Best Practices

Promoting New Releases to Your Followers

February 21, 2017

It’s Friday. Your new album drops. You want everyone to hear it. On Spotify, the key to getting your new release in front of fans is “Follow.” Think of your followers as subscribers to your mailing list on Spotify. They see your new music:

  • In their Release Radar playlist.
  • Featured inside their Spotify app.
  • In their personalized new release email.

Here’s a bit more about how we promote your new album, single, or remix.

It all starts with Release Radar.

Release Radar is the place listeners go to find new releases from their favorite artists. It’s a personalized weekly playlist featuring releases that matter most to each listener. It collects everything new in one playlist, and acts as a jumping off point for deeper discovery.

Every listener’s Release Radar is personalized based on:

  1. Artists they follow: These go right at the top of their playlist every week. If you’re releasing a full album, we’ll pick a song to include based on each listener’s taste.
  2. Listening history: We round out the playlist with new tracks from artists each listener has played or new music we think they’ll like.

Building followers on Spotify is a powerful way to get yourself playlisted. If you have a million followers, we’ll automatically add your new music to a million playlists on release week.

Promoting your album inside Spotify.

On Fridays, we feature a row of new releases on every listener's Home tab when they open the app. That row also exists all week in the Discover section of the Spotify app.

Sending weekly new release emails.

On Fridays, we also send listeners an email highlighting relevant new releases. The email features up to 10 new releases from artists they follow and a link to their Release Radar for more discovery.

See who's listening.

To see how all of this impacts your first week numbers, head into Spotify For Artists. (If you’re not on Spotify For Artists yet, request access here.) You'll see how many people are listening to your new music and where they’re discovering it.

As you build followers, we’ll continue expanding the way we recommend new releases — so you can engage your fans and tap into bigger audiences on Spotify.

Spotify for Artists helps you to develop the fanbase you need to reach your goals.

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