Ads Not Triggering The Algorithm? Try THIS (Track vs Profile vs Playlist)

[@AndrewSouthworth]

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[@aftercommonera]

If you're sending them to a landing page they aren't likely not going to click through to stream on Spotify knowing they don't have premium, they'll just choose another method.

[@Child9Music]

not quite true, I do and I have no Spotify premium. the reason why is because if I like it I check out their other songs on Spotify. In addition to that I always check their most popular.

[@VickyLenzer]

Mass Music lovers will always listen through Spotify tho, doesn't matter premium or no

[@yeserguitar]

Statistics made really clear and I’ll think about for the profile campaigns!

[@PatriciaPalmeroAlvarez]

Very informative video! Thank you Andrew!

[@10max30]

I have been sending to a song within an album and on some days I have received almost triple the streams of past campaigns when I sent to only one song, the number of saves has quadrupled and the number of playlists has doubled; all this spread across all the songs on the album. The song I chose from the album maintains similar numbers to when I used only one song. All this is happening to me by chance however, I didn't plan it. I don't know if other factors have something to do with it since it is the first time that I only target Tier 1/2 countries. My music is in Spanish so I'm still discovering what suits me best!

[@redcurrantrecords]

If you create a great playlist people will listen to the playlist many times, also my playlist (Australian Cafe Music) appears under the "discovered on" on many other artists pages as they are on the playlist, so the playlist gets free marketing.

[@FrMaximilianMaryDean]

First, a plug for hiring Andrew and his team at Forbid Media. Like many, I have tried playlist submissions and running ads, but the team at Forbid are masters at creating ads and getting results. Thanks to their campaigns I qualified for Discovery Mode and everything has taken off exponentially. Second, we tried sending people to a new release, and it worked really well, but when we sent them to a playlist I created of all of my songs 3 things happened: 1st, I would get 2-3 times as many streams from the campaign than from sending them to a song; 2nd, people were saving the playlist which means ongoing streams and discovery of my catalogue from the ad campaign; 3rd, it was easy to see how the ad campaign was doing just by looking see the number of listeners and streams for that playlist. Just a final point on this score, if you send them to a playlist the first song on the playlist will get the most streams - so if you want to increase streams on a certain song simply put it on the top of the playlist during the ad campaign.

[@AlexSaheli]

Oooooooooooh thank you, I'm changing my link from playlist to a song 😅 Golden video

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Thanks dude!

[@andrewkovaliov6625]

I used to love driving people to a song in an album (autoplay), so that the next song would start playing automatically as well. However a few months ago they changed the scheme. As soon as the first song ends, they start playing a random song by another artist. An alternative option is driving people to a playlist but autoplay isn’t available this way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@BrettAltmanMusic]

Love this video. Really clever and haven’t heard this logic before! Thank you!

[@allenrm120]

Andrew, I respect your grind. Keep up the good work.

[@sotakunaii]

thank you so much Andrew!!! Isn't it a problem that people on mobile who click on the "play"-button on the landing-page get directed to Spotify in browser instead of the Spotify app? Then they are not logged in and listen as free plan users. I think with my landing-Page that would happen. Or is that a thing between old and new smartphones?

[@sirrusminor8436]

I liked pointing to a playlist of my own songs so that I could identify which streams had come from the adverts, but I have had some bad campaigns in terms of the ratio of landing page conversions to actual Spotify plays. The last time I just pointed to the actual song and this has dramatically shifted that ratio. It may be a coincidence but I think I'll stick with the song for now

[@ToreGThomassen]

Thanks for all the great videos you make. I have a question that i'll hope you( Andrew) or others can answer. I released a track 2 weeks ago and it boosted quite much on Spotify, i had 1500 monthly listeners before the release and now i have over 2000 the last week and its increase every day. I have a pretty large catalog and there are other tracks that probably could well. The question is; would you put all the ads money in one track or would you spread it more ? . I make instrumental tracks in the style of Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter so you know

[@DeweyDaDon]

I have a question I hope you can answer. In previous videos you said to create a custom conversion event to use for hypeddit . But there’s already two conversion events that show up in Facebook that you can use in conjunction with API “hypeddit smart link click and hypeddit smart link visit . So why can’t we just use smart link visit vs setting up a custom conversion event ?

[@AndrewSouthworth]

You can use the Hypeddit Smart Link Click event without creating a custom conversion. In the past you couldn't do this, so the older video I have I used a custom conversion. You can still create a custom conversion if you want, but you don't have to anymore.

[@juanimingardo]

thank you for these videos Andrew!

[@Isaacthompson]

Great work as always! 🙏

[@jayssandri]

Hey Andrew!! what would you do differently if it was a EP release? It's a 5 song EP, 3 songs have already been released through waterfall strategy. The EP will contain 2 new songs. One song in the first position and the other in the 5th position.

[@SouhailEntertainment]

Introduction to Destination Choices for Spotify Promotion - 00:00:00 Using Meta Ads for Spotify Promotion - 00:00:26 Sending Users to Individual Track Links - 00:00:50 Sending Users to Your Spotify Profile Page - 00:01:49 Sending Users to an Album Link - 00:02:14 Sending Users to a Playlist - 00:03:09 Comparison of Destination Choices and Their Impact - 00:03:40 Recommendation for Using Individual Song Links - 00:04:08 The Issue with Free Spotify Users and Artist Radio - 00:04:33 Data on Premium vs. Free Spotify Users - 00:05:36 Implications for Advertising in Different Countries - 00:06:07 Optimizing for Premium Spotify Users - 00:08:46 Conclusion and Additional Resources - 00:09:23

[@michaelandrews6262]

So I have found that if your release is the first track on either a single with multiple songs, an EP or an album, an Instagram ad linking to my Hypeddit landing page with a further link to that first song will play the song and then continue to autoplay through the songs on the B side of the single or the other downstream tracks on the EP or album. I send conversions to the first track, and as I am doing a waterfall release strategy, the holdover to multiple songs on the release is pretty high.

[@scunny]

When you release your 2nd or 3rd song on a waterfall release etc do each of them still trigger the release radar?

[@michaelandrews6262]

Yes you can pitch any new track on the release to Release Radar. I've even had the other previously released songs get some additional Release Radar streams.

[@gregoryjkane]

What’s the opinion on sending to a “deep link” of your song, but within a This Is Artist playlist?

[@philleann]

I do this, but to my own personal curated playlist so that I can reorder the playlist how I like. It works for me. The playlist grows, I get multiple listens, and a good percentage follow me too.

[@huynhcris]

This is what I do to. Curious what Andrew think about this method compared to sending a user to just the single track

[@NewMarshallPlan]

I do this too, to our own curated 'this is' playlist.

[@SpectrumTheOriginator]

That's what I do. It works well for me

[@VAVIBEATS]

Great video! Do you know by data how many clicks on smartlinks typically end up in streams? Is there a rough percentage that you know of? Thank you!

[@christopherrocky]

I've found the playlist is the best for saves and playlist adds. I still get followers but not as many as the profile granted. So I've found absolutey I get way more saves from a playlist. It might just be my genre of music though which is pretty niche, orchestral/cinematic hybrid epic with fantasy themes

[@NewMarshallPlan]

When running my own experiments I also have not found statistically valid proof yet that sending people to a song directly leads to more saves and playlist adds then sending people to a playlist. Now I basically do both, this way: The first 2 to 3 weeks of a campaign I send people to the song 'just in case'. Then I change the link to a deeplink on playlist that starts auto playing. -On top of that, I always keep a small campaign that goes to our profile running for our most popular song that's at the top of our profile. So if people simply press play, the song advertised for will play first!

[@AndrewSouthworth]

For a lot of instrumental artists I will recommend playlists instead, because its often a bingeable genre. That might be why its working better for you. But for 'regular' vocal-driven music i'll always see dramatically more saves going direct to song than a playlist (in some cases like 5X-10X more).

[@NewMarshallPlan]

@AndrewSouthworth that's weird, we are vocal driven but I don't see that difference... Maybe it also depends on the genre, countries and age groups?

[@christopherharv]

I can’t stand Spotify, as a user or as an artist. I don’t want to have to pay for a subscription membership just to be able to select which song I want to share from my album. If it were a good product, I’d be okay paying them, but it’s not. The UI is cluttered and unintuitive, and they don’t pay artists as well as other platforms. Hate that it’s the number 1 streaming service, we need a paradigm shift.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

The pay would go up considerably if they just dumped the free plan entirely - premium streams pay 2.2X higher than free streams. As far as sharing your music, if you use Spotify on the computer you can still grab links from your songs from the album. You don't need a paid plan to do that. I'm not a fan of Spotify's pay rate but honestly I love the platform as a user. I've tried Apple Music and KZbin Music and Spotify is massively ahead when it comes to UI and algorithmic recommendations.

[@gonzosalamanca]

What do you think about running lyrics videos as ads? I was thinking making some with my spotify canvas in the background to make it more dynamic

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Sometimes they work well, but sometimes they don't. Def worth trying though!

[@prod.kaverr]

What do y‘all think is a good Cost per Click? I‘ve just started my First ads for a Song so i dont have much Reference on what is good or bad

[@benny_bisquits]

I’d also love to know, I have an ad running for my latest song and I’m getting a 2.90 per click . That’s pretty high I know but also only on day 3

[@prod.kaverr]

@@benny_bisquits Thats way to high tho, i get a Click for 9 Cents Right now

[@AndrewSouthworth]

The cost per click doesn't actually matter, only the cost per conversion. If someone is using a traffic campaign I don't trust the data at all, it will always look much better on Facebook than the reality is on Spotify. A good cost per conversion would be $0.30-$0.40, a great cost per conversion would be $0.20 to $0.30. Under $0.20 is amazing.

[@philleann]

Instead of a 3rd party landing page, I have started to send my ads to a post on my website that has my music links. Its been working well and I get to keep my data. The only downside is I haven't figured out how to do a presave campaign this way yet.

[@Child9Music]

but, how do you deal with people who don't click to listen on e.g. spotify?. the landing pages that support pixel you don't pay for until they click.

[@philleann]

@@Child9Music I have the link buttons to my music on my website set up as a conversion event in FB ads.

[@hilltoptheband]

you can set up pixel with custom web designers... i do it with wix@@Child9Music

[@philleann]

@@Child9Music I have my pixel on my website set up so that anyone who clicks a button to a streaming service triggers a fb conversation event.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

I usually tell people not to use their own website. Not because it can't work, but because most artists will create a landing page thats slow, poorly designed for ads and/or without the correct conversion event. I'd say less than 10% of the artists I see trying to do it with their own site actually do it correctly. The other aspect is that the smart link services are easier to setup and you get much more analytics such as daily visit / conversion tracking, country breakdowns, service breakdowns etc. But if you did it correctly and its working for you feel free to keep doing it!

[@ardaitadaita5717]

why spotify doesn't capture traffic to istagram adds track.I got 1000 conversions. Oh, the live track is not increasing, I checked the deep link to the song, everything works and the song opens. I understand the need to listen to the song for 30 seconds, but doesn't everybody listen to the song for a thousand conversions. or is this where Spotify no longer wants .

[@davidmoikave]

I'm having the exact same problem. Thousands of conversions and nearly 0 plays registered in Spotify. It is driving me nuts...

[@Leemanuel05]

I've read that 60% of Spotify users are on the free plan. Is that incorrect?

[@Child9Music]

One thing though with a track link to a non premium user on a mobile phone is that if they don't have the Spotify App installed they only get a snippet of the song in the web browser with a message saying sign up to play all of it and you have to press play button to play the snippet, but with the app installed and a non premium user it does play all the track automatically. and the same happened with a playlist, only snippets of each song are played. so question is, how to automatically open in the app and not the browser?

[@AndrewSouthworth]

If they don't have the Spotify app on their device, it will always be a hot mess. However most people won't click if they don't have the app so for the most part this doesn't matter. If someone does have the app, as a premium or free user, the smart link service you use should deep link and force their device to open the app and not the web browser.

[@samuelesalvel4033]

@@AndrewSouthworth I use hypeddit and it's not the case... opens spotify in browser (instagram browser, which is even worse...) and if I click the button "open in app" it opens google play store 😑do you think hypeddit could change this and put a real deeeplink?

[@TJMehra]

Andrew, I’ve tried asking this earlier as well - With no response :( - When I do advertise from my Instagram, my links open Spotify into Instagram’s Browser, where a user isn’t logged in. How can I get past this?! PLEASE HELP.

[@Stanislove_BY]

Hey, I've been experiencing the same issue lately. Around 70% of the time when I open Spotify smartlinks from Instagram, it doesn't directly open the Spotify app. Instead, it leads to a webpage, and when I tap 'open app,' it redirects me to the Play Store, not the Spotify app. This seems to be a common problem among Android users, as several of my friends (also Android users) have reported the same issue. It's not just with my ads but with most music ads that lead to smartlinks that I see on Instagram. Previously, the Spotify app used to open immediately in all cases, and I'm curious if others have also noticed this change in Instagram's behavior. I believe it really influences music ads negatively, adding a lot of additional and very inconvenient steps for people converting through your ads. It would be really great if Andrew gave his insight on this topic.

[@SaintSoldier84]

This only happens for me when I post the presave link

[@samuelesalvel4033]

Same. Deeplinks forces to open the app and autoplay. We need to find a smartlink service that uses deeplinks

[@tybrockofficial]

Love u Andrew thx

[@juststefanos]

Can u please make a video on if soundrunners digital is legit

[@who_cares848]

i cant run the ads because it has the word "spotify" in it. wtf.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

hmm i've never seen that happen before! did they actually say that?

[@who_cares848]

Yeah I figured it out though. Its because I had "stream on Spotify" in the headline. I guess you can't do that... Weird....

[@screamidol]

The high percentage of premium users doesn't tell us how many free users didn't end up listening at all due to the Spotify "hurdles".

[@AndrewSouthworth]

It gives us a good idea of why those hurdles don't matter much - most people in the countries we target have premium so there are no hurdles for them.

[@jayriku12]

Thanks. I've been sending to Playlist since I get most passive listeners there but I do get a good following. I'll setup another campaign and try for a single track in the future. Thanks for the info

[@Child9Music]

which countries do you target? and are you using a landing page for that?