Spotify Playlists Vs. Social Media Ads Promotion: Debunking Common Myths About Pros & Cons

There are two main types of Spotify promotion most artists use: playlisting and social media.

As a company who’s run more campaigns than most others (over 10,000), spent more dough on marketing than others (over half a million) and actually offers BOTH services to artists, there is a unique advantage and experience we can offer.

Let’s take a deep dive into the pros, cons, misconceptions, and truths about each of these marketing methods.

There are people selling courses online teaching artists to spend money on social media to send traffic over to Spotify. This in and of itself is not a bad strategy, but there is key information that is being left out of their reasoning behind selling these courses (which btw, we give out our social media ads course INCLUDED when you purchase any promotion package at www.omarimc.com/promotion)

Here are some of the key pros and cons most artists need to recognize about Spotify promo:

Pros Of Spotify Playlisting

1. Playlisting typically yields lower cost per stream than sending over traffic from social media
2. The streaming metrics stay on Spotify vs. metrics staying on social media

1. Typically a lower save rate than sending traffic from social media because the people who clicked on your ad were already interested in your song vs. serving the song to people for the first time on playlists
2. Have to be knowledgeable about finding good playlists to get featured on (pro and con)

Here are some factors we look for to determine good playlists:

1. SEO (Is the title one that is search friendly and could get followers based off how many people search for it)
2. Are the lists running ads to gain listeners
3. The location of the listeners on the list
4. The amount of followers each list on the profile has (typically MORE variation per list is good)
5. The follower graph of the list
6. Number of listeners per follower

Pros Of Sending Traffic To Spotify From Social Media

1. Higher save rate because the people who clicked on your ad were already interested in your song
2. Can choose the primary location you’re trying to get listeners from

Cons Of Sending Traffic To Spotify From Social Media

1. Typically more expensive to get Spotify streams (anytime you’re trying to send traffic from one platform to another, it’s typically going to be more expensive than native advertising on that platform)
2. Can be difficult to truly optimize ads as a novice marketer

1. You will usually see streams and saves as your metrics of success with Spotify playlisting. Followers are extra gravy on the biscuit, but nothing really happens when a fan follows you on Spotify. It is more beneficial to have that follower on social media.
2. When your music is removed from any advertising (playlists or social media) your streams will start to slow down. Unless you were placed on enough algorithm playlists to sustain your monthly listeners (unlikely), your streams will slow down.