How to Promote Your Music on Spotify and Social Media

If you compose and record your songs independently, you surely know that once your music production is complete, one of the most important phases of the project begins: promoting your music and creating a music marketing strategy to promote your songs on Spotify, YouTube, social media, and other digital platforms.

To help you take the next steps in your music project and get more people to listen to your music, this article explains the main methods, tips, and advice to promote your songs on Spotify.

Info: This tutorial assumes that you’ve already taken care of uploading your songs to Spotify and other streaming platforms.

Promoting My Music on Spotify

Today, Spotify is undoubtedly the leading music streaming platform, far surpassing Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, YouTube, and Amazon Music.

Getting your song to appear on editorial playlists (those created by Spotify itself) or on playlists curated by specialists in your genre should be one of the main goals of any music marketing or project promotion strategy.

Below, we explain some ways to get into playlists.

Submitting a Pitch on Spotify (How to Send Songs to Official or Editorial Playlists Using Spotify for Artists)

To get your music added to one of Spotify’s official (or editorial) playlists, you must submit a pitch for your song through Spotify for Artists. The “pitch” is a formal submission to Spotify’s curators just before your song is released.

You should distribute your song with a time buffer to increase the chances of Spotify curators adding it to their official or editorial playlists. Ideally, you should do this 3-4 weeks before the release. Keep in mind that you can only select one song per album or EP for the pitch (this might be a factor in deciding to release albums as singles).

And yes, it’s possible! With my independent project Tripulante, just by properly submitting the pitch, one song was included in a “Fresh Finds España” playlist for a month.

Check out our blog post for all the details on how to set up an artist profile on Spotify and submit your pitch correctly—an essential step for sending your songs to Spotify’s official playlists.

Some of the best digital distributors also offer services to directly contact Spotify playlist curators, proposing their aggregator’s main releases for the relevant playlists.

Services to Submit Your Song to Spotify Playlist Curators

There are various third-party platforms that allow you to send your song to playlist curators, organized by genres, countries, languages, and more. These are reliable and reasonably priced services that give your music a chance to appear on impactful playlists.

We recommend the following platforms for sending your music to playlist curators:

• Submithub: A Spanish-supported platform, but with a lower acceptance rate based on our experience (same music sent as on Groover but with higher prices despite sharing many of the same playlists).

On these platforms, you’ll send your songs one by one to playlist curators and see details such as the number of listeners, included songs, and other playlist data before submitting. The average cost per submission is between €1 and €3, and accepted songs can remain on playlists for weeks or months.

There are also other platforms offering bulk submissions to playlists, but based on user feedback and pricing, these services don’t seem very reliable yet.

Tip before sending your music to playlist curators: We recommend researching each curator’s playlists on Spotify beforehand to ensure your project matches their music style and language. This can save your submission budget.

Submitting My Music to Independent Spotify Playlists

Another way to reach independent Spotify playlist curators is to search directly on Spotify by genre (e.g., “indie pop in Spanish”) and explore playlists for contact details in their descriptions. If you find one, you can submit your song or contact the person in charge. Keep in mind that most major playlists are managed by record labels and editorial teams, making it difficult to get featured without being part of their artist roster.

Promoting Your Song on Spotify (Paid Options)

Another way to promote a song on Spotify is by running ads directly on the platform. Campaigns start at around €250, but these are only targeted at non-premium users (premium users don’t see ads). For independent artists with limited budgets, this may not be the best option to start promoting music on Spotify.

Buying Plays for Your Song on Spotify

Although many websites offer thousands of plays for very low prices, we strongly advise against using these services, as Spotify can easily detect them. This could lead to problems with your artist profile or a penalty from Spotify’s algorithm (and we don’t want that, right?).

How to Promote My Music on Social Media

With the rise of TikTok, the way music is promoted on social media has changed significantly. Promotion isn’t limited to Spotify anymore. Audiences need to discover you, and TikTok is one of the best platforms for that. One of your main goals should be to create short videos with the potential to go viral. These vertical videos are compatible with the three major platforms today: TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels.

Music Promotion on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels (Short Videos)

Here are some tips and ideas for creating short videos to promote your music:

• Stick to the vertical format and keep the duration short (no more than 60 seconds if you want compatibility across all three platforms—the shorter, the better).
• Grab attention within the first 3 seconds of the video.
• Provide value or an interesting element (explain the steps you took to write a song or produce your music).
• Share the story behind your song’s lyrics.
• Perform a playback with your song playing in the background.
• Perform an acoustic version (just an instrument and vocals).
• Play an instrument (or explain how to play the chords, a guitar solo, etc.).
• Talk about the artists who influenced you to create your music.
• Put on your studio headphones and record yourself singing parts of covers or versions of other artists’ songs—always with your own style.
• Discuss the collaborators involved in your single (musicians, technicians, designers, etc.).
• Be consistent and don’t give up too soon. Many people may not yet know you’ve released new music!
• Don’t spam! Avoid comments in other threads like “listen to my music.”

Music Promotion on Other Social Media Platforms

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and standard Instagram remain essential for building a community around your music project and keeping your followers updated.

Focus on content such as news updates, concert summaries, photo sessions, music videos, lyric videos, and discussion topics related to your music. These elements are still crucial for creating engagement with your audience.

Promoting My Music on YouTube (Google Ads)

Creating a Google Ads campaign for a music video or lyric video is accessible to everyone. With a relatively small budget, you can display your video as an ad before videos from artists in your style or as a promoted video on the side. This gives your new video some initial traction and helps potential audiences discover your music.

All of this can be managed through the Google Ads platform.

Promoting Your Music on Facebook and Instagram (Meta Ads Manager)

Another key way to promote your songs is through ads on Instagram and Facebook. These can be set up directly in the apps (using the Promote Post buttons) or more professionally via the Meta Ads Manager.

Normally, when using this type of promotion, we will link our song’s ads on Instagram or Facebook to a link page or Smart Links for our release. This way, we can properly track the click results as follows:

The key to these ads is audience targeting (accurately defining your target audience based on location, musical tastes, age, etc.). It’s also important to decide if you want to redirect ad clicks directly to Spotify or use them to grow your followers. Either way, paid ads should complement your organic promotion efforts on these platforms.

Using the Facebook Pixel helps track click behavior and allows you to retarget ads to those who have already interacted with your project or website in the future.

Tip: Remember that high-quality recording and composition play a critical role in your music promotion. Make sure your work is recorded using professional equipment. Check out our article on the best microphones for home studios.

Promoting Music on Music Blogs

Preparing a solid press release for your release, a photo session that matches the vibe of your new song or album, and a polished press kit to send to blogs and music outlets in your genre is still important. Getting featured in blogs can add prestige and recognition when shared, even though fewer people discover music this way. Still, links to your video, official website, and potential playlists from the outlet will always help if they like your music and publish it.

Other Methods to Promote Your Song

At this stage, consider hiring professional help to promote your music. Many companies specialize in music marketing, and there are freelancers with years of experience at major or indie labels offering their services.

However, having a basic understanding of the aspects discussed in this article gives you more options and control over defining and implementing a marketing strategy for promoting your music productions. From our perspective, the quality of your music composition and production is ultimately crucial to the success of your promotion.

Finally, playing concerts, attending other bands’ shows in your area, word of mouth, and collaborations with other artists are vital to reaching as many people as possible. And remember: patience is key. It’s a long journey, but persistence pays off. Step by step, and good luck with your release!