There are a seemingly infinite number of Spotify promotion services available online. To save you some time, here are the best Spotify promotion services that i’ve personally tried on my own music.
Each of the companies on this list provide streams from real people, not bots. Results may vary but each of these companies are legit from all the data I can see.
In general we can break these services into 3 categories:
- Music Marketing Ad Agencies (1)
- Spotify Playlisting Companies (2 to 6)
- Pitching Platforms (7 to 9)
Each service type has its own pros and cons, so it’s hard to compare them directly. One thing I think would be beneficial is for you to see how the Spotify Playlisting Companies compare on a cost per stream basis.
The above graph is based on my own data from each of the Spotify playlisting companies shown in this article. Note that we’re excluding SubmitHub, Groover, PlaylistPush and SubmitLink from this graph because they’re a different type of service.
In this graph Partnered Projects is the cheapest service and Indie Music Academy is the most expensive service.
However one thing that didn’t sit well with me is Partnered Projects and Playlist-Promotion over delivered by such a large margin, I felt I show calculate what it would have cost if I purchased the appropriate package size for the streams I received.
It’s possible both of these companies always over deliver, but assuming that is not the case here’s what the graph looks like…
In this adjusted graph Partnered Projects goes to the 2nd cheapest position and Playlist-Promotion moves to the most expensive position. It is worth noting that technically YouGrow also overdelivered by about 15%, but that seems like a more realistic number so I didn’t adjust them in the 2nd graph.
Now lets take a deep dive through each of these services!
Forbid Media
At the time i’m writing this post, Forbid Media is the only company on here that uses direct digital advertising to promote your music. In most cases this means using Facebook conversion ads to drive people directly to your song on Spotify or other streaming platforms from Instagram and Facebook.
The result is a save rate of 50+%, a repeat listen rate of 2.5+, and a follow rate of 5-10%.
Now i’m definitely biased here and I want to be transparent about it, because Forbid Media is my company. However you’ll find that everyone in music marketing agrees that the level of engagement you get using direct ads is vastly superior to Spotify playlists. Plus, the streams don’t stop when the promotion stops.
Check out this video to see a case study where we got a song to 12.6 MILLION streams on Spotify in 6 months.
I’ve used Facebook ads to get over 10 million streams on my own music, and as a company we’ve helped generate over 150 million streams for other artist’s music. Click here to learn more about our service.
Partnered Projects
Partnered Projects offers several services including Spotify playlist promotion, YouTube ads promotion and recently also TikTok ads promotion. The Spotify playlist promotion in particular is delivered utilizing a network of curators with organically grown SEO based playlists.
This means that the playlists are ranking for specific keywords when people search inside of Spotify. For example, when you search for ‘pop music’ or ‘workout music’ on Spotify, certain playlists will come up at the top.
I took their Spotify playlisting service for a spin in June 2023 with their 25k-35k stream package. In total the campaign delivered about 64,000 streams.
Keep in mind that when I review services, companies know i’m reviewing them. So it’s hard to tell when companies over deliver just because they know i’m watching. But those are the numbers I experienced.
Here are some unique selling points of Partnered Projects:
- You aren’t charged unless your campaign is approved
- Their rejection rate is about 50%, meaning they have some quality control
- Campaigns are actually pitched behind the scenes using a custom pitching dashboard
- Playlists are grown organically using SEO
Update: As of October 2023, i’m now co-owners of Partnered Projects. When working with them they gave me a lot of access into their business. They let me see the curators, the pitching dashboard, the Shopify backend and more.
I felt they were doing things the right way and they were open to partnering up. My involvement is mostly related to marketing and scaling the business, but I wanted to be transparent and mention this.
Indie Music Academy
Indie Music Academy offers an ‘organic SEO’ playlisting service, very much like Partnered Projects.
Ryan Waczek is the founder of Indie Music Academy and he uses his service on his own music – that should tell you a lot. On his YouTube channel and website he’s gone to great lengths to help artists tell the difference between playlists that are botted and playlists that are real, and that should also say a lot about their service.
I interviewed Ryan on my YouTube channel in 2022 and since then we’ve talked at least every couple weeks. We’re both content creators in the music marketing niche trying to help artists reach their goals and I can vouch that Ryan is as genuine a guy as he seems on his channel.
Eventually we realized that I never tried his playlist service so he hooked me up with a trial campaign for one of my songs. In summary we ran a 50,000 stream playlist package which generated a total of 51,588 streams.
You can read my full review of it here.
Moonstrive Media
Moonstrive Media operates similarly to Indie Music Academy in that they offer organic SEO playlists. I spoke with Janik, the founder, via email and they’ve actually been reselling their network to other playlist companies for quite a while despite being relatively new under their current brand.
One big difference with Moonstrive compared to Partnered Projects or Indie Music Academy, is that Moonstrive Media sells campaigns by the follower count and not the stream count. As a result, their campaigns are generally cheaper but the actual stream count you get is unknown ahead of time.
They’re a legit company and their playlists are grown organically. One downside i’ll say is that i’ve noticed their playlists tend to be a bit more generic. One of my songs was added to a playlist called ‘songs that excite the white folks’.
YouGrow Promo
YouGrow Promo is a digital music marketing agency providing Spotify playlist services, YouTube ad services and TikTok / Instagram influencer services. In their Spotify playlisting service you’ll actually find a lot of the same curators on Partnered Projects, Indie Music Academy and Playlist-Promotion.
Right now they offer 4 Spotify packages:
- Starter – $77
- Rising Artist – $247
- Superstar – $617
- Megastar – $1097
They hooked me up with a $247 Rising Artist plan for 10k-22k streams. In total their campaign delivered 26k streams.
Their dashboard and customer service is probably the best out of anyone i’ve reviewed on this list. Every campaign gets a dedicated campaign manager and he hits you up every time a playlist is placed on your campaign.
Read my full YouGrow Promo review here.
Playlist-Promotion.com
Playlist-Promotion.com operates similar to Moonstrive Media in that they sell campaigns by the follower count and not the stream count.
They hooked me up with a 100,000 follower campaign, however they actually delivered 772,000 followers worth of playlist coverage. The campaign delivered 46,088 streams.
Depending on if you count the pricing at the 100k or 700k follower pricing, they switch between the 2nd cheapest service and the most expensive service. In general I can say the playlists they placed me on were relevant, and their dashboard and customer service were on point.
Read my full Playlist-Promotion.com review here.
SubmitHub
A lot of artists hate on SubmitHub online, but in my opinion it’s one of the best platforms for artists online. However, it’s less of a service and more of a directory of curators. Here’s how it works:
- SubmitHub allows you to select some search criteria like genre and curator type (Spotify playlister, blogger etc)
- They list all the curators that meet the criteria, and show you a ton of data for each one so you can evaluate them
- You can sort and filter the list to get to the right people
- You individually select the curators you want to send your song to, and click submit
- Within 48 hours the curator has to either accept your song to share it to their platform or reject your song with feedback telling you why they’re rejecting it
The feedback is often why so many people hate on SubmitHub. They either can’t take the heat or the feedback is genuinely bad (partially because curators are not necessarily also music creators themselves).
The reason why SubmitHub is awesome is that they provide you all the data you need to make a great decision on who to submit to. If you do your research and pitch to the most accurate and receptive curators you can get away spending very little money for a lot of Spotify playlist adds.
Another reason SubmitHub is great is that since you’re in control of who you pitch to, you pretty much know exactly where your music will be shared. This means the playlist can be more accurate to your style, and since the curator is paid whether they accept or reject the song the playlists are generally curated better.
Get 10% off SubmitHub campaigns using my link.
Groover
Groover essentially works exactly the same as SubmitHub. They were founded in 2018 so are relatively new, and as a result don’t have as many curators on the platform as SubmitHub. However they’ve created some differentiating factors between themselves and SubmitHub.
The big one is that they’ve focused on developing in specific markets around the world. For example if you’re looking to grow in the French market Groover is going to be a much better pick than SubmitHub for you in many cases.
Here’s how it works: Artists can individually choose which Spotify curators they want to pitch to. Submissions cost 2 Grooviz (€2) each, and curators can either approve your song to share or reject you with feedback.
Additionally they have a service where you can specify a budget and some basic information like genre, and they’ll automatically match you to specific curators. Then you can refine their selection and submit.
PlaylistPush
PlaylistPush also works quite similarly to both SubmitHub and Groover. However a huge distinction is that you can’t choose which curators to submit to. You choose your genre(s) and then PlaylistPush submits your song to curators based on how their playlists are matched to that genre.
PlaylistPush is 100% legit and totally works, the problem is that i’ve found in most cases it’s much better to use SubmitHub or Groover. Here’s why:
- They pay their curators more per review
- The curators do the exactly same work as SubmitHub
- The genre match isn’t always great
While its great that they pay curators more per review, that means artists pay more per review. Also while on SubmitHub if a reviewer doesn’t reply you get a refund, with PlaylistPush if they don’t reply you do not get a refund.
There is one massive benefit to PlaylistPush though, and that is in convenience. With them you just choose a genre, give them your link, pay a fee and thats it. No sorting through curators, no looking at their stats and playlists, no guessing. This generally makes PlaylistPush appealing to labels or people with large budgets.
If you don’t mind paying 3-5 times more per result to save time, PlaylistPush is a great option. If you’re more budget conscious but are fine spending the time sorting through curators, SubmitHub and Groover are the better choice.
Companies You Should Avoid
There are a ton of companies offering Spotify promotion but unfortunately there are a lot of bad actors out there. Some may use bots to inflate their numbers or drive numbers on your song, or they might just be flat out scams that never deliver on what they promised.
The only time I personally hired a company that delivered obvious bots was View Maniac, and this was back in 2019. They explained it was a legitimate service but when my song gained 1,000 followres and 5,000 streams overnight with nothing after that, I knew it was BS.
Jon Anderson of Two Story Melody specifically calls out these companies as being sketchy on his blog:
- Music Diffusion
- Musicvertising
- Artist Push
- Artist Sounds
You can read his whole article on the best Spotify promotion services here.
There is also a company that has been delivering botted streams to artists against their will – WAVR.AI.
Every day they add thousands of songs to their dozens of playlists, and pump bots to the songs on the playlist. Artists then see the playlist in their Spotify for Artists, go check it out and see either a website or email address in the playlist description. When you contact this site they ask for money in exchange for more promotion.
I cover that scam in this video:
Spotify Advertising Tools
Spotify actually has several built-in methods of promoting your music. These aren’t Spotify promotion services per-se, but they’re worth mentioning.
- Marquee – You pay per click to retarget existing fans and show them your newest release
- Discovery Mode – Spotify promotes your music to new people in Radio & Autoplay more strongly, but in exchange you give them 30% of streams from Radio & Autoplay
- Showcase – You pay per click to target new fans, or old fans, to show them any release on the home page of Spotify’s mobile app
All 3 of these tools have their place and can drive good results. In practice you often blend these with digital ad campaigns or playlisting campaigns, you wouldn’t use these alone if you have a budget.
Spotify also has ad studio which includes running audio and video ads to users on the free tier of Spotify, but in my experience these don’t perform very well in comparison to Facebook Ads.
