Creating Your Online Brand for Bands (Beginners) #3: Understanding the Spotify Algorithm

‘Tis the season of Spotify Wrapped! Musicians and bands all over the world have been scrolling through their year-end numbers from the popular, albeit controversial, streaming platform. Though we can all agree that Spotify should pay artists more, the music player isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, 286 million monthly active users stream through the platform according to their Q1 2020 report. That’s a lot of users! With that many people listening, you’d think it would be easy to get your music in front of a bunch of people who haven’t heard it before right? Well… wrong. You’re competing with more than 3 million creators, from bands just starting out all the way to the mega-celebrities whose new songs instantly top the charts. So how do you get more listens from new listeners on your music? It all has to do with the Spotify algorithm - BART - and how your music works with it. This is a very deep rabbit hole my friends, so today, we’re going to work on a basic understanding of the Spotify algorithm and which tactics you can use to increase your chances of your music being played to new fans.

The Basics of Algorthims

Oxford defines an algorithm as “a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.” Basically, an algorithm is an automated program that looks for certain criteria (rules) in order to complete an action (a problem-solving operation). Algorithms are everywhere - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google (ads), Hulu, DoorDash.. the list goes on. Any time youre on a device and the app or program suggests something new you may like, that’s an algorithm at work.

Spotify’s algorithm is an AI system called Bandits for Recommendations as Treatments, or BART. Its job is to keep listeners playing music in the app for as long as possible. When users listen for longer, they see more ads and they listen to more songs, which means Spotify makes more money. To do this, BART plays and suggests a combination of songs you know and are familiar with and some new tracks that you haven’t ever heard before. This usually does the trick - your stream remains relatable, yet interesting.

So how exactly does BART decide which songs to recommend to listeners while they’re in the app?

According to Ditto, there are three main functions:

1) Natural Language Processing: BART analyzes the language, lyrics, and content of a song.

2) Raw Audio Analyzation: BART detects the “vibe” or “mood” of a song’s audio, using tempo and a variety of other factors to determine if a song is upbeat, chill, heavy, minimal, holiday, instrumental, etc.

3) Collaborative Filtering: BART now compares all of the gathered information from new songs to a listener’s current listening habits to decide what suits their tastes.

Crazy right? Ok, so now that we understand how it works, how can musicians, bands, and their teams take the new releases they have and make them play nice with the Spotify algorithm?

How Spotify Distributes Tracks to Listeners via Algorithmic Playlists, Daily Mixes, and In-Stream Suggestions

Getting onto a Spotify Algorithmic Playlist is the stuff that streaming dreams are made of. So how can you increase your chances? Spotify bases all of its song suggestions on hard data - namely, statistics. Here’s what BART takes into account when it’s deciding which songs to share to users who have not heard them before:

• A user’s listening history (what kind of songs they go for, the mood of music they usually listen to, the music styles that make up their listening history, and the genres of music that they gravitate to)

• A song’s skip history. When a user skips a song, it’s akin to a “ding” on that song’s algorithmic viability. Less skips equals more suggestions, and thus, more listens.

• The time a song is listened to. Songs that are listened to for more than 30 seconds are more likely to catch BART’s AI eye.

The First 30 Seconds are Key

How your song is perceived in the first 30 seconds of its play is the most important stat on Spotify. It pays attention when your song is listened to for more than 30 seconds - AND, when it’s listened to beyond 30 seconds, the listen becomes monetized. Now, I’m not even close to telling you as a musician or band to base your songwriting on the Spotify algorithm. Please don’t do this. Let your creativity flow - and however long your intro is, let it be. Don’t form your art to please a Capitalist entity. However, you may consider releasing a “radio edit” or “artist’s cut edit” that eliminates a long intro and outro. That will at least get your foot in the algorithmic door and get new listeniners tuning into your songs. Once they’re a follower, your long release will be there to listen to.

The First 24 Hours After a New Release Posts are Telling

The first 12-24 hours after you release a new song is the perfect time to get a rush of listens that have a low skip rate and a high rate of listening past the 30 second mark. When you’re making a plan around a new release, pick a day that isn’t significant for any other musical reasons. For instance, if a chart topper is set to drop a new release on a specific day, avoid that date. You don’t want to be competing with someone who already has the huge advantage of millions of listeners. Also, it’s a general rule of thumb that new releases should come out on Fridays, as that day of the week gives you a better chance to make it onto one of the New Music Friday playlists. Once you pick a date, promote it HARD. Make sure your fan base knows when the song or album is coming out, and encourage them to listen as many times as possible. When you send lsiteners to your songs on Spotify from other social media outlets, this data is also taken into account in a positive way by the BART AI.

You’ll also want to take advantage of pre-save apps, which lets your followers save the new track or album ahead of time. On the day of the release, the song or album will show up automatically in their songs, and Spotify will send a nifty reminder that they have newly released music to listen to.

While you’re at it, make sure you’re asking your band members and fans follow your page and to save your new releases to their personal playlists. This increases the chances of your future releases being included in Release Radar, which are algorithmic playlists tailored specifically to each individual user. The Discover Weekly playlist is another individually-tailored algorithmic playlist that depends heavily on user’s own created playlists. If two songs are often grouped together on a user’s playlist and your song is sandwiched between them so that it plays whenever those songs play, BART is more likely to pick that song up when showing new music to other users to who also listen to those 2 songs.

The Direct Approach

If you’re not already using Spotify for Artists to track your listens and understand your listener demographic, you should be. Spotify for Artists has powerful tools where you can submit your songs directly to be featured in Spotify’s popular curated playlists. When you’re submitting a song for publication through Spotify, be sure to tag your song with mood, genre, and other telling factors that inform the BART algorithm on the back end as to what kind of music it is.

Create a Complete Presence on Spotify

So you’ve utilized all of the above tips and you’re seeing tons of new listens on your songs. Great! Now you need to keep those listeners engaged with you and your future releases. The best way to do this is to have a complete Spotify page ready when users land there. Make sure that you have photos, lots of music, playlists, social links, bios, upcoming shows, merchandise links, and more added to your Spotify page (which you can do through Spotify for Artists). Think of it the same way you’d think of your website or Facebook page. You know people are going to land there looking for all of your relevant information. If a listener clicks through to your profile from a suggested song, you want to give them the immediate gratification of learning about you right then and there, within the Spotify app. You’ll lose people if they have to go elsewhere to search for information on you.