[fallinditch]

There seems to be a lot of anger around Spotify these days, often misplaced I reckon.

One of the biggest impediments to new artists making a living from recorded music is not the existence of Spotify and other streaming platforms, rather it's the massive and growing library of existing music, some of which is excellent.

But it's not impossible. My neighbor manages his music career himself. In 2024 he went from having 250,000 monthly Spotify listeners to 800,000. A few months ago he was able to give up his job and devote himself to music full time - he is getting decent streaming royalty checks.

If you complain that Spotify is contributing to a generic and bland listening experience then that is totally your own fault. Spotify will give you excellent and adventurous listening experiences, but you have to put in the time to 'train' your personal algorithms first, mainly by liking tracks, saving albums and playlists, and making playlists. Also: by paying attention to DJs/curators and researching dark corners of the music blogosphere, SoundCloud and Mixcloud.

[ZeWaka]

I find that the Spotify algorithm is great if you ignore all of the Spotify-branded recommendation junk, and just use the 'Keep Listening/Autoplay' feature.

As in, put on a playlist, then finish it without having repeat on. I find some of my favorite music from the following tracks. It helps if you have a very varied playlist - it discourages just playing tracks from the same artists.

[saaaaaam]

A lot of that music is now payola, placed into those "organic" autoplays via Spotify Discovery Mode, which requires artists and labels to take a 30% discount on royalty rates for their music to be played in this context.

[ZeWaka]

Neat, didn't know about that program, thanks. It seems Discovery Mode is more tailored towards their Spotify-generated playlists/radio but also seems to mention Autoplay.

I think that further underscores my point of having a varied playlist, since you're only eligible for Discovery Mode if you have >25,000 listeners.

[ekam]

Did your neighbor share with you what worked for him?

[fallinditch]

It's interesting, Schur (artist name) hasn't had anyone ever review his music as far as I can tell, none of his tracks have ever got much traction on YouTube, none of his releases are even listed on albumoftheyear.org, low traction on SoundCloud too. He said he gets fans via Instagram (34 k followers). He's not on TikTok. Looks like he's not on any official Spotify, or other popular, playlists.

Schur's music does have a very catchy and upbeat vibe, I like his stuff. I guess it's possible he could have had a track featured on a TikTok video that went viral, without being aware of it.

So for him his best channel is Instagram. I noticed that he's using Insta ads, I'm getting them in my feed, but I follow him too.

[fallinditch]

I think for Schur it really is the 'vibe thing' that works for him - he makes music that resonates with people. Spotify makes it so easy to like songs and every time someone likes a track it becomes more likely to be featured in the algo playlists and so the vibe snowballs.

[itsoktocry]

>you have to put in the time to 'train' your personal algorithms first, mainly by liking tracks, saving albums and playlists, and making playlists. Also: by paying attention to DJs/curators and researching dark corners of the music blogosphere, SoundCloud and Mixcloud.

If you're going to do all of this, what's the point of the algorithm?

[ThrowawayTestr]

How can the algo know what you like if you don't tell it?