How To Get More Streams & Listeners On Spotify LEGALLY
You've heard the phrase "it's a numbers game" – when it comes to streaming music on DSPs, that couldn’t be truer.
Here’s how to get more streams & listeners on Spotify – legally.
The Importance of Legal Streams
Getting more streams and listeners on Spotify is all about boosting your numbers. But since streaming fraud tactics are more prevalent and challenging to identify than ever, we wanted to show you how to reach a broader audience and correctly enhance your music's visibility.
Legal streams are the key to transforming your career in the music industry.
Two crucial reasons why:
More streams means more money —this seems obvious, but you must remember that (almost) every single stream on a DSP generates royalties. The more plays you get, the more you make; the more platforms you're on, the more revenue streams you have. The second you break through as an artist, your gains may go from 0 to 60. Always keep this in mind.
Fraudulent streams mean serious consequences—artists are getting kicked off platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal for utilizing bot farms and other illegal number-boosting methods. That doesn't just hurt your career—it all but erases it.
What is Streaming Fraud & How to Avoid It
If you’re going to avoid streaming fraud, you need to know what it is.
Simply put, streaming fraud is any scam that utilizes bots of streaming farms to falsely inflate the number of plays a song or album receives on a streaming platform to generate illegitimate success.
If you remember this much, the likelihood of engaging in illegal music-boosting practices decreases significantly.
We wrote an in-depth guide on what streaming fraud Is and how to avoid it that covers how streaming farms work, warning signs to look for, and more. You can (and should) check it out right here.
How to Increase Your Monthly Streams & Listeners on Spotify
Luckily, there are perfectly legal ways to boost your numbers organically on streaming platforms like Spotify. Let’s examine a few of them.
Free, Fair Music Promotion
Claim your Spotify Artists profile - Spotify offers many free artist tools that help you organically reach new listeners. By claiming your profile, you can:
Deck out your Spotify Artist Page with eye-catching photos.
Become verified.
Utilize Spotify pre-save campaigns to secure streams and add to users’ libraries the moment your next song, EP, or album drops.
Take advantage of Spotify playlists - Pollen. The Core. Marrow. These aren't random words and phrases – they're Spotify playlists. If you feel your music belongs on one, add the playlist name to your song or album title (especially if it's a remix). It might seem silly, but doing so explicitly names your aesthetic and helps the algorithm place you with other kindred, more established artists. You can also create and host your playlists on your Spotify Artist page to produce a similar effect. (If you do, remember to keep adding music to these playlists, as that helps them get noticed and discovered)
Pitch to Spotify playlist curators - It's true: you can pitch to Spotify's official playlist curators right through your Spotify for Artists dashboard. We've got a ton of advice on how to nail your pitch (which you can read here), but there are three keys to note right now: you can only submit one track at a time, you can only submit on a desktop, and you must submit unreleased music. (That means pitching between when your song's delivered to Spotify and its release date)
Let’s look at one more tool Spotify offers to help you promote your music.
Spotify Marquee: What Is It & How It Works
Spotify Marquee is a fully realized and low-key elegant pop-up ad.
Marquee artists receive full-screen, in-app displays of a song, EP, or album they want to promote. Those ads reach listeners who are algorithmically likely to check out their music.
Spotify Marquee artists saw an average 3x lift in listeners, regardless of their career stage. More streams mean more residuals, more exposure, and more chances to build a fanbase.
It's the most sure-fire way to increase streams without breaking the law.
You can learn more here.
Start Growing Your Audience on Spotify
If you want to grow your audience and boost your streams on Spotify, you can. This guide is proof.
Take the actions above to start making tangible changes to your career. TuneCore artists do all of the above and have the opportunity to opt into TuneCore’s Accelerator program, which organically boosts streams and offers an exclusive partnership with Spotify Marquee.
Streaming is a numbers game. Let’s help you play addition, not subtraction.
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