Strategy for transition from Release Radar to Discover Weekly

[mentataudio]

Thanks to all Andrew's videos and all your help (especially georgik thanks!) I just got my first significant release radar boost on the first Friday after the Fri I released the track. I'm now wondering how to give it the best chance of getting onto Discover Weekly.

I just hit 20% popularity on the Friday and saw a big boost from release radar streams. The track seems to be doing well, save rate has dipped a little but is still at 32% all time, 25% last 7 days.

It's Wednesday and the track has moved up to 26% popularity. I've never got to this stage before but I think I should expect another release radar boost if it maintains this popularity or grows.

Is it worth upping my ad spend to try to push it over 30 in time for Monday? Or is it likely it will hit that anyway with another release radar boost on Friday?

[georgik]

Congratulations!! :-)

I wouldn't worry too much about getting on DW as quickly as possible. If people are saving your track and listening to it, its popularity score should stay relatively constant. You can leave your ad spend alone and see if it gets to 30 by Monday, if not then it'll surely get there by next Monday. Enjoy!

Also, nobody can tell you whether or not your track will get another RR push next Monday. It really is up to the black box of an algorithm. Your save rate surely has something to do with it (and 25% / 7days looks good (even though that does also count people who saved from your ads, which have a higher save rate than algo-playlist listeners)). Just keep it steady and hope the quality of your track will keep getting it pushed

[mentataudio]

Thanks georgik . That makes sense, so it's all about the black box and something to do with total number of streams and good save rate. Hadn't thought about it quite like that. I will leave it alone and see what happens!

[mentataudio]

So I didn't hit 30 the Monday after my big Release Radar push, but my stats have kept up and my track just got to 30, so should be in line for a Discover Weekly on Monday.

This made me wonder, it is a few days until then... what makes a track's popularity score go down? I certainly have a couple that have gone down over time. Is that because the listeners to saves/follows/playlisting went down? I have usually submitted to a bunch of curators to get my tracks on playlists a few weeks after release, now I am wondering whether I should stop doing that because while this playlisting gets me a bunch of streams it probably drags these ratios down.

Any thoughts?

[georgik]

Good question! I dont know exactly why tracks go down in popularity but I think playlists shouldnt hurt you as long as they aren't your only source of streams -- and even then, they would surely increase your track's popularity as long as it is getting streams from them, not decrease it. Just my opinion though, like I said, I don't really know.

In my experience, a track's popularity will naturally go down over time. The only way to counter that is through new listeners, whether through ads, DW / RR, or curator playlists.