Hey, welcome to Rise’s first Mailbag Q&A. We got a lot of great, and frequent questions, so we wanted to put them all in one place. Because if there’s one thing we learned in school, more people have question than ask them.
So let’s jump right in!
From Alex B:
Thanks for this, it’s appreciated. I’ve run a (Rise Conversion) campaign, and it’s going pretty well. I’m trying to grow followers before releasing an album later this year. What would you recommend as the best overall strategy for a pre-album release?
Answer: Artists need to do everything they can to give their music a chance. Literally hundreds of thousands of new songs are uploaded to Spotify every single day. So, you can’t expect people to accidentally find your song. You have to make them aware of it, make it easy for them to engage with, and make the music so damn good that they’ll go out of their way and fend off the thousands of other daily distractions to listen to your music.
Most of the work you want to do is in preparation for the release since the majority of your promo should happen once the song is out, and you are able to drive people straight to the music. One proactive thing you can do is run a pre-save campaign with Rise, which offers two benefits.
The first — it builds followers and pre-saves ahead of release to increase your Release Radar reach on the first Friday of your release.
Second — we use an existing release to promote your upcoming one, so we get some momentum going on your catalog ahead of time, helping build some recent listeners that Spotify can recommend the music to as well.
Another way to prepare for your release would be to test different video content related to your album. Engage with your audience on social media, tease the upcoming music, and try to get an idea of which song is the most liked on the album so you can focus more attention on promoting the crowd favorite as a way to introduce people to the album, rather than relying on your own opinion of your music, which is very difficult to do objectively.
A final note would be to get all your other ducks in a row ahead of time. Determine how much budget you’re spending where, schedule campaigns in advance, and have everything dialed in so you aren’t rushing to submit campaigns and miss out on the first few days of your release.
From Beth B:
My question is this: If I purchase a YouTube campaign from Rise, can I just submit the link to my video, or do I have to give Rise access to my YouTube (or other) account?
Thanks for your help.
Beth B.
ANSWER: Hey Beth, we do not require any type of access for YouTube campaigns. Since Google Ads do not require access before running an ad, we are able to run official ads on YouTube with just a link to the video.
In fact, Rise NEVER asks for login credentials or requires administrative access to your accounts. For most campaigns, any connections are suggestions so we can optimize the campaign, but they are not required.
The only campaigns we do require advertiser access for are TikTok and Instagram. We do ask for viewer access to your Spotify For Artists account, largely so we can glean audience data, improve the campaign targeting, and better help support any questions you may have.
But regardless of the campaign type and platform, your accounts are 100-percent secure. All charges will accrue through our ad accounts, so there’s never any additional cost to you outside of the campaign budget you used to create your Rise campaign.
From Chase B:
Hi, … Thank you for this opportunity to ask this question. I wanted to do a campaign for a new soundtrack I would be releasing next year, but I could not find proper pricing on the Spotify tier I was interested in. Why is this? Also, do you have any options for not doing subscriptions? I prefer not to do those and I’m a more “try before I buy” person. Thank you kindly in advance for your response.
ANSWER: Hey Chase, first of all, yes, Rise offers single campaigns, as well as subscriptions. You can read more about those here: https://rise.la/all-campaigns/
Minimum campaign pricing is just $50 on TikTok, $100 on IG and YouTube, and $250 on Spotify.
And if you go to http://rise.la/create you can experiment with platform, optimization, and budget and see exactly what Rise will promise for each campaign type.
From Michelle L:
Hey team, … I have some video content from my latest video drop, but I get overwhelmed at the idea of creating ads. I know the audiences I want to target, but I always feel like I’m doing things wrong. Can you help oversee or tweak things? Thanks.
Answer: Hey Michelle, we like to say that we take the Y out of DIY. We don’t currently mentor artists, but have created Rise instead to be a platform where artists can outsource their marketing entirely to us and focus on their music instead of tweaking and obsessing over their ad campaigns endlessly.
We’ve already linked to our Campaigns & Pricing page (which included detailed explainers for every campaign we offer), but you might enjoy watching this webinar to learn more: https://event.webinarjam.com/go/replay/13/klnlxarh6cnc1
From Ibidapo A:
How to get the contact list of genuine Spotify Curators? And how to write to them?
ANSWER: Hey Ibidapo, finding and contacting genuine Spotify Curators is an extremely tricky business. We have found our trusted and vetted curators that we pitch to after years of effort and research.
Our usual test is to ask where the streams are coming from (check out this post on How Rise Keeps You Safe from Bots and Fake Streams). While it may be challenging for you to build your own list of trusted playlists on your own, you always have the option of creating an Exposure Campaign on Rise and when you have a Spotify Exposure Subscription or spend over $750, we pitch your song to our trusted network for free as a bonus.
From Jerry M:
Does Spotify play music videos and if so, how do I locate where to send them to be shown? I have a Spotify account and am creating a playlist, but that’s not the same as a music video – or is it? My latest video has been selected by 3 film festivals in the U.S., but I’d like to increase the audience for it and future music videos. Thanks.
ANSWER: Hey Jerry, Spotify is currently Beta testing music videos in a few countries, so we don’t have access yet, but you will be able to upload them in your Video & Visuals section on Spotify For Artists. In the meantime, if you haven’t uploaded short, silent video clips to Canvas, we would recommend doing that to increase connection with your audience. You can read more about the music video Beta testing here: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-03-13/music-videos-rolling-out-in-beta-to-premium-spotify-users-across-select-markets/
SCREENSHOT
From Janet J:
Does Rise offer regional targeting with Spotify, or on any other platform? If not, why?
Answer: This is a great question. We currently don’t offer regional targeting on Spotify, but we have plans to offer more targeting options on a new campaign type we’re working on for Active Listener growth, so stay tuned.
Since Spotify is a global platform with millions of users from all over the world, we focus on targeting the users most likely to enjoy your music regardless of where they live. We understand that some artists still would like to focus more narrowly, so we do offer a Big 5 option whenever possible. This allows users to pay a higher cost per result if they prefer to focus on the US, CA, AU, NZ, and GB instead of a global audience.
For Spotify, targeting Big 5 can sometimes be prohibitively expensive for some artists depending on their music, but we will be giving artists this option with our new Active Listener campaigns coming this year.
From Charles B:
Why is the minimum on Spotify higher than on other platforms you run campaigns for?
ANSWER:
There are a couple of reasons why. First, we want artists to get enough meaningful exposure from a Spotify campaign, but we don’t believe a budget under $250 is enough to have an impact on the Spotify algorithm.
Secondly, Rise works with our audience-facing brand, Tout, which serves as a music recommendation platform through ontout.com and through our Tout Playlist Network. By having a higher minimum on Spotify, we can more easily weed out music that may not be of a high enough caliber for our Tout listeners. Ultimately, this is the best thing for the artists since it raises the overall listener experience, resulting in better results for all involved. A rising tide lifts all boats.
From Steve C:
Why are my monthly listeners dropping during my Rise campaign?
ANSWER: This is another great question and one we get pretty often from newer artists.
Monthly listeners are an aggregation of many, many metrics. Most often what happens is a popular playlist that was delivering a sizable amount of streams removes a song, and you lose that audience.
But, it’s critical to remember that a listener does not belong to you. Just because you were able to get people to listen once, be it from a playlist or an ad campaign, does not entitle you to future streams from them.
Music is a war of attrition. And you must not take any listener for granted, and do whatever you can to turn a more passive listener into a fan.
Rise is working on an Active Listener campaign that can help you achieve this, but every marketing campaign is ALWAYS going to depend on the quality of the music over any other variable.
From Scott T:
Why is my exposure campaign saying I have 1,789 engagements, but I’m not getting anywhere close to that number of streams?
ANSWER: Anyone who’s ever run or is
considering running a Spotify Exposure campaign should read this detailed campaign explainer: https://rise.la/guides/detailed-guide-to-spotify-exposure-campaigns/
But, the core metrics for an Exposure campaign are Ad engagements and Ad impressions. Happy to clear things up as our Exposure campaigns are unique, and therefore a bit different than traditional campaigns you might be familiar with.
Rise Exposure campaigns were designed to maximize Impressions & Engagements on the creative promoting your song. Engagements are defined as clicks/taps, not to be confused with comments or likes. This exposure increases streaming, but it is against the terms of service to guarantee any amount of streaming performance or placement.
Exposure campaigns perform best when run in tandem with Conversion campaigns, which together help satisfy Spotify’s highest value actions: Follows, Saves, and Playlist Adds. Impressions and external traffic coming to Spotify further improve results. These things drastically increase your chances for algorithmic traction and listener growth, but they do not guarantee them.
We use social ads to drive traffic to our own playlists that are 100-percent real, that’s why we made them, and why Exposure campaigns guarantee Ad Impressions and Ad Engagements rather than a number of streams. Everything is in line with the platform’s terms of service, and we run ads to the playlists to ensure legitimacy. This is ideal for artists who want to boost monthly listeners, but don’t want to risk getting on fake playlists or obtaining bot follows. The cost per engagement is higher than you’ll find with fake playlist placements because real listeners cost more.
From Brian H:
Do you deep link to my song on your playlist?
ANSWER: We don’t use deep links because a majority of Spotify listeners do not pay for premium, and deep linking wouldn’t work for them.
From Alice R:
Why doesn’t Rise show me the ads it uses in my campaign?
ANSWER: In most cases, we do show you the ads, and you made them!
For YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, you will select a specific post or video to be promoted for your campaign, and that post is the ad.
For Spotify Conversion campaigns, the ad is the first 30 seconds of your song, paired with your Spotify profile photo. Check out our Tout Discovery Flow for more examples (optimized for mobile): https://ontout.com/discovery/
And for Spotify Exposure campaigns, we use the first 15 seconds of your promoted track, matched to one of the custom videos in our library of proven content. These videos have consistently outperformed more niche creative, and ensure we can reach the campaign’s guarantees — and most importantly — get you the best results.
That’s it for now, but if you ever have any questions feel free to email us at support@rise.la, and if you have any specific needs or questions about your campaign just create a support ticket from your customer dashboard.