Article Posted by CD Baby - DIY Musician

Spotify’s algorithm isn’t just interested in your stream count; it’s looking for a quality stream-to-engagement ratio. Meaning, of all the people that heard your song, how many of them saved it to their library, queue, or playlists? That’s the kind of activity that really gives your music muscle on the platform.

With a Spotify pre-save campaign you have the chance to demonstrate both quality and quantity, boosting your first-day stream totals AND getting fans to save your song to their queue.

What is a Pre-Save?

Similar to download pre-sales on iTunes and Amazon, a pre-save campaign on Spotify gives you a window of time where your fans can actually DO something with the music you’re promoting before its release — namely, save the song or album to their queue so they’ll hear it as soon as it becomes available on Spotify.

No sense in sharing your excitement about your upcoming release in a tweet or email if no one can click to buy, save, or hear it!

With a pre-save you can incentivize your audience on Spotify to take action during that promotional period leading up to the release by running a contest or offering access to exclusives, while also ensuring that your songs makes the biggest splash possible on Day One (which, again, is a key factor in the release’s algorithmic performance).

Just as download pre-sales are tallied as first-day sales (improving your chances of charting), the more people that pre-save your release on Spotify, the more impressive your first-day streaming activity will be.

To sign up you’ll need to put in basic info like your name, email and create a password.

Don’t take this step lightly — use an email that you actually check, and a password you actually remember because you’ll be using your distro site to check the stats from your project(s) even after you’ve completed the uploading and publishing steps.

How do you run a pre-save campaign on Spotify in 7 steps?

1. Set a release date and work backward

If you’re going to make your music available for pre-save a month in advance of its release, that means you need to get things in gear with plenty of time to execute the campaign.

If all the information about your release is entered completely and accurately during the distribution signup process, CD Baby can deliver your music to Spotify lightning fast, but I would still recommend building an extra week or two into the process as a buffer.

For example, if you want your music live on Spotify on December 1st, and you want your pre-save campaign to begin on November 1st, I would suggest you sign everything up with your distributor by mid-October. You’ll see why below.

2. Distribute your music

As I mention in the step above, you need to get your music onto Spotify via a distributor.

During the signup process you’ll enter the target release date. Once your release has been finalized, we’ll deliver it to Spotify — and all our other download and streaming partners — and those platforms will make it available on the release date.

3. Get your Spotify URI

What is a Spotify URI?

A Spotify URI is a unique identifier for a song, album, or playlist on Spotify. This is different from a URL, which is a web address.

You can find the URI for any music that is ALREADY available on Spotify by clicking the ellipses next to the track, album, or playlist within Spotify and scrolling down. It will look something like this: spotify:album:5HsLJuoLxi83psFBAhAAe7

But how do you find the URI for music that isn’t released on Spotify yet?

Show.co offers services to get your Spotify URI for a pre-save campaign.

4. Figure out how you will reward fans that pre-save

Maybe being the first to hear a new song is enough for your fans. But if you’re trying to boost interest, it’s worth considering other options to get people to click “pre-save” when they arrive at your campaign page.

A t-shirt giveaway? Backstage passes? Access to private SoundCloud tracks?

Once the person clicks “pre-save,” you can lead them wherever you want to unlock a file, URL, or experience. Oh, and if you’re doing a giveaway or random drawing, you’ll have their contact info as well.

Different distro companies have different options but the most common options for what you can distribute are a single, an album or a cover of an already existing song. Click on the option that best suits the description of the project you’re dropping.

Once you’ve picked what type of content you are distributing, you then have to fill in basic info about the project.

Once this information is complete, it will prompt you to upload the cover artwork for your project. Before submitting it, make sure you have researched what the company requirements are for uploading artwork so you create the art with these requirements in mind.

The final task of the creating a single or album step is to upload the actual music — upload the mp3. or wav. file of your song to the site.

You get to pick the outlets and streaming platforms you want your project to show up on.

Major outlets like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. are popular amongst the public and would be great platforms to gain an audience. Other outlets like Pandora, iHeartRadio, Amazon, etc. are great too, but they’re less popular these days. With that being said — it never hurts to put your music EVERYWHERE. You never know who’s listening!