This has been great for many independent artists and labels, but there’s still a major: it’s difficult to get more plays on Spotify without the assistance of Spotify editorial or placement their in-house playlists.

Overcoming The Editorial Hurdle

The best teams are overcoming the editorial challenge by running direct-to-fan Spotify promotions that encourage fans to add tracks to their collections and provide valuable social data to music marketing teams.

A very common consumer streaming path on Spotify looks a bit like this:

  • Fan discovers song on a playlist
  • Fan saves song to their Spotify collection a.k.a. “Saves” or “Favorites”
  • Fan repeatedly listens to song in their Spotify collection

The most proactive teams in music are therefore overcoming the editorial hurdle by trying to influence Spotify collection saves in any way they can.

Optimizing Collection Adds

Childish Gambino’s team chose to use a ToneDen contest to promote the release of his latest album, “Awaken, My Love!”, on Spotify.

Fans were directed to the contest landing page on ToneDen from Facebook and other social media channels, where they were prompted to enter via Facebook’s Connect API (essentially, a one-click email opt-in form).

When a fan enters with Facebook, we get their email and other valuable information that can be used in future campaigns.

After entering, fans were able to save Childish Gambino’s album to their Spotify Collections in order to increase their chances of winning:

Fans can gain more entries and “level up” by supporting your artist on Spotify

ToneDen’s contest feature is designed get the most social actions out of your fanbase. After entering a contest, a fan is enticed to increase their entries by doing the following:

  • Email capture (occurs for all contests automatically)
  • Following Spotify account(s) — can do multiple in one click
  • Following Spotify playlist(s) — can do multiple in one click
  • Adding track or album to Spotify collection
  • Pre-Save track to Spotify collection — coming very soon
  • Following SoundCloud account(s) — can do multiple in one click
  • Subscribing to YouTube channel
  • Following Twitter account
  • Sharing contest URL to Facebook

The Childish Gambino team chose to focus their efforts primarily on Spotify in an effort to maximize the album’s presence on the platform.

Awesome Results

The contest turned out to be a resounding success for the Childish Gambino release!

His team was able to gain the following from one single promotion:

  • 11,073 Emails
  • 6,513 Spotify Account & Playlist Subscribers
  • 6,712 Unique Spotify Streams
  • 6,408 Spotify Collection Saves for his album
  • 6,427 YouTube Subscribers
  • 5,430 Facebook shares

While the primary goal was to influence collection saves, his team managed to gain a ton of audience data that can be used for future releases, in addition to making his fans happy.

In fact, the response from fans was overwhelmingly positive. Take a look at the comments section of the contest:

His fans had nothing but positive things to say about his new album & enjoyed the shot at winning some sweet Childish Gambino gear.