My most recent release, a three-song EP, is sitting at 268,328 streams as of this morning.
That’s so big a number that my puny mind can’t process what it even means, but certainly one takeaway from the six digits is that a crowd of people have heard my music.
That’s great.
But in another light (and there’s always another light), it’s also fairly disappointing. Because eight months ago, I set the goal of getting 1,000,000 streams on the release over the following year – and with eight months down, I’m roughly 730,000 streams short.
Barring a miracle or a beef with Drake (which I’d qualify as a miracle), it’s virtually certain that I’ll end my yearlong journey nowhere near my intended destination.
Still, all things considered, I’m feeling grateful.
I’m incredibly grateful to have had the time and the budget to market my music, and somehow even more grateful to have seen it connect with real people.
With all of that said, in today’s email, I’ll do my best to avoid mushy sentimentality. Instead, I’ll do some cold analysis of the most recent numbers and share my two biggest regrets from this marketing journey.
Here’s where things are at.
First, the main tactic driving my streams has been Meta ads.
I’ve written a bunch about this over the past eight months, so I won’t belabor the topic here. Feel free to read earlier updates like this or this if you want a more detailed description of the campaigns.
But I do want to give you a fresh view on the numbers.
So far…
- I’ve spent $5,008.12 on direct-to-song ads.
- I’ve had an average CPR of $0.51.
It’s worth noting that all of my ads have run to Tier 1 audiences. Taking that into account, I’d consider my campaigns to have been average or slightly below in terms of cost efficiency.
I also had my friend Ashwin, who runs Daily Dosa Music, run a $150 Meta ad campaign for my song “Haunted.” He was able to drive about 360 saves for the track with that budget – a number which I considered pretty impressive.
Outside of direct-to-song Meta ads, I’ve added all three songs to playlists that I’ve built using Meta ads. Those owned lists have generated 74,483 streams in the past year, although that number includes an extra four months and streams from songs other than the three on the most recent EP.
Finally, I’ve run a few small, third-party playlisting campaigns on SubmitHub, Spin Promo, and PlaylistIQ. I’ve spent around $300 and those three campaigns have driven somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 streams.
(PlaylistIQ campaign is Omari’s new platform. That one’s currently live, and I’m planning to document the results after it wraps.)
I spilled the high-level results at the top of this email, but here’s a screenshot of where things are at on each song.
Again, I’m mostly grateful for all of this. But there’s a small part of me that’s slightly disappointed, as well – and that part of me has two main regrets.
First…
I wish I’d made more social content.
Initially, I’d planned to lean into organic social for promotion, with the idea that I’d spend a couple of hours crafting posts each week.
As it’s turned out, I’ve leaned back into the bushes like Homer Simpson.
Since releasing the first track eight months ago, I’ve posted to Instagram five times. In other words, over any 30-day period, I’m more likely to change my toothbrush.
This is a bummer solely in terms of lost organic reach, but it’s probably dampened the effectiveness of my ad campaigns, too. Artists who post more typically have more effective ads, because they have more content from which to choose.
With all of that said, there’s a curmudgeonly side of me that’s kind of glad I’ve shirked social media. Do I really want to spend my hours scrolling mindlessly on a five-inch screen? Does the world really need one more video of me looking mightily awkward while holding a guitar?
Maybe… but probably not. That’s how I console myself, at least.
Second…
I wish I’d spent more of my ad budget on my most effective song.
This is probably my biggest regret: At the beginning of March, I pushed all of my ad budget toward my song “The Kingdom Is Close.”
It’s the first song I released of the three, and largely because it’s been out the longest, it has so far accumulated the most streams – including the most streams from algorithmic playlists.
I promoted it because of that… which was a mistake.
For context, I consider three factors to impact how effective Meta ads are in promoting a song:
- Meta campaign performance (mostly cost per result)
- Engagement metrics on Spotify (saves, streams / listener, etc.)
- Algorithmic performance on Spotify
Of the three songs on the EP, my song “Everything” has consistently had both the highest engagement metrics and the best cost per result. But I somehow convinced myself that algorithmic performance mattered more than those factors.
After spending $1,000 on another song for two months, I can confirm that it does not.
For what it’s worth, I think the second factor – engagement – is the most important of the three, since it most directly relates to how well real, live people like your song.
If people are streaming a song three or four times per month and saving it at a high rate, then they really like it. That matters much more than whether faceless algorithm gods like it. But past Jon unwisely worshiped at the altar of those algorithm gods, and so sacrificed his ad budget on the wrong song.
I’ve since come to my senses and switched back. But I wish I’d stayed the course all along.
So, that’s where things are at.
I’ve focused on my mistakes in today’s email, but in normal life, honestly, I haven’t bothered myself too much about them. Because again, at the risk of mushy sentimentality, I’m mostly just grateful to have had a bunch of people hear my music over the past eight months.
268,328 is nowhere near a million, but it’s enough for me.
Thanks for reading this long, rambling email. Here’s hoping it’s a least a little bit helpful on your own journey, and as always, here’s wishing you good luck.
– Jon
