How do people discover and consume music?

Author

Andrew Southworth
October 07, 2024

Hey friends!

Today we’re going to talk about how people discover and consume music.

Specifically, we’re going to discuss how ‘normal’ people discover and consume music. Because chances are if you’re reading this you’re like me, you’re not just a normal music fan, you’re either an artist yourself or you’re in the music industry in some way and music is your passion.

Understanding how people find and consume music is important when it comes to marketing, because you can use that knowledge to help you promote your music.

Before we dive in too deep, I just finished hosting our 2nd Music Marketing Live summit with 27 guest videos and 6 livestreams, totaling over 25 hours of content! The event is over, but you can purchase replay access here.

How I Discover Music

Now, let me talk about how I discover new music nowadays. Typically it happens one of 3 ways:

  • It gets recommended to me on Spotify in some way (Mixes, Discover Weekly, Radio, DJ, Editorial playlists etc)

  • It gets recommended to me on YouTube after i’m watching another music video

  • I’m actively searching Reddit, YouTube channels, forums etc for similar bands to what I like

It’s rare that I ever find new music on social media because I practically never go on social media. I post my stuff and I get off as quickly as possible. I’ve never discovered a song or artist from TikTok. However, I did first hear the band Starset from a Facebook ad.

The way I most typically listen to music is I go to either their profile or a specific album, and I listen to that artist. I essentially go through phases of obsessions where I may listen to 1 artist exclusively for days or weeks when I find a new artist I love. But again, i’m not the average music fan.

How A Regular Fan Discovers Music

Now I want to contrast this with how a non-musician, typical music fan finds and consumes music. I’m using a specific person here as a reference. Typically it happens in these ways:

  • They find it on social media, either from the artist themselves or from someone else using their sound

  • It gets recommended to them on Spotify in some way (Mixes, Discover Weekly, Radio, DJ, Editorial playlists etc)

  • A friend tells them to check it out

This person doesn’t create content on social media, but they consume it daily. So it makes sense that social media would be such a large part of how they find music. They also regularly share content and music back and forth with friends.

While they also discover music through Spotify’s recommendations, it’s quite different. They don’t actively play any algorithmic playlists on purpose but after finishing a release or playlist Spotify’s Radio & Autoplay takes over, and that pushes new music their way.

However the largest differences occur with how they consume music. They don’t go to an artist or album and binge them, when they find something they like they do one of these two things:

  • Like the song, so it gets added to their liked songs playlist

  • Add the song to a playlist in their library

Then when they listen to music, they simply go to their playlist and play it on shuffle. They’ll almost never listen to more than 1 or 2 songs back to back by the same artist. These playlists can be hundreds of songs long, and songs are almost never removed, which can result in streams for the artist for literally years.

This person has never used SoundCloud, or BandCamp. They don’t look up user playlists or editorial playlists on Spotify. They’re never going to play Release Radar or Discover Weekly on Spotify. This doesn’t mean those particular things aren’t valuable, different demographic audiences will have their own preferences.

You should think about your audience and how they might discover and listen to new music. For most people, Spotify algorithmic playlists will be part of it, but you may find that your audience is unique.

New Content

TikTok Music is shutting down for good, Spotify has added AI playlist creation, Canada wants some streaming money and thousands of music videos have vanished off of YouTube.

In this video I show how to run what I call a 'YouTube ads fluff campaign'. It's very similar to how I would normally run ads on YouTube to promote a music video, except designed more around volume and less on quality.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

  1. My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.

  2. My ad agency specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.

  3. Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.

  4. 1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or my team here.

My Links:

Discount / Affiliate Links:

If you’d rather just purchase the e-book, or physical book or audiobook you can do so here.

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