YouTube has been pretty good to me. Since 2012 I’ve racked up 18K subscribers, 9.2M views, and 263K watch hours despite not having any “real” music videos. Granted, more than half of those views were for a song I was hired to cover for a Just Dance game. Embarrassingly, I filled in for Will.i.am on the rap section and Ubisoft approved it anyway. I’ve since set the video to unlisted but if you’re a glutton for punishment, knock yourself out. I don’t write about YouTube promotion much because Google Ads is a convoluted mess. Instead I’ve recommended YouTube Growth Engine (my review here) and You ..read more

Last month I wrote about how Spotify effectively removed audience targeting from Marquee. Worse, my campaign “targeting” all 55.2 million Spotify users in the US only managed to spend 10% of my $500 budget. I concluded that Marquee is now mostly indistinguishable from Showcase, except the latter will quickly blow through any budget you set. WRONG! My freshly completed Showcase campaign for the same track also managed to only spend 10% of my budget, and this time I only budgeted $100! Spotify Showcase campaigns As you can see, every previous Showcase campaign targeting “Default audience” (i.e ..read more

When Spotify launched Marquee two years ago, I was positively giddy. My first post on the subject proclaimed that it was even better than Meta ads. Finally I had a way to reconnect with my listeners on Spotify, or at least those deemed part of my “reachable audience.” That reachable audience quickly climbed from 2.1K to 4.4K listeners in the US. Despite the small audience size, I routinely managed to spend over $200 at $0.50 per click. Today that same audience of previous listeners hovers around 23K, but Spotify no longer refers to them as my “reachable audience.” And for good reason! They’re ..read more

Before you ask, yes, that’s Christopher Columbus, who set sail across the Atlantic on a voyage to discover some fresh jams. I previously wrote that using Spotify Discovery Mode was a no-brainer. I’ve heard it compared to standing up at the theater. Sure, the first person to stand gets a better view, but before you know it everyone is standing. No one is any better off than before, just less comfortable. Of course, that was the plan all along. Spotify now pays out 30% less on Radio, Autoplay, and Daily Mix tracks from Discovery Mode participants. We’re less comfortable than before, yet we conti ..read more

Three months of no posts! I’m sorry. But I’ve got a good excuse… Earlier this month I released my 13th studio album, Underneath These Dying Stars. I’ve got a lot to share with you, but I thought I’d start with something relatively painless and uncontroversial. When’s the last time you sat down and actively listened to an album along with dozens of other fans? For someone like me who doesn’t perform and doesn’t go to shows to protect my hearing, that basically never happens. But when it does, it can be magical. Listening attentively with others facilitates a deeper connection to the music and t ..read more

Over the years I’ve managed to rack up over 17K subscribers to my YouTube channel despite only having a couple of “real” videos. Sure, I could take my phone to the beach and lipsync. But I won’t. I’ve spent my entire adult life learning how to play the piano, sing, write songs, arrange, mix and master. Why would I pair the fruits of all that labor with amateur visuals? Of course, I could hire a professional to produce a video for me, but we’re looking at $5K+ for something decent. Lyric videos are a nice middle ground. A decade or so ago I made a few with $50 software and they were… adequate ..read more

By now you’ve likely heard of Spotify Discovery Mode. It’s a relatively new feature, still in beta, that provides more algorithmic exposure for your music. The tracks you opt in will appear more often in two specific contexts: Radio — Algorithmically generated playlists based on any artist, album, or song Autoplay — When a listener reaches the end of an album or playlist and another song comes up I paid $1000 for similar exposure on Deezer (see here and here) and couldn’t wait until the day I could run the same sort of campaign on Spotify. That day is here and the reality is better than I ever ..read more

I’ve been growing my Spotify audience with Facebook and Instagram ads for years. Facebook Ads Manager is pinned in my browser and I check it multiple times a day, sometimes obsessively. I know my way around, but it’s not exactly intuitive. There’s definitely a learning curve, and the platform is constantly evolving. What if there were a way to automate the entire process without ever having to crack open Facebook Ads Manager? Enter Hypeddit Ad Automation. My current self-managed ad campaign for my new single isn’t performing too well. Instead of promoting the song directly, I’ll use Hypeddit A ..read more

Last August, I took Spotify playlist pitching into my own hands using a service called OKTIV.IO (read the gory details here). My efforts resulted in 16 playlist adds, 2K+ streams, and a monster spreadsheet of leads. I deemed the effort worthwhile, but way too much to take on with every release. A new service called artist.tools inspired me to give it another go. artist.tools provides context on 40K+ playlists and 5K+ curators, including contact information, bot detection, listener estimates, and historical data. As of this writing, artist.tools has identified over 2K scam contacts to avoid. It ..read more

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