Spotify was founded in 2006 by two Sweds, Daniel Ek and Sven Hans Martin Lorentzon. The platform is available in 178 countries including the Americas, Europe, 40 African countries including South Africa and the island of Mauritius as well as Asia. That’s a huge audience to be exposed to (365 million users and 165 million subscribers). If you can get Spotify to stream your music, it’s the realization of every musician’s dream to have access to that many listeners.

First: How do you get recognized by Spotify

1. Prepare a reputable Spotify Profile on the Spotify for artist portal. Upload good photos of the artist or group, attached to an in-depth bio, link to a generous number of social media sites, place your latest single into the artist pick field, and be consistent. Regularly update everything especially your artist playlist. In fact, regularly updating everything, your profile, your photos, YOUR MUSIC, will give you a much better chance of being noticed by Spotify’s music release editors.

2. Release your music so that it’s picked up by Spotify which uses specific algorithms to find new music to promote. Spotify really wants you to attract fans and the best way to do that is to match their fans’ interest level. Releasing a new song every 6 to 8 weeks will put you in that sweet spot. Releasing a song every 30 days is the greatest frequency that is often beneficial, but 6 to 8 weeks seems to be the most successful.

3. Preparing 30 days before the release of your song starts the process for submission to an editorial playlist. Write an excellent editorial playlist sale’s line or pitch. Prepare your photos, videos, and stories about your music. All this needs to be ready to hand to your distributor before your release date, so it’s ready on your release day. Take note of televised artist interviews, the MC always asks about the artist, or the song and the artists always has a story. “What’s yours?” Just to get your creative juices flowing, reflect back to the days of Dick Clark or Don Cornelius, the artist always had a story to tell. Start your music story with those kinds of reflections. Forget about Pre-saves before releasing your video. On your music release day, everything will be ready to go, if you prepare 30 days in advance.
4. On the release day, the bigger the response the better chance you’ll have of making use of that response. You can use the enthusiasm to promote your music, making it easier. Respond to social media comments and requests. The more people that hear it immediately after its release the greater the influence on the Spotify’s algorithms. When your song is added to a playlist, you need to promote this fact on all your social media platforms. The play listers will be encouraged by your promotion of them and they’ll want to add your future releases as well. Link everything (playlists, videos, etc.) into Spotify to drive up your listens at Spotify.

5. After the release, pitch your song to “user” playlists. To find these playlists, go to server’s playlists supply. You can also use a promotion service like Playlist Pitch, Submit Hub, Playlister.Club, and SpotiMatch to find playlist for your already released music. Some of these curators cost a fee per month. For some artists this is a good investment, for others, it simply doesn’t pay.

6. Make an artist playlist of your own and find artist in your micro-genre that compliment your work that will draw the kind of fan your desire more of. Tag those artists on social media. Continuously update your playlist and tag the artist. Do this bi-monthly and soon you’ll be gaining new fans regularly.

7. Tell stories for the duration of your releases (that means releasing pictures, discussions about the lyrics, videos, behind the scenes photos, stories, etc.). Keep your fans interested in your music.

8. Remember, you cannot just do this for one release, it has to be with each release. Your rise to recognition and you’re maintaining that level of success is based on your consistent and sustained promotion. How often do you hear the name “The Rolling Stones.” That’s how often your fans need to hear your name to never be forgotten.

Once you get on Spotify, how do you successfully promote your music. Repeat what you did to get there in the first place.