So should you do a pre-save campaign feature to help your upcoming music release? This marketing plan allows artists to encourage fans to “pre-save” an album before it drops so it gets automatically added to their Spotify library upon release.
As Screen Rant explains, pre-saves have become an important metric in the streaming era. They give artists and labels early data on how many users plan to listen to an album right away. This helps forecast first-day streams and build buzz leading up to release day.
With Spotify’s pre-save campaigns, artists can now leverage pre-saves as a marketing tactic. According to Digital Music News, artists can activate a pre-save card on their Spotify profile when distributing music. This card lets fans click to pre-save an upcoming album and view the tracklist and release date.
The number of pre-saves is tracked in real time on Spotify for Artists, giving valuable insight. In testing, some artists have already garnered tens of thousands of pre-saves with the new campaigns.
For artists, pre-save campaigns offer a way to directly engage fans on Spotify and prime them for an upcoming release. Artists can monitor pre-saves to gauge interest and even potentially adjust promotion strategies.
Screen Rant notes additional potential benefits – a high number of pre-saves signals that an album may get strong engagement on release day. Plus, it brings fans back to Spotify repeatedly to check for the new album.
This ultimately benefits Spotify as well, driving more user activity. The pre-save campaign joins other recent artist marketing tools like canvas loops and Marquee ads.
However, some potential downsides of pre-saves have been pointed out. As Digital Music News discusses, artists could inflate numbers by incentivizing pre-saves through promotions like offering merch discounts. This could set unrealistic expectations for actual streams on release day. There’s also a chance fans lose interest and don’t listen after pre-saving far in advance, or forget to check out the release. While analytics company Chartmetric says pre-saves have about a 50% conversion rate to streams, that still means half of pre-savers may not become listeners. So while most see pre-saves as a useful marketing tool, artists should be aware inflated pre-save counts may not truly reflect fan demand. Still, the real-time data provides valuable early insight into how promotional strategies are working leading up to an album debut.
Overall, Spotify’s pre-save campaigns provide a simplified way for artists to generate interest in new music. For smaller artists especially, it represents an impactful, data-driven marketing tactic. Fans get notified instantly when anticipated albums are released. As Screen Rant states, it’s a “win-win” for artists, fans, and Spotify alike.
Here are some platforms that allow you to do pre-save campaigns.
- DistroKid (free for DistroKid users)
- Soundplate (free)
- Music Gateway (free)
- Show.co (paid)
- Presave.io (paid)