**Guest post originally featured in the Symphonic Distribution Blog.

 

 

 

"Spotify is a powerful tool for any artist interested in reaching a larger audience. One of the most effective ways to utilize the platform is to create a custom Spotify for Artists profile which will help you get verified, easily manage your profile, learn about your fanbase and more. In this post, we’ll break down some tips to help you make sure your profile is optimized and ready to go.

Before we dive in…

To create your Spotify for Artists profile, go to artists.spotify.com and claim your profile.

Once your profile is approved, you’ll receive automatic verification, which will make you more discoverable among other artists and boost your position within Spotify’s algorithms. Once you’ve got this done, you can start utilizing all the tools the platform has to offer to help you achieve maximum success as an artist.

Artist’s Pick

Artist’s Pick is a valuable tool that allows you to feature music at the top of your profile. You can make a track, an album, a playlist or even an event the focus of your profile for two weeks, but you can update it at any time. This allows you to draw listeners to a certain release with the ability to include a short message as well.
+How To Get The Most Out Of Spotify

Marquee

Familiar with pop-up ads? — This is a version of those you actually won’t hate.

Marquee is a full-screen, sponsored recommendation of your new release to Spotify Free and Premium listeners who have shown interest in your music and have the potential to listen more. Although this isn’t a new tool, many of our artists don’t take advantage of this great feature! When the Marquee pops up, listeners are nudged to check out your newest release and explore. That means:

• You can market your music in a purely musical environment.
• No need to waste ad spend in cluttered spaces.
• Track exactly how your listeners engage with the release after seeing the Marquee.

Discovery Mode

With Discovery Mode, artists and labels can identify songs that are a priority for them, and Spotify’s system will add that signal to the algorithms that determine personalized listening sessions. Essentially, this increases the chances of those selected songs being recommended to listeners. Now, this doesn’t guarantee your music is going to be pushed over anyone else. All is does it take into consideration is if listeners are engaging with your songs or not and how to recommend better material for them in the future.

Sell Merch Through Shopify

Spotify and Shopify have teamed up to make selling merch right from your profile easier than ever. With this integration, your fans can browse your merch, you can pin your favorite items to the top of your merch tab, and you can tag select items that go with certain songs or albums so as your fans are listening, they can get the merch that goes specifically with those releases. To connect your Shopify store or just learn more about how it works, click here.
+5 Urgent Reasons Why Music Merch is Essential for Every Gigging Artist

Live Events Feed

What used to be called the “Concert Hub” is now revamped into something even better, your Live Events Feed. If you’ve got shows coming up through one of Spotify’s ticketing partners, like Ticketmaster, AXS, DICE, Eventbrite, See Tickets and more, you can showcase your upcoming shows right on your profile. Not only does this make it easier for your fans to see where you’ll be playing next, but it’s a great way for you to push ticket sales through your Spotify profile to the listeners who will appreciate them the most. Plus, fans who like similar music to yours will also be recommended your shows, sharing your music even further to likeminded listeners who may not know you yet. To learn how to link your concerts to your Spotify profile, check this out.

Utilize Presaves

Presaves are similar to preorders. A pre-save for a Spotify campaign allows your fans to connect on Spotify and automatically add an upcoming album or single to their Spotify library when it is released. Additionally, fans can automatically follow the artist or a playlist and have the album added to a new or existing playlist. With this feature, you can promote an upcoming release by giving your fans the opportunity to save it in advance prior to the actual release date. That way, they’ve got it saved and ready to go for the moment it finally goes live.

Setting up presaves for your upcoming music has a ton of benefits. From organically growing your audience to increasing engagement on your profiles, presaves offer an additional way to market your music that takes only a couple minutes to set up right in the SMS. To help you out, we’ve partnered with Hypeditt and Feature.fm to make it easier than ever for our Symphonic clients. Check out, “How To Set Up PreSaves Using Symphonic” to learn how it works.
+Create a Pre-Save For Spotify and Apple Music in 4 Steps

Spotify Clips

We’ve all seen the success of short form content nowadays, and Clips brings that success to Spotify for artists like you to take advantage of. Clips are short, under 30-second vertical videos to help you focus on the music and keep your content all in one place on Spotify. With it, you can hype up an upcoming release, promote an album or single, share stories about your music and influence fans to go deeper into what you have to offer.

Clips are uploaded directly to through Spotify for Artists and are attached to your artist profile. You can even tag Clips to your new track or album so fans can check it out right there.

Consistently Update/Maintain Your Profile

Your Spotify profile is the first point of contact between you and potential listeners. It serves as the most important way to represent your brand and your music. That’s why it’s absolutely essential to optimize your profile to showcase what you have to offer to the best of your ability. Ensure that you have a high-quality profile picture and header image that represents your brand. Write a compelling bio that tells your story, and make sure to include links to your social media accounts and website. It’s extremely important to update all of these features consistently and highlight any major achievements or announcements as they come.

In the meantime, you got this! With some consistency, hard work and a better understanding of how to make the platform for you, you’re on the right track."

 

 

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