Want to improve your performance on Spotify & Apple Music, and increase your chances of playlist placements?
It might be time to review the pre-release premieres and radio plays.
Pre-Release Premieres & Airplay
Traditionally one of the most popular approaches to music promotion is the use of premieres on platforms such as YouTube, SoundCloud and 1st time radio plays. These are often done weeks in advance of the release date in a bid to create hype and anticipation for the forthcoming release. Whilst premieres and radio plays can offer a lot of exposure, they can also have a detrimental impact on a releases success if done too early.
The most beneficial time for a premiere for a label is on the release day itself when it’s fully available to download and stream. This means that the content is most likely fully monetised wherever the listener discovers it and the listener gets instant gratification.
Sometimes YouTube and SoundCloud channels ask labels to waiver their royalties for a premiere. We generally advise labels against doing this and more information can be found here.
Parity – The condition of being equal
Both Spotify and Apple Music ask for Parity, meaning that they ask for a release to be available on their platform at the same time it’s been made available for fans to listen to publically anywhere else.
The benefits of parity
Focussing Premieres, social media campaigns and radio plays on the release day means that the music is instantly accessible to consumers who want to access it. From here they can instantly download it from download stores, follow the artist on their streaming platform of choice and support the label.
If your priority is to achieve high profile playlists placements and features on Spotify and Apple Music, parity should be given.
Parity on Apple music means that the track will also be Shazamable.
If parity is not given
If Spotify and Apple Music don’t have the release live on the store when it’s being premiered or aired publically, they may choose not to support the release for playlists, editorial and features.
How can they tell?
Spotify asks artists, labels and managers to pitch their tracks/songs to their editorial team for playlist placement. We published an article which goes into great detail about how best to do this, with one of the main takeaways being to ‘sell the story’ and don’t use the pitching process to announce PR milestones. Pitches are read by Spotifys editorial team who will often go on to check out the artist and labels socials.
We then ask labels to complete our ‘Significant Press Updates’ form and this information is emailed directly to the editorial team at Spotify. If the majority of your PR evolves around Premieres and Radio plays which were done well in advance of the date it became live on Spotify, Spotify may choose not to support your release.
We can omit this information from what is sent to Spotify, but it will no doubt be easily accessible information to Spotifys team if thats where the focus has been for the label.