Spotify for Artists: Every Musician Should Know

Spotify has become one of the most essential streaming platforms, for both music lovers - the ones who make it and the ones who love listening to it. With over 350 million users and 150 million subscriptions, Spotify has become a significant turning point for emerging music artists. Spotify has opened doors to a greater reach for many musicians. But is that all it can do? Spotify offers a lot of other services and features for music artists to help push their music and mark their presence in the streaming world. 

Here, we have compiled all the different features of Spotify that you could make effective use of, and bring your music marketing game to the next level. Note that most of these services are available under the ‘Spotify For Artist’ tab in your account. 

Discovery Mode

This is a recently launched feature by Spotify. As the name suggests, it is simply a marketing strategy that helps users discover independent artists like yourself, resulting in a long time growth and reach. The whole point of this is to make you take the driver’s seat - you get to control the whole operation. You basically select a track of yours that you’d want to get the most attention, and the Discovery Mode strategy includes that selection into its algorithms that assure customized listening hours for users. 

It is only effective if the listeners like the track. When a user isn’t engaging with the track, Spotify assumes that it isn’t working out and refrains from recommending the track to users who have similar music preferences. For more, don’t miss out on our article How To Use The Discovery Mode On Spotify in 2023.

Marquee Ads

This works totally based on listening history. That is, users who have accessed your song through Spotify Radio and have liked it may get a full-screen suggestion when they open the app, that tells the user to check out your album. It will be headed with ‘New music for you!’ And this, can be implemented for both free account holders as well as premium account users. We recommend you read our article on How To Make Spotify Marquee Ads for more information. 

Clips

Now this is something brand new. After Instagram introduced the Reels feature similar to TikTok videos, Spotify announced Clips. Short visuals have been observed to work tremendously so it is not surprising that Spotify introduced a similar feature. So what do you have to do? You can simply make a 30-second video of yourself, talking about your music, promoting, and sharing stories that could drive more listeners to your profile. This catalyzes the development of a permanent fanbase because it helps your new listeners get to know you and your music better and engage with it on a regular basis. 

Your artist profile is directly linked to the feature, so you could upload your 30-second video, which could range from a promotional video, or a clip of your music video and so on. Speaking of artist profiles, don’t forget to check out our article on How To Update A Music Artist Profile.  

Canvas

Although it isn't very surprising, album artwork has entered a new era. This is the looping image that can be added to each of your Spotify releases and played while people listen. Spotify claimed that Canvas can get folks interested, then make them listen. Those listening are more likely to stay stream (+5% on average vs. control group), promote the music (+145%), add it to their personal playlists (+20%), download the tune (+20%), and save the track (+1.4%) when they see a Canvas. They are also more inclined to go to your profile page of yours (+9%). 

Fans of your Canvas can be discovered outside of Spotify. Your Canvas will spin in the backdrop of the Instagram Story when you or a listener posts the song from the Spotify app on the social media app, along with information about the music and a link to ‘Play on Spotify’ for viewers.  To gain prospective fans as well as maintain their attention for longer, you may quickly add a new Canvas anytime you have an idea and you want to change it, if that's once for the single or over and over time again. The backdrop of the ‘Now Playing’ panel is fully filled with canvas and displays in a vertical manner. The ratio is 9:16, and the length is 3 secs to 8 secs (remember this is when it is playing only in the background) of the canvas. 

Countdown Pages

Your fans may pre-save your upcoming release, see a sneak peek of the track list, pre-order new merchandise, watch video Clips you publish with them, and keep track of the countdown till the album is online using Countdown Pages. According to Spotify’s study, 80% of pre-savers listen to newly released music within the first week of its release. This feature is primarily designed to help you build suspense and excitement for your next release. Your top fans will automatically get a notification when you publish a new Countdown Page. Listeners could also explore the page right from your profile under the ‘Upcoming Release’ tab. 

Spotify will likely bring up a lot more services and features for music artists, so make sure you always look out for its updates. Read more about Spotify in our articles -  Spotify Pay Per Stream: How Does It Work? and Find Spotify Playlist Curators: How to Get Placed on Spotify Playlists. 

We at GreaseRelease, have a bunch of curators on our network who are looking for new & exciting music to push on their massive playlists. If you make music and want to reach a wider audience, check out our submission platform and get a chance to reach millions of listeners! Submit your tracks now! 

 

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