide to Leave Spotify

Let’s say you decide to go through with it. What now? Here’s a list of steps and things to consider.

Contact Your Distributor

Spotify won’t remove your music directly, but your distributor can. You’ll likely need to contact your distributor’s support team to request removal.

The good news?You can always add your music back later.

Inform Your Fans

Never pull your music silently. That’s how you confuse and upset fans.

Give fans a heads up about your decision on socials and your email list. Briefly explain why, and let Spotify users know exactly how and where they can still access your music.

Suggest Another Streaming Platform

Most casual listeners won’t switch platforms for one artist, but loyal fans might. Do your research and only recommend platforms you actually feel good about supporting.

Offer Listening Alternatives

The fans impacted by this decision are going to be Spotify users, of course. Here are some alternative ways they can still listen to your music.

• Encourage digital downloads (Bandcamp): Bandcamp is hands down the best option here. Fans can buy and own your music and stream it through the Bandcamp app like they would on Spotify. The best part is that you get paid more for your music. I personally like Bandcamp because the platform and community there are very supportive of independent artists.

• Use YouTube as a free option: YouTube is universal, searchable, and free. You likely have your music distributed here in the form of art tracks when you uploaded your music for release. Almost everyone already uses it, so it’s a solid fallback for fans who won’t switch DSPs but still want access to your music.

• Sell USB flash drives with your music: USB or USB-C flash drives are a cool, collectible option. Fans get files they own forever, and it adds a tangible, meaningful layer to the fan relationship. If fans have a newer smartphone with a USB-C connection, they can just connect the flash drive to their phone and transfer the files over. The big drawback is that music files can take up quite amount of space and be a little more inconvenient to use.

• Sell physical music formats (Vinyl & CDs): Although this option can be the most profitable for you, it’s also the furthest away from what Spotify users are used to when listening to your music through a phone app. Still, this should be mentioned as an option as one of the best ways to support you and your music in this situation.

Consider a Middle-Ground Option

For a lot of artists, taking down their entire catalog from Spotify is not an easy financial choice. What some artists will do instead is leave their previous releases on Spotify, but no longer release new music there. This keeps some revenue and discovery flowing while funneling fans towards platforms, options and channels where artists can better monetize their music.

Reinforce Fan Communication Channels

When you lose the features and benefits of Spotify, you should strengthen other areas of your marketing and communications with your fan base.

Encourage fans to:

• Track you on Bandsintown
• Sign up for your email list
• Join your Instagram Broadcast Channel
• Favorite your Instagram account so your posts show up more often
• Follow you on Bandcamp

When you don’t own your fan relationships on Spotify or even social media, it’s always a good idea to have multiple ways to reach them.

Conclusion

Yes, artists can survive without Spotify. It may be the biggest music streaming platform, but it does not have a monopoly over your career. You still have other platforms and channels that can supplement what Spotify can offer.

This is not to say it won’t be inconvenient for you and your fans, but being able to adapt as an independent artist is a valuable skill to exercise. In an ever-changing technological landscape, this is likely not the last time you’ll have to learn to make adjustments to how you operate.

The post Can Artists Really Survive Without Their Music on Spotify? appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Regardless of whether you’re a developing or established artist, the main goal here isn’t to rack up Spotify streams. Instead, the focus is on maximizing reach for discovery and brand awareness while building your social media following. Why?

Because growing a real audience is the foundation you need before streams, playlists or press can have any lasting impact. You want the ability to directly connect with potential fans so you can nurture those relationships to monetize later. That’s how you build a supportive fan base.

For the established artists, it’s important to regularly attract new eyes and ears to bring them into your marketing funnel. Having super fans is great, but business-wise, it can be challenging to sustain your career without bringing in new fans/customers regularly.

This plan won’t fit every type of artist or genre perfectly, but it should serve as a good starting point to figure out your content strategy.

The $1,000 Breakdown

• $600 → Short-form video content creation
• $400 → Social media ads (reserved only if a video pops off organically)

That’s it. Simple, clear and effective. The approach is a combination of organic posting and the smart use of paid media.
 

Why Content Comes First ($600)

Content is the core of this promotional plan, specifically video. Short-form video (think TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) is the number one way people discover music today, especially for younger generations. These platforms are discovery engines that help push your content in front of new potential fans.

Many artists hate the idea of creating content, but the reality is that content has been key in promoting artists and their music, even before social media existed. From a marketing perspective, most online attention is on social media, so it only makes sense for artists to prioritize social media to build and grow their careers.

So if you’re serious about promoting a song and getting discovered by new people, you will need plenty of short-form video clips to post.

Here’s how I’d spend the $600:

• Hire a videographer if possible: See if you can find a local freelancer or someone looking for more experience with video who can do a video session for about $200 – $300 a session. For each shoot, aim for 2 to 4 hours at 2 or 3 locations. Within those locations, you’ll use different areas, angles, and backgrounds to give yourself more variety in your videos.
• Do multiple full song takes: Perform the song live or lip-sync it, just like you would in a traditional music video. Make sure to practice and rehearse beforehand so you can maximize your time shooting, especially if working with a videographer.
• Create volume: Chop up those takes into different clips. You can create a clip of the verses, chorus only, verse + chorus, bridge into chorus, or even a few standout lines within a verse. These clips can range from 10 to 90 seconds. If done right, one shoot can easily yield 20 to 40+ usable pieces of short-form videos.
• Switch things up: For each new location, bring outfit changes. Experiment with different camera angles, editing techniques, props or other actors to give you even more variety.
• Add text captions over the video: A lot of people scroll their news feed with the sound off. Using text on the video is one good way to catch someone’s eye and stop the scroll. This can be text captions of the lyrics as you’re performing them, or you can also use a text hook. Your hook should either signal who the song is for, communicate what it’s about, or intrigue the viewer to watch more. Some artists may choose not to use any text, and that can work perfectly fine too.

To learn more about creating short-form videos and what type of video you should be creating, check out this blog here.

After your first shoot, you should have a full month’s worth of daily content. Maybe even more if you post only on weekdays and recycle clips with new captions or hooks.

For posting on Instagram, you can use the new trial reels feature to test content. Posting a reel as a trial will only show it to non-followers to see how it performs before deciding to make it public on your profile and share it with the rest of your followers.

What if you can’t hire a videographer?
Use the $600 to invest in equipment: a tripod, lighting, and maybe editing software. Your smartphone camera is more than good enough, especially if you have one of the newer iPhones or Samsung Galaxies. Ask a friend to help shoot if needed. The key is consistency, not fancy production.

If you are shooting your own videos, check out this blog.
 

When to Use Ads ($400)

The remaining $400 is strictly for ads, but there’s a catch. You don’t spend it unless one of your videos starts taking off organically.

Think of ads as “fuel for the fire.” If a clip is already working well on its own, boosting it will amplify its reach and impact. Otherwise, spending ad money on a video from the beginning without trying it out first is a risky gamble.

Since we’re on a limited budget and you can test it for free, it makes sense to put money behind a video once you know it works as an organic post.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Post your first batch of 20–30 clips daily (or weekdays only). Once a day is fine.
2. Watch the numbers carefully: If a clip shows strong engagement numbers or signs or signs of virality, consider putting $100 – $200 behind the video.
3. Keep stacking: If a second video also does well, put another $100 behind it. You’ve got up to four shots with that $400.
4. Keep the momentum going: If a video goes viral and attracts followers, use another $300 to create a fresh batch of videos for the same song, in new locations or with new visuals, to keep the momentum alive.

What If Nothing Pops?

 
This is important: not every song is going to hit, and that’s okay. It may take posting multiple videos for months and experimenting with different songs to start seeing traction. Remember that what’s considered “good” music is subjective, so there’s no way any strategy is guaranteed to work right away.

If none of your clips take off after the first $300 session, don’t panic.

Here’s how to pivot:

• Use the second $300 for a new batch of videos, but this time for your next song.
• Keep the $400 in reserve for ads, in case something from the next batch pops.
• What about the first batch of videos? Keep posting them on Instagram as a ‘trail reel.’ This is a useful tool for creators to see how your videos perform for non-followers without having the video visible on your profile. However, you can’t post it exactly as you did before so you’ll need to change it up and experiment with different captions or text hooks.
• If the second song doesn’t move the needle, repeat the cycle with the third. Shoot another batch of videos and you should have $100 left over for ads.

Newer artists often need several songs before something resonates with an audience. It doesn’t mean your music sucks, it just means you’re still developing and experimenting. The problem is not the algorithm. Having the self-awareness and patience to not let poor responses to your videos affect your consistency will give you the best shot of finding success.
 

What About Playlists, Music Blogs, Radio or PR?

 
I wouldn’t spend money on any of these with a $1,000 budget. Here’s why:

• Playlists: Other than pitching to Spotify’s editorial playlists (which is free and worth doing), I wouldn’t pay for any playlisting services. Legit services can be expensive and it usually won’t build a fanbase. Streams and followers are siloed on their respective platforms, so you can’t reach directly to listeners… at least for now. Plus, there are a lot of playlisting scams. It carries some risk if your song lands on a botted playlist with fake streams.
• Music Blogs: We no longer live in the 2000s. Blogs aren’t how most people discover music anymore. Sites like SubmitHub or Groover can be fine to submit your songs for feedback, but don’t expect them to break your career.
• Radio: A majority of Americans still listen to the radio, but it’s a high barrier of entry and radio pitching services can be expensive. Unless your song goes massively virally and crosses over into the mainstream/traditional media, most songs aren’t going to be the right fit for radio programming on the popular stations where you would ideally want your music on. Of course, there are smaller local or college radio stations. But in my experience, it’s not cost-effective compared to what you can achieve on social media.
• PR Campaign: Hiring a publicist is costly, and even if you land a feature in a big outlet, it won’t necessarily move the needle for your business at this stage. Getting cover on Rolling Stone isn’t going to transform your career.

With limited resources, your focus should be squarely on creating content that reaches people where they already discover new music, social media.
 

Scaling the Plan

 
$1,000 might feel like a lot for a new or developing artist. But you can scale this plan down:

• $500 budget: $300 for content, $200 in reserve for ads.
• $250 budget: $150 for DIY content (tripod, lighting, editing apps), $100 for ads if something works.

The same logic and steps apply, but in smaller chunks.
 

Final Thoughts

 
Promoting your music and building real traction is one of the hardest parts of being a developing artist. If you’re not regularly performing live and reaching new listeners in person, your next best opportunity is on social media, specifically through short-form video. It’s been the engine behind breakout artists of all types for years, and it’ll remain essential heading into 2026.

Here’s a recap. If I had $1,000 to promote a song:

• $600 → Shoot short-form performance videos
• $400 → Keep in reserve for ads if a clip takes off organically or goes viral

No playlists. No blogs. No PR. No radio. Just consistent, engaging video content and smart use of ads.

Social media, especially video, is the most cost-effective way to promote your music and develop your brand. A playlist can expose someone to a new song, but a video can communicate a lot more about you. And at the end of the day, you don’t just want listeners who stream some of your songs or buy a vinyl record. You want fans who will recommend your music to their friends, show up to your live shows every time you’re in their city and buy merch regularly to support your career long-term.

Remember, the goal isn’t to inflate vanity metrics like streaming numbers. You want to grow your audience and fans who connect deeply with you as an artist and brand. That’s how you build a music career that lasts.

The post How Artists Should Spend a $1,000 Budget Promoting a Song in 2026 appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Many independent artists struggle with social media marketing. It’s not easy to know what exactly to post to break through the noise, get your music heard and reach new potential fans.

I put together a case study based on a recent album campaign I did to show you that it’s not as complicated as it seems to gain traction on social media.

This album rollout campaign resulted in 3 videos I created to promote singles for an artist going viral. This led to Snoop Dogg reposting one of these videos to his 80 million Instagram followers and Erykah Badu sharing another video to her Instagram Stories.

The organic reach for these viral videos spread well outside our network where random, high-profile artists, comedians and celebrities even engaged with the videos. This was my first time experiencing something like this so it was quite interesting to see it unfold.

During the 3 month campaign that started with the first single release on 8/8/24:

• We accumulated over 10 million views for the videos promoting the singles across all platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube Shorts). The videos were shared over 120k times.
• Spotify monthly listeners increased by over 35,000 (25% increase)
• Instagram followers increased by over 4x
• TikTok followers increased by over 17x
• One song from the new album, What Dreams Are Made Of, was added to a Spotify editorial playlist with 241k followers and brought over 80k streams during this period.
• On Spotify, the songs on the new album accumulated over 288k streams, 90k listeners, 28k saves, and 15k playlist adds within these 3 months.

Although we didn’t go mega-viral, these numbers were still impactful for a middle-class, independent artist seeing success on social media for the first time, with numbers exceeding well beyond the norm of what we were used to seeing.

What can other artists learn from this experience to build traction on social media?

In this blog, I will share the full breakdown and timeline of this album campaign, how we tried to capitalize on these viral moments and key takeaways that you can apply to your next campaign.
 

Before The Viral Campaign

 
Before getting into the full details, I want to share some context on how things led up to this album campaign that I feel many musicians can relate to.

However, if you just want to dive into the next section, the key to our viral success was posting short-form performance videos on socials (Spoiler Alert). I wrote an entire blog on this that you can check out.

Like many artists, even those in the music industry for decades, we struggled to find organic success posting on social media and remain a victim to the all-mighty algorithm. We were stuck at around 20k followers on Instagram and 1.4k followers on TikTok.

For previous album rollouts, we kept things relatively traditional with long-form music videos and bits of behind-the-scenes content here and there. When it came to views and reach, our measure of success was reaching views over 10k on Instagram and 800 on TikTok. These are not high standards, but that was the struggle we faced.

As a millennial marketer, I’ll be honest and say I’ve been avoiding TikTok and short-form content for many years despite being aware of its impact. All the artists I work with are already established to some degree, so it took time to figure out a content angle that would make sense for them.

The inherent problem with our marketing efforts has been focusing more on activating/engaging current fans and hoping they would be the ones to lead new potential fans into our marketing funnel through word-of-mouth tactics (i.e. sharing traditional music videos on social media, using songs in their Instagram Stories or playing songs for friends). In other words, not being more intentional with how to market to new fans with how technology and consumer behavior have evolved.

Over the years, I have found this to be an extremely common problem for established and seasoned artists. The discovery potential with the algorithms on these platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) can be massive, but you have to create and format specific content that they want to push to their user base.

For the past year or so, I began noticing more and more artists finding organic success on social media by posting vertically one-shot performance clips with lyrics on the videos. This was my “ah-ha” or eureka moment.

I realized many musicians were taking elements of a traditional long-form music video and adapting it as short-form vertical videos specifically for social media.

However, even editing short clips from a traditional music video into a vertical format isn’t good enough. I touch more on this later.

For decades, traditional music videos have been the primary marketing tool for artists to reach new potential fans. The problem is no one watches full music videos on social media and the algorithms hate it.

I was able to one artist to buy into the idea so we decided to give it a shot in the summer of 2024 with an acoustic album of many of the artist’s popular songs.

We posted about 20 short-form performance videos and there was a good response on Instagram with a few of them. Overall, we did notice that posting these types of short-form Reels gave us more views and engagement than we typically saw by pushing it to non-followers. The cool thing about Instagram analytics is that you can see how a Reel performs with your followers versus non-followers and how many followers you gain from the video.

This allowed us to experiment further and get more familiar with TikTok, a platform I’ve avoided diving into for so many years. With this experience, we were able to do this campaign again, but with the new studio album.
 

Viral Campaign Timeline

 
Now that we have that covered, here’s a breakdown of all the key moments during the campaign. I have included links to the exact video to give you a better idea of what was posted.

Thursday, August 8, 2024: The album campaign kicked off with the first single release of Take It 2 Far. The first short-form performance video was posted on all platforms on the same day. The video started with the chorus, and then led into the first verse. It performed poorly, initially getting only a couple hundred views the first day.

Tuesday, August 13, 2024: The next video to promote Take It 2 Far, starting on verse two, was posted and went viral on TikTok.

Views for the first 7 days of Take It 2 Far on TikTok

Even though it started to tail off a bit, the algorithm was still pushing the video steadily for over a month and brought in hundreds of new followers a day.

For comparison, this is what we typically would see as best case scenario on TikTok before this album campaign started:

The graph above is for a video promoting an acoustic version of his most popular song with over 10 million streams across all platforms.

After the first couple of days, we were getting noticeable bumps in views and engagement too. Once the algorithm favors your video, it’ll push all your other videos to non-followers.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024: After about a week of the song taking off on TikTok, the momentum carried over to Instagram. Up to this point, we gained about 5k followers on Instagram and 5.6k on TikTok.

To keep the momentum going, we shot another batch of videos for the song in a different location. However, none of the videos for this single would ever reach the same heights as the initial viral video.

Wednesday, August 21, 2024: I got a text from the artist showing that Snoop Dogg reacted to his Reel and followed him.

Shortly after, he reposted our Reel to his 89.2 million followers on Instagram.

The video Snoop Dogg reposted to this Instagram followers.

Side Note: We have no idea how Snoop Dogg came across the video as it seemed very random but we’re glad it came across his radar. Because the video was going viral on TikTok and did not have the same response on Instagram. By the time Snoop Dogg saw the video and reposted it, we had FB and IG ads running for about a week already. It’s possible he saw the ad or maybe someone who follows shared it and was connected with Snoop. Who knows.

Thursday, August 22, 2024: After about 24 hours, Snoops’s video hit about 1.3 million views, 30k likes and 1k comments on his Instagram. We wanted to make sure people knew about this so in the next video post for the song, we wanted to acknowledge that Snoop reposted it. We mentioned it in the caption.

Friday, August 23, 2024: Another type of content we introduced was responding to popular comments with videos. The goal was to engage the new fans and show some personality to build a deeper brand relationship with the artist outside of the music. Although these videos didn’t go viral, some of them performed extremely well because of their entertainment value.

We also used this opportunity to make sure people knew about Snoop Dogg reposting. There were already people commenting that either the song reminds them of Snoop Dogg or that Snoop should be on the remix. This was a great tie-in for one of these types of videos.

Wednesday, September 4, 2024: In order to take this momentum to the next level, I felt like we needed to spark more user-generated content (UGC). The hope was to figure out how to incorporate the song into a dance challenge. Instead, we tried launching an open verse challenge for the first time. It didn’t do too well, but we did have about 20 people participate across all platforms.

Thursday, September 12, 2024: The next single “What Dreams Are Made Of” drops. We shot a batch of videos on a rooftop from a space we rented. None of the 6 short-form videos we posted to promote this song went viral, but it still had a positive response.

Friday, September 13, 2024: The second single was added to a Spotify Editorial playlist with 241k followers.

This song was originally supposed to be the last single before the album dropped but we moved it up in response to the viral success we were having with the first single. Because of this, I submitted the song for Spotify editorial playlist consideration a week before the single release date and thankfully it still got added. However, it is still recommended to submit to Spotify at least 3 to 4 weeks in advance of the release date.

During the 3-month album campaign, this playlist brought in over 80k streams. It was great this happened because we can compare streaming numbers for a song that got playlisted but didn’t have the same social media success as the other singles.

Thursday, October 3, 2024: The third single Can We Still Be Friends officially drops and eventually became our most viral song. However, the first video flopped.

Due to scheduling issues, we had to shoot last minute at night the day before the single release. I was not prepared to shoot, but we just needed to improvise something to get a video out for release day.

Not a strong start, but the beauty of doing these short-form videos is it doesn’t matter. You can keep posting until something hits.

Thursday, October 10, 2024: We shot another batch of videos for the third single. For the second video, I wanted to experiment with posting a video that was still on a tripod and had the artist sitting this time. The camera was handheld in all the previous videos and he was standing.

This video also flopped, but why? Was it because of the still shot? Was it the sitting? Or was it because it started with the chorus and went into the first verse? Although it was easy to say that a sitting shot, especially if there isn’t any camera movement, doesn’t make for an interesting or engaging video, we learned that wasn’t the case.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024: The third video we posted went viral and hit similar numbers as the first viral video in August. I wasn’t ready to rule out that a sitting and still camera shot could work so I tried it again. This time, I started the video with the second verse and that did the trick. Also, the reason this video also did better is because you can see his entire outfit.

I believe this video helped the next one to go viral, reaching the most views we’ve seen on a single video so far.

Thursday, October 17, 2024: We post the fourth video and it goes viral, reaching over 2 million views across all platforms and becoming our most successful one in the campaign.

Monday, October 21, 2024: We introduced “fit check” as a new type of content to experiment with. As a fashionista, this type of content made sense for the artist and it did well hitting 160k views. It even caught the attention of West Coast legend Suga Free, to whom many commenters during this campaign have compared the artist to during the album campaign.

Friday, October 25, 2024: The new album officially drops on all platforms.

Monday, October 28, 2024: I suggested the artist go live on TikTok and Instagram to talk to fans about the new album. As strange as it sounds, this move was more about showing the new followers that this artist is a person.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024: Because of the viral success of the video we posted on 10/17, we wanted to post another one with the same backdrop. Unfortunately, it was the last and only take we did in front of the house before getting kicked off the property so we couldn’t finish recording the second verse.

Since we only had half of the second verse recorded, we shared a 20-second snippet and it went viral, also reaching 2 million views across all platforms.

Thursday, October 31, 2024: We released our only “traditional” music video for “It Might Not Be Love” on YouTube. This was shot the previous year. For how much was spent on this music video, it did not provide a good return on investment for how it performed compared to the short-form videos.

We posted a short snippet of the music video on socials but it didn’t perform well. The mistake the first time was mentioning the full video was on YouTube in the captions and on the video itself, which could have potentially caused algorithms to derank it.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024: Erykah Badu shared the 20-second snippet on her Instagram Story. Although this didn’t really move the needle, we still gained about a thousand new followers and it was cool to see this as big fans of the artist.

Screenshot of the Erkyah Badu repost on Instagram Stories

Thursday, November 14, 2024: We introduced a new type of content called BS Comments where the artist would respond to negative comments. It’s our take on Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets where artists, athletes and celebrities respond to mean comments about them.

Thursday, December 5, 2024: Since the traditional music video wasn’t effective, we shot a batch of videos for the fourth single at a local bar. We posted the first short-form video, outperforming the clips pulled from the music video.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024: The best video for “It Might Not Be Love” out of the recent bunch was posted and it also started to take off leading up to Christmas.

Instagram graph showing the Reel performance for It Might Not Be Love.

It’s annoying that once you run an ad on an Instagram video, the performance metric graphics for ‘followers versus non-followers’ disappear so I can’t show previous ones unfortunately. But since we didn’t run this video as an ad, I’m able to share what the graph looks like for this video. Of course, it doesn’t take a data scientist to understand that this is the type of performance you want to see – views increasing from non-followers.
 

Social Media Campaign Costs

 
For this campaign, we wanted to keep costs at a minimum by focusing on building organic momentum on social media.

Even though we accomplished this, we made sure to push the album from all angles. In addition to paying for radio promotion and a publicist, we also put ad money behind videos that were gaining traction to add fuel to the fire. All these things did help, but all of the momentum came from organic socials from these short-form videos.

So if we’re just looking at the core costs of creating and posting videos on social media, including ad spend, it was about $1,000. This also includes a $250 rental fee to book a rooftop to shoot videos for one of the singles.

This does not of course include the cost to hire someone like myself to manage the entire campaign and create the video assets, but if you’re doing it yourself, this won’t be a cost for you.
 

Key Viral Video Takeaways

 
1. Going viral is often unexpected. You hear this a lot from people who go viral. In our situation, it was definitely true. We were seeing some success posting short-form performance clips for a previous acoustic album release but did not expect any of our videos to take off like the first one.

Because it is unexpected, it’s good to be aware of the action steps you should take if it were to happen to you to keep the momentum going. I cover this below.

2. Negative comments are “good.” As you become more popular, you will naturally have more haters and attract more negativity your way. Unfortunately, that’s the way our culture and society works now. But people leaving negative comments ultimately help your video in the algorithms. This can be viewed as a good thing as long as you’re not reading these comments or taking them to heart.

As someone who read most of the comments, I would say 90% were positive and 10% were negative. A lot of the “negative” comments were drawing comparisons to what the artist looks or sounds like to be funny or entertaining.

3. Luck and timing still matter a lot. The first time I posted the video for the first single, the numbers were doing what they normally would do. But the next video took off on TikTok only and not the other platforms.

The second video that went viral, promoting the third single, took off on Instagram and not TikTok.

Through experimentation leading up to these viral videos, I found that posting around 9AM PT on either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday worked the best for us. The analytics on Instagram and TikTok showed that our peak active users was at about 4PM PT.

Sometimes you don’t know what video will catch with the algorithm. You just have to do your best to use the analytics to find the best times to post and keep trying.

4. Comment baiting in the videos helped. It’s one thing to ask a question in the caption as a way to encourage comments from your fans. It’s another thing if elements in the videos naturally encourage people to leave a comment. This could be from how you look, how you dress or any imperfections in the video.

From our end, it was something that was totally unintentional, but it worked in our favor. The artist is very fashion-conscious and can be a bit more… adventurous with his clothing choices so viewers often left comments about it.

5. Experiment with which part of the song to post. Going into this campaign, my hypothesis was starting the video with the chorus or hook was best move. Turns out that starting the video with the second verse performed best. Now, this may vary depending on the genre or style of music you do so it’s important to experiment.

Also, you don’t need to share the entire verse or include the chorus in the video. In fact, I’ve seen plenty of artists just share 15 – 30 seconds of a verse and have it perform well.

With this in mind, we tried sharing a 20-second snippet of a verse and it took off.

6. Social media success does not directly translate to streaming success and vice versa. Despite earning over 7 million views from all of these videos, we saw a slight increase in overall streaming numbers. Once Snoop Dogg reposted our video to his Instagram followers on August 21st, we saw a noticeable bump in streams on Spotify as shown below.

The streaming impact on Spotify after Snoop Dogg reposted the video for “Take It 2 Far” to his 89 million followers.

In general, the numbers and attention you earn usually stay localized within that platform, except when something goes mega-viral. What I noticed is the reverse is true too. If you get a lot of streams from Spotify playlists, this often does not translate to getting followers on social media.

7. You can’t predict which video will go viral. Initially, I thought if certain performance metrics were high enough, the algorithm would more likely push it to non-followers.

On TikTok, you have ‘average watch time’, ‘percentage of full video’ watched and ‘retention rate’. You would think these metrics are important to them since they’re highlighted in the analytics overview.

When I compared these numbers to other videos, I found that there were some that had better metrics but they weren’t getting the same love with the algorithm. There are likely other metrics that are taken into account, like shares and how many videos are created from your original video/sound.

8. High production and higher costs for video don’t mean better marketing performance. As an independent artist, a traditional music video where you’re spending thousands of dollars out of pocket just isn’t a cost-effective marketing tool in today’s digital climate. That’s exactly what we saw play out in this campaign. We got significantly more reach and followers from 20+ short-form performance videos that cost a fraction of what we paid for a traditional music video.

Most of the short-form videos I put together and posted were shot on a $500 camera (Insta360 Ace Pro is now $300, but there’s also a newer model), but you can do better with most modern smartphones, like an iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Because these videos can be inexpensive and simple to shoot, you can create more and have them edited much quicker. Because content is so saturated, it becomes more of a numbers game than having super high-quality production.

In fact, highly produced content can potentially work against you in the newsfeed as people subconsciously prefer more authentic, less unedited videos. This is why the short-form performance videos that usually perform best are often one-shot.
 

Conclusion

 
Typically, songs and videos that go mega viral encourage and incentivize user-generated content (dance challenges, lip syncs, reactions, reviews) and/or attach themselves to memes or events. For us, that was one area we weren’t able to capitalize on to take these viral moments even further.

Despite that, this was a successful campaign as a fully independent effort. Creating the right content to promote your release on social media doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

Hopefully, this case study and campaign breakdown was useful for you. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, leave a comment or set up a call to chat with me.

The post Going Viral On Social Media: Campaign Breakdown For Musicians appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

In this blog, I share 5 live performance discovery platforms that basically any musician can apply for a chance to get featured in front of new potential fans.

Before You Apply

 
Even though these live performance discovery platforms are free to apply, make sure you’re giving yourself the best chance to succeed. You don’t want to waste your time, or anyone else’s, by submitting when you’re clearly not ready.

Here are some things you should do and have ready beforehand:

• Read the directions and requirements carefully to see if you’re eligible.
• Explore and research each of these platforms to make sure your music is a good fit.
• Have experience performing live. After all, these discovery platforms are based on performance, whether in person or on video.
• Released music on major streaming platforms. At the very least an EP and/or a handful of singles. If you need some help, here’s my free guide and checklist for releasing singles.
• Establish a web presence like a website with all of the essentials and active social media profiles.
• Offer a way to collect emails to build your email list.

It’s really important you have this online marketing foundation, just in case you do get accepted for one of these platforms. Getting discovered by new fans won’t do much for you if you don’t have the follow up ready so they can continue the fan journey. You want to have your marketing and branding systems in place to develop and strengthen that fan relationship once they discover you. On the other hand, without these elements, you may not get selected in the first place.

If you don’t have much money to work with, here’s are tips to market with little to no budget.
 

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts

tinydeskcontest.npr.org

Masta Ace performing on Tiny Desk Concerts.

Origin Location: Washington D.C.

About: This contest needs no real introduction. You may have seen your favorite artists perform on Tiny Desk Concerts at some point. For those not familiar, it is a video series of live concerts that started in 2008 and hosted by NPR Music and All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen.

Although the Tiny Desk series is often reserved for more established and popular artists, there’s a “tiny” chance for you to get on there.

Starting in 2015, NPR Music hosts an annual contest from February to March where judges select one winner to play their own Tiny Desk concert set. In addition, they get to headline NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour and get featured on NPR’s All Things Considered radio program. Over 6,000 videos are submitted each year, but there can only be one winner.

BUT… just because you don’t win the contest, doesn’t mean you still can’t get exposure from it.

In 2018, I wrote about an artist in my city who blew up from his Tiny Desk Contest submission video. Even though Hobo Johnson didn’t technically win the contest that year, he still ended up performing on his own Tiny Desk Concert session because of how memorable his submission was. As of this writing, his “Peach Scone” submission has received over 22 million views on YouTube alone.

Genres: Any

Audience Reach:

• 7.63M+ on YouTube
• 1M+ on Facebook
• 746K+ on Twitter
• 428K+ on Instagram

My Comments: I would encourage anyone who plans to submit a video to watch the submission videos of the past winners, which you can find on their contest page. This is so you can get a feel for the diversity of the artists and range of styles that get selected. You don’t have to be a super confident and polished rock star to win. Nor do you have to conform to a certain image or body type.

In terms of the video submissions itself, one common element I see in these videos is that it’s often a one-shot, one-camera video. I feel like anything with multiple camera angles and high production value may be too polished for the judges. I think that one of the key elements that the judges look for in these submissions is raw authenticity and high production video can contradict this. Just my personal observation.

Second, you don’t need fancy or expensive video equipment to win. As you’ll see, some of the submissions were shot with a smartphone by themselves. If you plan to shoot your own video, you can use this guide I created to help you get the best quality video from a smart phone.
 

COLORS x STUDIOS

colorsxstudios.com

Doja Cat performing at COLORSxSTUDIOS.

Origin Location: Berlin, Germany

About: COLORS is a unique aesthetic music platform showcasing exceptional talent from all around the globe, focused on promoting the most distinctive new artists and original sounds. In the context of an increasingly fragmented and saturated scene we seek to provide clarity and calm, offering a minimalistic stage to shine a spotlight on the artists and give them the opportunity to present their music without distraction.

Genres: Any, but they seem to lean a bit more towards R&B, Soul, Hip Hop and singer/songwriter types.

Audience Reach:

• 6.65M+ on YouTube
• 1.3M+ on Instagram
• 282K+ on Facebook

My Comments: It’s likely you may have seen a COLORS x STUDIOS video at some point with their signature single color background and microphone hanging from the top. Although their focus is to showcase newer, emerging artists, there have been plenty of established artists who have performed like Billie Eillish, Doja Cat, FKA Figs, J.I.D. and Quavo & Takeoff.

Although their main studio is in Berlin, they have set up temporary studios in different countries to focus on curating local talent for their editorials and videos. More recently as of this writing, they were in Vietnam and published videos for Vietnam-based artists Suboi and Low G. So even if you aren’t based in Berlin or not able to travel there, it’s still worth submitting from other countries in case they want to focus on seeking artists in your country.
 

Audiotree

audiotree.tv

Jacob Collier performing on Audiotree.

Origin Location: Chicago, IL

About: Audiotree showcases talented musicians and bands from around the world. Originally created to give young bands a platform to be seen and heard, the Audiotree Music channel has become a cornerstone in the music world. The concept is to capture intimate performances from diverse artists in a professional studio at no cost to them.

Genres: Any

Audience Reach:

• 743K+ on YouTube
• 87K+ on Instagram
• 40K+ on Twitter

Sofar Sounds

sofarsounds.com

AstraLogik performing at Sofar San Francisco

Origin Location: United Kingdom, but available worldwide

About: Sofar Sounds is a global community of music lovers creating space where music matters. Through curating intimate performances in unique locations, Sofar shows create lasting connections between artists and fans.

Sofar brings artists and guests together in intimate settings without distractions, pretense or crowds. Sofar shows transform everyday spaces — from living rooms and rooftops to boutiques and museums — into captivating venues for secret, live shows, creating inclusive experiences that bring people closer together.

Founded in London in 2009, Sofar invites guests to discover new artists, places, and people, whether at home or abroad, in over 400 cities around the world.

Genres: Any

Audience Reach: These are numbers for their main global channels, but each city or chapter of Sofar Sounds will have their own social media accounts to cover their local area. For example, the ones in my area are Sofar San Francisco and Sofar Sacramento.

• 1.35M+ on YouTube
• 272K+ on Instagram
• 217K+ on Facebook
• 40K+ on Twitter

My Comments: I’ve had a chance to attend a few of these shows many years ago because my friends performed. You can check out their videos here:

• AstraLogik (you can actually see me in the background)
• Zion I (RIP)
• Basi Vibe
• The Philharmonik

Sugarshack Sessions

sugarshacksessions.com

Fortunate Youth performing for a Sugarshack Session.

Origin Location: Bonita Springs, FL

About:Sugarshack music channel is an entertainment and discovery platform for live music lovers. Built upon the foundation of a multimedia company, the Sugarshack Music Channel uniquely connects people with artists through audible, visual, and real life experiences.

The Sugarshack Sessions was started as a digital music series that featured unique and intimate acoustic sessions filmed/recorded in a backyard in Bonita Springs, FL in 2014. The idea: to do something we loved with people we cared about to create something positive for others.

The Sugarshack Sessions is now one of several programs featured on the Sugarshack Music Channel. The channel has grown from a backyard hobby into a full-time business that includes an online community of more than 350K+ subscribers and 400M lifetime views who tune in to watch our acoustic sessions, live music videos, documentaries, and podcasts that feature local, emerging, and national bands.

Genres: There’s definitely a certain musical style and vibe that they cater to as opposed to genres. Everything is acoustic and leans more into the island and reggae vibes. However, you will see some rock, country and hip hop artists as well but it’s gotta have that feel good vibe and sound good acoustically.

Audience Reach:

• 396K+ on YouTube
• 106K+ on Instagram
• 60K+ on Facebook

My Comments: They have multiple different content series, but their main discovery series is called Sugarshack Sessions. Plus, I love how they will include “For Fans of…” in their social posts to help viewers get a sense of the type of artist someone is.
 

Conclusion

 
There are a number of ways to get exposure as a musician but nothing beats seeing a performance in person. Although it’s not exactly scalable, I’m a big believer this is the most impactful way to gain fans.

Unfortunately, these opportunities don’t come easy for newer, emerging artists. This is why you want to take advantage of these live performance discovery platforms as they can potentially bring in more gigs in the future.

If you’re still new to performance, I would recommend avoiding these live performance mistakes.

The post 5 FREE Live Performance Discovery Platforms For Musicians To Apply appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.