It’s no secret that Spotify has become a significant part of music artists’ repertoire and success in the last few years. Meaning, if your goal is to nurture a successful music career, taking care of the Spotify side of things is a must. As Spotify continues to grow and dominate even bigger, a wealth of opportunities await those who are willing to seize them, but also competition.

The quest to become a successful artist on Spotify with a growing fanbase and an increasing number of streams is a dream for many. However, the road to success is not an overnight journey. it requires a firm grasp of the long game. It requires planning, perseverance, and for you to adapt when needed. For emerging artists, the initial steps can be scary and lead to uncertainty and overwhelm.

If you can relate, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will take a dive into the steps, strategies, and creative approaches you can take not only to survive but to thrive on Spotify in 2025. Embracing the power of planning, innovation, and technology, and connecting on a deeper level with fans will be the compass guiding you towards new horizons. Let’s get started!

Make Great Music

If there’s one thing to get right before anything else, it’s this. There’s no way around it. No amount of marketing or promotion will compensate for subpar music. Creating exceptional music is the foundation for success on Spotify and your music career overall. Here are some tips to help you on your journey to make great music:

1. Find Your Unique Voice: Take the time to explore your artistic identity. What makes your music special? Are there influences from your childhood? Identify your strengths and passions and infuse them into your productions. Be true to yourself. authenticity resonates with listeners.
2. Focus on Quality: In today’s saturated landscape, quality is a minimum requirement. Make sure your tracks are properly mixed and mastered or consider investing in professional services to take your track to where they need to be. Also, continually get feedback from trusted peers or music professionals to continually improve over time.
3. Explore & Experiment: Don’t limit yourself to a single genre or style. Experiment with different genres and styles and collaborate with diverse artists to expand your horizons. This can help you appeal to a broader audience.
4. Make Them Feel: Music is about feelings. It’s also about story. create music that evokes emotion and tells a story. It can be through lyrics, melodies, or a beat. Emotion is the basis for connection on a deep level.
5. Stay Relevant, Stay True: The industry is always changing and evolving with new genres and trends coming and dominating the scene for a period of time. Stay updated on current trends and incorporate elements from them into your music without losing your artistic essence.

Create and Optimize Your Spotify Artist Profile

Your Spotify artist profile serves as your gateway to the global audience. It’s your digital business card, representing your brand, music, and story. Once your music is uploaded to Spotify, you should get access to your artist profile either from your distributor or label or by claiming your artist profile.

Making your profile the best it can be is essential to make a lasting impression and connect with listeners. As a quote I like says – “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. With that in mind, here’s how you can create and optimize your Spotify artist profile for maximum impact:

1. Compelling Bio: Craft a concise and captivating bio that tells your story as an artist. Use this opportunity to share your musical journey, influences, and unique style.
2. High-Quality Photos: Choose professional, visually appealing, high-quality, and high-res photos that reflect your identity as an artist. Make sure to set the profile picture, avatar, and gallery in your “About” section. If you currently don’t have any images, consider investing in a photo shoot or even creating a headshot with AI tools.
3. Link to Social Media and Website: Include links to your social media accounts and website in your profile. This will enable listeners to connect with you on other platforms and expand your reach beyond Spotify.
4. Update Regularly: Keep your profile fresh by updating it consistently with new releases, announcements, and relevant content.
5. Create an Artist Playlist: An underrated one. Create a playlist that showcases your own music but also tracks from other artists you like or within your genre or style. This playlist will serve as a reflection of your musical taste and will give your fans another peek into your artistic vision.

Create an Effective Marketing Plan

You’ve worked hard and made great music. It’s time to celebrate and share it with the world. What’s more to be done, right? Unfortunately, in today’s ultra-saturated landscape, just releasing and hoping for the best won’t cut it. You need a plan and a good one. A strong marketing strategy ensures your music reaches the right ears and helps you build a fan base. Here are a few points to get you started:

1. Define Your Goals: Clarify your objectives. What are you aiming for? more streams, followers, or live gigs? Setting clear goals guides your efforts.
2. Utilize Social Media, Consistently: Leverage platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Consistent engagement keeps fans invested.
3. Visual Storytelling: Create visually appealing content such as album teasers, lyric videos, and behind-the-scenes footage.
4. Email Marketing: Maintain an email list to update your fans about new releases, tours, and exclusive content.
5. Collaborations: Collabs are one of the most effective ways to gain new fans and exposure while also building connections and making friends. Seek artists with the same to slightly above you in terms of followers / fanbase. By releasing a track together, you share your audience with each other and grow together.
6. Pitch to Spotify Editorial: Submit your music to Spotify’s editorial team for a chance to be featured on official playlists. Being featured on those playlists can bring massive exposure.
7. Pitch to Spotify Playlists: Submit your music to Spotify curators to get playlist placements. Use a great pitch matching the playlist’s theme. Getting playlisted can substantially boost your visibility and is relatively easy to do.
8. Engage with Fans: Respond to comments, messages, and feedback. Engage in real conversations and build connections with your fans.
9. Utilize Paid Ads: Invest in targeted advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify to reach new audiences.

Release Music Regularly

One of the basic requirements to become a successful Spotify artist is to have a strategic approach to releasing music. The frequency at which you put out new tracks can greatly impact your growth as an artist. Balancing quality and quantity is key. here’s how to effectively release music to keep your fanbase engaged and your audience growing.

Frequency Matters

To establish a loyal fanbase and enhance your visibility, releasing music at least once every two months is recommended. On the upper end, releasing new music once every month or even 2 weeks can help you harness today’s short attention spans and the constant demand for novelty in today’s world. However, don’t forget about the quality of your releases. even high volume requires excellence.

Momentum & Quality

Releasing regularly builds momentum, which maintains a constant presence that attracts new fans. It also keeps existing fans engaged and keeps you from fading from their radar. What’s more, this practice can “force” creativity, pushing you to explore new ideas, concepts, and musical styles.

Find Your Rythm

While regular releases can undoubtedly boost your growth, an overload of content can overwhelm both you and your audience. The key is to find the rhythm that aligns with your capabilities while keeping your listeners engaged.

Engage Your Audience

Engaging and connecting with your audience is the heartbeat of a successful Spotify journey. It’s not just about getting streams; it’s about building a community that resonates and passionate about your music. Here’s how to connect with your listeners and keep them coming back for more:

1. Social Media Interaction: Regularly interact with your fans on platforms like Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and SoundCloud. Respond to comments, like your favorite ones, and create polls to involve them in your journey.
2. Behind The Scenes Content: Offer a sneak peek into your creative process. Share your studio moments, songwriting tips, and personal and interesting stories to make your audience feel like they’re part of your artistic journey.
3. Personalized Messaging: Send personalized messages to your most engaged fans. They’ll love it and will appreciate you for it. Express your gratitude for their support and keep them in the loop about upcoming releases or events.
4. Live Q&A Sessions: Host live Q&A sessions on platforms like Instagram Live or Facebook Live. This direct interaction allows your fans to ask questions and get to know your better.
5. User-Generated Content: Encourage fans to create content related to your music, such as covers, TikToks, or artwork. Share them on your social media to show appreciation and involve your community.
6. Exclusive Content: Offer exclusive content to your loyal fans. This could be unreleased tracks, acoustic versions, or early access to upcoming releases. It makes them feel valued.
7. Host a Remix Contest: Let your fans unleash their creativity by organizing a remix contest for one of your tracks. Offer cool and exciting prizes. This not only encourages fan participation but also provides a fresh perspective on your music.
8. Storytelling: Share the stories behind your songs. Whether it’s about personal experiences, challenges, or triumphs, storytelling adds depth and meaning to your music.

Engaging and connecting with your audience is an ongoing journey. Authenticity, transparency, and a genuine interest in your fans will create a connection that goes beyond streams. By nurturing this connection, you’ll create a dedicated community that not only listens to your music but becomes a part of your artistic narrative.

Create a Spotify Artist Playlist

Definitely one of the overlooked ways many don’t consider. As an artist on Spotify, creating a playlist is a great opportunity to share your musical identity, influences, and favorite music with your audience. This way, they get to know you better and connect with you more deeply.

First, define what the playlist is about. It could be a genre-specific playlist, songs that inspire your creativity, or simply your releases + complementary ones. Don’t forget to Integrate your own tracks into the playlist. This provides listeners with an immersive experience of your music journey and introduces them to your releases.

Alongside your own tracks, include some of your favorite songs from other artists. This introduces your audience to tracks they might not have heard before and showcases your musical range and depth.

Arrange the playlist in a way that tells a musical story. Consider the flow of the tracks, the transitions between them, and the emotional journey you want to take your listeners on.

Now that you’ve created your artist playlist, share it everywhere. on your social media accounts, website, and newsletter (If you have one). Invite your fans to follow and engage with the playlist, to amplify its reach and impact. Also don’t forget to regularly update the playlist. Keeping your playlist fresh helps maintain listener engagement.

Get featured on Spotify editorial and user-curated Playlists

There are two types of playlists that you can submit music to and be featured on Spotify – editorial playlists and user-curated playlists. 

Editorial playlists are created and managed by Spotify’s own editorial team of curators. Getting featured on these can be a game-changer for artists looking to gain more exposure, as these playlists usually have a massive follower count and reach. 

On the other hand, user-curated playlists can be created by any Spotify user. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you should skip them. These playlists can be a goldmine too. They just need a bit more diligence and research to make sure they are legit.

Submit to Spotify editorial playlists

To get your song submitted for playlist consideration, go to your music dashboard under – https://artists.spotify.com/. Navigate to the “Music” section and then “Upcoming.” You should see your unreleased songs. Choose the track you want to submit and click on “Pitch a song”. Then you will be presented with a form to fill in with details about your release. Fill it to the best of your abilities. In the description, make sure to write the best pitch you can.

Submit to user-curated playlists

Securing a spot on Spotify’s editorial playlists is a big deal, but don’t forget to utilize user-curated playlists. They hold immense potential for boosting your music’s reach and impact. 

First, you need to find you some quality playlists. You can do this simply by using Spotify’s search bar, then finding contact information in each of those playlists. It is doable, but we don’t recommend it, as this method is very manual and can get tedious and take quite some time. Instead, you have two options:

1. Use a service

There are several tools available that can help you find curators’ playlists to submit to. These are Teder, PlaylistSupply, PlaylistMap, and artist.tools. These tools can be incredibly helpful in streamlining your search for playlists to submit to.

2. Use a playlist network

There are also several playlist networks available that can help you get your music submitted to curators’ playlists. These networks often have relationships with the curators, so the submission process takes place inside their platform. Those include SubmitHub, Goover, PlaylistPush among others.

Collaborate With Other Artists

Collaborating with other artists is one of the strongest ways to go for musicians aiming to make it big on Spotify. Think about it like combining your superpowers. When you team up, you’re not just merging styles, you’re also merging fan bases. That means double the listeners discovering you and your tracks.

When artists collaborate, each one brings his own style to the table and they both bring out each other’s creativity. With that, the likelihood of creating something fresh and unique goes way up, and as a result, the chances of getting featured and playlisted. Plus, think about all the things you can learn from someone you connect with. Not just on music skills and techniques, but also on business, the industry, and life in general.

But perhaps the best part is the community. By collaborating, you’re not just making music, you’re also becoming part of a network of fellow artists. It’s like having a support squad cheering you on, helping you on your music journey. So, if you’re on your journey to Spotify success, remember: two heads are definitely better than one!

Utilize Paid Ads

Once you’re already on your way, you can consider integrating paid advertising into your Spotify strategy. Utilizing social media ads can be very beneficial for your Spotify journey when done right. These ads offer targeted outreach, enabling you to reach completely new fans, and enhancing visibility. By capitalizing on the user bases of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you can precisely target demographics based on music preferences, age, location, and more. This amplifies the potential to connect with listeners who are more likely to resonate with your music.

Start by defining your goals: do you want more plays, followers, or maybe even some hype for an upcoming release? Craft eye-catching visuals and catchy ad copy that truly represent you and your music. Then, choose the right platform (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc) based on where your target audience spends their most time. Set a budget you’re comfortable with and keep an eye on the results. Adjust your approach based on what’s working. Remember, it’s not just about pushing your tracks. share Behind-The-Scenes snippets, popular posts, and other engaging and relatable content. With a little bit of creativity mixed with data-driven decisions, paid ads can go a loooong way in boosting your journey on Spotify.

Conclusion

Here we are, congrats! After all you’ve learned, it’s time to put all of this into action. Step into the world as your canvas and compose your story of success with everything you learned. Remember, this isn’t just about numbers and streams, but about touching hearts and creating a musical connection that lasts. Good luck!