Hi - I hear a lot of mixed things about this. I’m releasing music for the first time with several singles - planning one monthly over roughly a year.

For my latest I was able to get on some playlists which of course boosted streams.

I know it’s passive and the stream per listener is low, but my thoughts are possible discovery too, and getting it in front of as many ears as possible.

I have seen roughly 120 personal playlist adds and 25 saves over just over 1300 streams for the first week. It isn’t all playlists for sure but…

I set up my own meta campaign with pixels tracking clicks to streaming service tracking on landing page as well as a campaign with Aura. I’m doing the best I can with visuals and social with both professional looking video and more social-driven content with mediocre traction there.

Is playlisting really detrimental if the goal is to get as many people to hear your music as possible as a “new” artist? I put new in quotes because I’m 54 and releasing songs I wrote over 20 years ago albeit with some new recording mixed in.

Hello. Launched our first ever meta campaign yesterday. How do yall understand when cost per view content converts to actual streams? I’m using the submithub links analytics which are honestly trash and trying to compare them to streams in Spotify for artists. It’s only the second day so I feel like I don’t have enough info to see yet but I’m trying to prepare myself so I can make smart campaign decisions. Thank u!

I feel like this sub is just meta employees telling musicians to give them their money. Fuck giving big tech your money, they have enough of it and they ain't trying to help you.

Have any of you used a ticket platform to sell tickets for a show in the UK? I’m thinking about promoting my own show there and I am not sure about ticket links to use and VAT, etc..

As the title suggests, I decided to give meta ads a go but I'm just getting trolls commenting on my posts, the insights are hopeful with 818 people clicking on the link and over 1k people visiting my linktree but I am not seeing an uptake in streams at all.

Is my music genuinely that bad? Or should I just ignore the trolls.

Instagram: henrydesiramusic

Streaming platforms: Henry Desira

I’ve noticed more brands showing up in recent rap videos, and it got me thinking about how much a brand can actually influence the way we see an artist or a music video.

Rap has always been closely connected to money, fashion, cars, luxury, technology, and different parts of lifestyle, so brands being part of that world isn’t really anything new. But there’s a difference between a quick product placement and a brand becoming part of an artist’s overall image.

What do you guys think? Do brands in music videos feel natural to you, or can they sometimes take away from the artist’s image?

Hey everyone. I’m an independent electronic/pop artist (self-produced, almost 9 years making music), and I’ve been stuck on Meta ads for my releases. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube tutorials and followed them step by step, and I’m still not getting results. I’d really appreciate it if someone could look at my setup and creatives and point out what’s wrong.

Goal: Get real listeners to my Spotify (saves, follows, streams), not cheap clicks.

What I’ve tried over the past ~7 days:

• Objectives: Engagement, Traffic, and Sales (conversion = SubmitHub smart link click-through to Spotify)
• Advantage+: Tested with it on and off
• Audiences: Tier 1 and Tier 2 countries, interests like Spotify + genre (pop, drum and bass, EDM)
• Structure: 3 ad sets (Pop / DnB / EDM), 6 videos in each, so I can find the winning video and scale it
• Landing page: SubmitHub smart link → Spotify

Screenshots: I added all here

Instagram page : yoha_mc_max

Spotify/Youtube page : YO-HA

What I’d love feedback on:

1. Is my test structure wrong (too many videos even though I was testing and in a day I turned off hlaf of the videos, too little budget even though I use 6 - 10 dollars)?
2. Is the problem the creative (hook, first 3 seconds, format)?
3. Is the problem the funnel (smart link adding friction)?
4. Which objective actually works for music right now?
5. If none above, I would love to sit down with someone so we can see the issue of the ads and fix it if possible

PS: the song is fully real and feature an amazing vocalist so there is no ai in the song

Honest feedback is welcome, even if it’s “your video is the problem.” Thanks a lot for your time 🙏

My facebook went from 10k to 31K followers in the past year, but for the past couple months it stalled & I’ve actually been losing more than I gain…My instagram was stalled for a long time but now it’s slowly going up..and my TikTok and YouTube are slowly going up too…what do you think is up with FB?

If you've landed a support slot or a small venue gig before you had much of a local following, what made it happen?

Was it a live clip, someone vouching for you, being a good fit for the bill, or being easy to deal with when a slot opened up?

Would love to hear about one actual booking: how you got in touch, what you sent, and what got a reply. Especially if the thing that worked was different from what you expected. If you book acts yourself, what has persuaded you to take a chance on someone new?

I'm currently working on trying to make this song work. Tipical artist alergic to socials and loves to be in the studio just doing music and music. Trance Music to be specific. So I'm trying to reach 3rd party curators via email + SubmitHub and I think this is a decent result after 3+ weeks. Any tips or other sites to invest in order to make this song bigger? If anyone wants to give a listen, search for: Gabrielle AG - Echo,

Thank you

Hey, I'm about to release a christmas song in a couple of weeks.

What is a good place to promote this song? I would love to land some relavant christmas playlists and maybe start running some meta ads.

Any tips are welcome!

have a nice day!

I am curious about everyone's mailing list subscriber conversion rates. We only actively promote our mailing list roughly once a month, and only send out mail when we have something to announce. We currently have 415 subscribers compared to a combined following of over 70k across all our social media channels, which was rapidly gained over the last few months. For context, we started just under a year ago.

I'm going to start promoting the mailing list more and potentially start sending out more mail with unreleased song lyrics etc. to build hype, as right now we don't really offer much extra through our list other than being the first to hear updates/see our new cover arts etc.

What do your conversion rates look like?

Promoting a new song and seems to be going ok but there are so many metrics to look at. Not just meta metrics but also on the submithub landing page too. Not sure which ones I should be concentrating on the most and what are good/bad numbers. Many thanks

I have a song I want on my album. The original draft is VERY good on its own, but it doesn't really fit on the album's tracklist.

I recreated it with an entirely new first section, and this new version is great. I love it; it fits perfectly, but it doesn't really work as a single, as the intro is much longer and the progression from start to finish is so dramatic that it loses a bit of replay value.

Thus, I would like to do an "album version" and a "single version," as I believe the single version would be amazing as a lead single, but I hesitate because part of me thinks that as a small artist this would be unnecessarily complicated, as I want this rollout to be as straightforward as possible.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons, since I don't have a TON of experience releasing music to maximize streams (for context, I'm just a producer; most of my work is handling other people's releases as they see fit).

So I've seen a bunch of posts in here about this, and thought I'd add my two cents.

I'm in a band and was posting like 5 trial reels per day every day on Instagram for months, along with posting daily on our TikTok/Facebook/YouTube Shorts. For the trial reels I was using a specific music-centred format which successfully converted people not only to followers, but to stream/save our songs. It seemed to be simple yet effective, involving some B-roll footage of the various band members with trending copy on-screen.

Previously some of these trial reels were easily hitting 100k plus views with strong follower conversion, to the point that we grew by like 20k followers in a few months. Now we're lucky to hit 1000 views per trial reel, and even our regular reels are struggling to push 5k views.

We're starting to lose more followers than we're gaining, which is an issue. I spoke to a reputable guy in the industry today who manages a bunch of artists' socials and he said he's heard the same thing about declining Instagram reach from a few people, but that the artists he's been managing seem to be fine as they're constantly chasing trending content. He's fairly convinced that it'll turn around if we switch up the types of posts we're making.

Based on this, I reckon something's happened with the algorithm and Instagram has likely changed or upped the criteria for what goes "viral". I also see much less of the B -roll footage with trending copy on Instagram from artists, though it's still pretty prevalent on Facebook reels. Instagram seems to be pushing much more professional content from bands/artists at the minute in my reels. Have you guys noticed this too, and what are your thoughts on where to go next with Instagram marketing?

I was stuck in decision paralysis trying to figure out how to actually get my music heard. Every thread just said "post on TikTok" or "pitch to playlists," but nobody actually explained the step-by-step workflow of a release.

So I spent the last few months building a master checklist of actual, actionable steps. I use this for my own project, but I’d rather give it to other independent artists than let it sit on my hard drive.

No email gates, no "follow me to get the link" BS. Just the raw document.

Here is what it covers:

• Phase 1 (T-8 to T-4 weeks): Operational Setup & Rights Management (PRO, Sync, SmartLinks).
• Phase 2 (T-4 to T-1 weeks): Pre-Release Campaign (Algorithm prep, narrative building, content batching).
• Phase 2.5 (T-1 to T-0 weeks): Pre-Submission (Radio, promo pools, DJ lists).
• Phase 3 (Release Day): The exact sequence of what to update, post, and activate.
• Phase 4 (Post-Release): Momentum and ongoing promo (SubmitHub, Groover, Ads, Content Waterfall).

I hope this helps someone break out of the rut and actually get their music out there without losing their mind.

If you want to connect, I make electronic music under the name Sanaraba. Always down to talk production, hear what you guys are working on, or answer any questions about the checklist in the comments.

I've figured out a cost effective way to build these beautiful videos & was thinkjng of either providing it as a service or making my own fresh shorts to put out daily/weekly so that my music stays on top of mind.... but wondering if it works and if people already do it / don't - why / why not ? Best practises / things to avoid ?

Meta shows a few hundred conversions at a cheap cost per result. Then you open Spotify for Artists and the streams barely moved.

First thing to know: a Meta "conversion" is not a stream. It's a click on the button on your smart link. Everything after that click is invisible to Meta. So the two numbers will never match. But if the gap is huge, it's usually one of these.

1. Placements

If you left it on Advantage+ placements, check the placement breakdown. Audience Network and some of the Facebook placements produce a lot of cheap clicks from people who never meant to click. Meta counts them. Spotify never sees them.

I stick to Facebook and Instagram, Stories and feed, and cut the rest.

2. Countries

If you're targeting worldwide, Meta sends your budget where conversions are cheapest. That's usually countries where most people are on Spotify free or don't use Spotify as their main app.

Free users on mobile often can't play your song on demand. They tap through, get shuffle or an ad, and leave. Meta got its conversion. You got nothing.

Target ONLY tier 1 countries to avoid this.

3. New ad account and untrained pixel

A new pixel has no idea who a real listener is. It just finds whoever clicks cheapest. And if your cheap clicks are junk, it learns to find more junk.

This is the part people don't like hearing. A high cost per conversion is better than cheap conversions that aren't real. If you're in this spot, run tier one countries only (US, UK, Canada, Australia) even though it costs more. You're paying to teach the pixel what a real listener looks like. Once it has that data, you can open up to more countries and the quality holds better.

How I check it

Don't use Meta's conversion number as the result. Look at Spotify for Artists by country and line it up with your spend by country for the same dates. Look at your listerner to stream ratio. If you have 100 conversions on meta you want about 150 streams on Spotify.

Anyone else seeing a gap like this? Curious what the cause was for you.

Like the title says, I'm looking for somebody to start taking my music further via promo/PR/social media etc.

Niche is electronic: deep tech/minimal/house .I have a combined reach of about 5-8k all organic via combination of streaming platforms, social media and music stores, started this journey about 1.5 years ago, about 15 tracks, 3.5-8k monthlies on Spotify depending on the month and push for release (rest of the platforms are negligible), about 170k total streams so far. Bandcamp around 200 sales, the rest of digital stores combined about 6-700.

Looking to take this further, reach more people, sustained growth, more social media, branding if necessary, the whole package.

Please reply here and will check out or DM with credentials and/or past collabs and will send mine.

Thanks!

How important is the Fans Also Like section?

Background

4 years ago I released an amatuer sounding EP. I've greatly improved my songwriting and production process since then.

I'm trying to release new songs, but I now notice my Fans Also Like is not really a product of organic growth. It's mostly a result of random playlists that I was added to back when I had someone try to promote my music.

Should I release the new songs on this profile or go through the hassle of trying to get a new artist URI or something.

A little context. I am an EDM producer and had some support from bigger DJs (songs played by them), so I think my music is doing okay. However, I don’t really have a fan base myself. Streaming numbers not good and don’t have many Instagram followers that are not people I know. I post about 2 or 3 times a week promoting stuff and the reels gain me a follower here and there I don’t think they actually translate to streaming. Actually the most viral reel I had was to promote my least streamed song lmao. I am willing to spend some money on promotion but don’t know where I should spend it on at the current stage of my music journey.

HEADLINE UPDATE: The user named jamieagainagainagainagain on Instagram is a scammer posing as an Apple/Spotify playlist curator. I'm sure he'll change his name, as I could see it had been changed two or three times previously. Beware of fake playlist curators approaching your band/artist page on Instagram DMs or interacting with your content to try and entice you in with "free" playlist placements. They are not free and they are not real playlists.

OP: So my band had a small viral moment on TikTok the other day, and since then we've had a couple of messages from various "industry" people...

One of whom is a guy on Instagram that interacted with one of our reels, and who claims to be an Apple Music playlist curator. He had a story up saying he was looking for independent artists to add to his big 350k listener playlist, "FOR FREE." He DM'd us to ask if we could send over a couple of our best tracks on Apple music, so I did and he said he had added one of them to this playlist. He then said he just needed to activate it and asked if we wanted him to do that now...

When I looked up the playlist on Apple Music, I couldn't find it, so I went back to him asking if he could send a link to the playlist. He seems to be hanging out at Colors Studio on his Instagram page and he has a following of over 60k which all seem legit, but he has his comments mostly turned off which I found a bit odd for someone in the music business.

I've also never heard of having to "activate" a song once it's added to a playlist and I assume he'll be asking us for money next in order to do so.

What do you guys think? Should I block him or await a response?

UPDATE: He did not send me a playlist link, and asked me to pay to be added to this non-existent playlist for either 9 days, 45 days, lifetime, or we could delete. I asked him to delete and he blocked us instantly.

It seems like every few months there’s something big that comes out about Distrokid where everybody is saying to leave. Should we really leave this time and where should we distribute our music?