Need Help Getting On Spotify's Release Radar

[shmig]

Hello there! So I asked this question in a comment on one of Andrew's videos but I thought posting it here could open up a conversation.

It seems to me that the gateway into actually benefiting from Spotify's massive audience is to first get picked up by Release Radar. You know, get some of that sweet, sweet algorithmic traffic bump. Unfortunately, this may be harder than I had hoped. For my release last week, I pumped in some Facebook ad traffic for about 30 streams a day. This is just the best I could do with limited budget, some early mistakes in ad manager, and no real following yet. Despite that, the save rate is great at nearly 45%, 15 new followers on Spotify, and about a 2.0 listener to stream rate. So people like the song, but Friday rolled around and release radar has yet to give us any love. I confirmed this by checking the stats here today - algorithmic streams are at only 2%, no release radar plays.

So my question is this: Is there a stream volume threshold to get on Release Radar? If so, where do you approximate it to be? Or could this be from other factors like skip rate or some other hidden variable? In one video, Andrew showed he had over 3000 streams for a track by day 7, and it got picked up by Spotify's release radar. Just trying to get an idea so that next release I can plan accordingly and not take out a second mortgage to pay for a huge ad budget.

Thanks in advance!

Band's Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0a83...QEm5os1ZzDkiOg

[EdChristopher]

Hey man, I think you need more streams, saves and playlist adds on your song before you get added to release radar, I also had the same frustration on my newest single, however on the last eligibility week, once it hit 5k streams and around 600 saves, it got pushed to release radar for a week...here's our track for context

https://open.spotify.com/track/5iqRx...urce=copy-link

[shmig]

Hey thanks Ed. I figured as much, just was trying to find a baseline of how many it would take. How many weeks is a track eligible for release radar???

And checked out the song, sounds good brutha.

[Steff]

Hey, I'm not sure. I had my second release yesterday and I only have six subscribers but I saw in my analytics that I was on a Release Radar playlist which gave me exactly 1 stream Could also be that Spotify's analytics is still behind. However, isn't release radar only pushed to followers and previous listeners anyway?
I'm glad I'm on it because it feels so much more official. I think the algorithm picks it up when you can jumpstart your streams in the first 48h with a few thousand. Since I have almost no subscribers that doesn't seem to be an issue. I know that you need over 300 views on YouTube within the first 48h on the platform to be picked up by the algorithm and to get pushed out on browse features etc. I guess Spotify has the same logic but with a higher number attached to it.

It would indeed be interesting to know how long a song is eligible for release radar.

[shmig]

Hey Steff. Yeah so apparently there are two types of Release Radar, one for the people already following you, and another that is algorithmic that I think Spotify kind of mixes in between songs from artists you follow. It looks like this a great boost if you can get on it, which is why I am so keen to land there.

[42valentino]

Hey I think I can help you! So I release my music with my friend under his name, 42 Fredo. Our first two songs we released I didn't know to much about social advertising, so neither of the two songs hit the algorithm. However our one single did, and currently has gotten over 30,000 streams, half coming from the algorithm. We honestly just followed Andrew's advice, set up a conversion campaign, made a landing page, and used automatic placements with a correctly formatted ad for each style. Full discloser we did spend $150 on the campaign, with a third of the money spent in the first two days. However, we quickly started gaining a ton of streams (Started off at 200 streams a day, then by the end of the week hit 600 streams a day, probably off momentum from our other releases and fans gained from advertising.) Then when the next friday rolled around we hit release radar which gave us 1500 streams in one day! So I think we just fed Spotify the right data and had a good plan. Then it hit discover weekly which gave a nice boost too. The best part is we don't even advertise the song anymore and we are getting around 1000 streams a day still. Thank god for Andrew's videos because I would have never been able to do it without that guidance.

[shmig]

Hey Valentino, thanks for your reply. Checked out 42 Fredo really nice beats. I make indie/reggae rock kind of stuff, so I think my issue has been with targeting. It's hard to pinpoint a band or genre that sounds just like us, but I'm still experimenting. So $25 in ads the first two days, got you around 200 steams each day. I'll keep that in mind for next release, seems like a good plan.

[42valentino]

hey thanks for the compliment! appreciate that. but yah we have a hard time comparing ourselves to other artists so we experiment with it too. We do artists like Travis Scott, Post Malone, etc. They don't sound exactly like us, but its in the same ballpark. And I think Andrew said it, the first 48 hours are critical to the success of the songs. So it makes sense to put a significant chunk of money for those days. Good luck brother!

[boogiemonk]

Hi Valentino - so you spent $100 in the first 2 days? How long did it take you to spend the last $50?

[Ghostown]

I believe a track is eligible for 4 weeks

[OnyxX]

To answer Steff, we noticed that songs will get a "test release" to Release Radar if you don't have a enough stats for the algorithm to know your audience. Your "test release" might only be 1, 3, 8 - something like that. Our first song got a test release of 3 Release Radars the first Friday (release day). Our release last week got a test release of 15. These are your followers. Those of use who actually got the song in our Release Radars (a couple of people we knew did, too) got an email, too.

This is not the same as Release Radar algorithmic push to people beyond your followers. I've been trying to figure out the same thing: what is the threshold? Andrew's songs You and Neutron only had around 100 saves and less than 50 playlists by day 6, and did not get a big push. Our last release had 132 saves on day 6 and we also didn't get a big push. I don't think any of this has to do with the number of streams. If it did, playlisting would work. Spotify needs to know who loves your song to find more people just like them. Streams alone don't show love (unless they have it on repeat). Saves are a good metric, but not the only one. You have to show Spotify what type of people will love your song and it has to be a big enough data pool. Not streams: engaged listeners.

On a side note, it can be very expensive going through the learning curve with Facebook ads and making mistakes, but you can always make more money. A song, though, shouldn't be wasted. What we did is take down one of our releases that did poorly and re-released it and ran the campaign, social media and everything, like it was a new release. You can't submit it for playlist consideration, but you get to keep all of your saves, playlists, and stream data and you still get to be in Release Radar. We got a test release of three Release Radars the first Friday. That song just went to our followers the second week (143 out of 300 followers), but we didn't spend a lot on ads. We did that as a dry run before releasing a new song.

This new song hasn't done well so far because I didn't know about the "learning phase" and kept messing with the ads (it doesn't display "learning phase" in our Facebook manager). Now, I am going to find a winner and leave it alone and let it optimize. I kept wondering how everyone was getting those low conversion rates. I misunderstood Andrew's video about optimizing, or maybe he stopped doing what he said in that video later, but now I understand.

But to answer the question, it seems like you need over 400 engaged listeners to trip Release Radar. That's what Andrew had with Socialize to get the Release Radar push the second Friday. Our goal is 500 saves by week 5 at this point, so we'll see if that's enough. I think the faster you reach the threshold, that matters, too, so hitting it at 5 weeks probably won't generate the same results as hitting it at Day 6.