Why Spotify saves are better than Spotify followers

Author

Andrew Southworth
October 16, 2023

Hey friends!

Today we’re going to talk about why Spotify saves and playlist adds are better than Spotify followers.

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Actionable music marketing advice every Monday. Narrated by Andrew Southworth.

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Saves & Playlist Adds

Let’s first talk about what saves and playlist adds are in case you aren’t familiar with the lingo. Understanding these is critical to knowing why they matter.

When someone saves a song they’re adding it to their library on Spotify, and additionally their liked songs playlist.

This is the liked songs playlist on Spotify.

This is the library, fans can sort by artists, albums, songs etc.

Playlist adds are when someone adds a song to their playlist. Many people listen to music almost exclusively in playlists nowadays, whether at the gym, cooking dinner, driving home from work or whatever.

Recently Spotify made playlist adds more significant. It used to be to save a song you pressed the heart button, and then to add a song to a playlist you had to click a menu button, and then find add to playlist. Now the ‘plus button’ replaces both the heart and the add to playlist button.

When you first click the plus button it saves a song, when you click it a second time it asks you what playlist you want to add the song to.

Why they matter

With both saves and playlist adds, these are actions that imply a person wants to hear this song again in the future.

Even better, in many cases these actions will guarantee a person will hear the song again in the future. The reason is many people have baked the ‘liked songs’ playlist, and their personal playlists, into their daily routine.

I’ve noticed my wife and several friends shuffling their liked songs playlist when they get in the car.

While many other music artists (and myself) tend to be fairly deliberate with the music we play, many ‘normal’ people (non-artists) are not. They often just want to fill the silence with music they generally enjoy.

When people listen to your music in their library or in their own playlists, it shows up as ‘listeners own playlists and library’ inside Spotify for artists.

Here are the advantages of this source of streams:

  • When you stop running ads or other marketing, it doesn’t go away

  • It is much more stable day to day than most other sources

  • It takes months or years for this source to decay

Think of this category as a reservoir you’re filling every time you drive new listeners to your page. It does drain over time, but the leaks are pretty small. Typically 1-2 years after a campaign is over you’ll still see plenty of listeners in this category.

If you want to learn how to drive more saves and playlist adds (and followers) to your music on Spotify, check out my course Spotify Growth Machine.

What about followers?

Spotify followers are great, but for the reasons listed above I value saves and playlist adds more.

Saves and playlist adds are virtually a guarantee that you’ll get more listening activity from that person in the future. Additionally, it is more likely to trigger algorithmic playlists because it is engagement concentrated on a specific song.

Having someone follow you on the other hand does not guarantee they’ll see new music from you in the future.

In fact, generally only about 4-8% of your followers will check out your new song in the first 28 days its out.

Some artists get amazing engagement from their followers, but that is still only 12%.

The Spotify algorithm is similar to social media and YouTube algorithms in that way. For example on YouTube subscribers don’t really matter that much - it matters much more that a person watches multiple videos from your channel in a row.

On YouTube, if someone binge watches your videos for 15 minutes you’ll be following them around on YouTube for a week even if they didn’t subscribe. The algorithm will keep pushing your content to them as long as they keep watching it.

New Content

In this video I talk about why Spotify playlist promotion doesn’t make sense for most artists (at least not yet).

In this video I chat with Eric Copeland of Make Music Income. We talk about income sources in music but also about sync, mico-sync, stock libraries and more.

Did you know you can listen to my music industry interviews on podcast platforms? Click here to listen to the Modern Music Marketing podcast.

News

Here are some music industry news highlights from the past week.

  • The biggest jazz album debut in Spotify history was released in 2022 by Laufey, bringing Jazz to Gen Z

  • Bandlab hires AI music expert

  • The Orchard is ramping up operations in Africa, as the music industry there continues to expand

  • Spotify to restrict some features for free-tier users in India to encourage paid subscriptions

  • Record companies secure victory against ‘streaming manipulation’ site in Germany, shutting down the bot platform SP-OnlinePromotion

  • Google launches measure to safeguard generative AI users from copyright claims, but taking on the responsibility themselves

Quote of the Week

This week’s quote is actually from an interview I did with Tommy Zee about 2 years ago. It’s paraphrased a bit to make it more concise, but it really stood out to me.

Thanks Stephen B. for commenting this on YouTube!

❝

To commit to the dream, that's painful. You're signing up for pain. Passion is based on pain/suffering. Lot of darkness in every successful artist. If you think that pain is bad....facing rejection....enduring the silence…no answer, no recognition. Wait until you're about to breathe your last breath, and you realize you haven't taken on the thing you knew deep down in your consciousness, your soul, the thing you most wanted to do, or the thing you were called to do. You rationalize. You tell yourself all kinds of stories. But you're not going to get another chance, unless you believe in reincarnation.

Tommy Zee

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. Forbid Media 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 Alex Bochel here.

My Links:

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

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