In this article, I’ll show you how I achieved my first 1,000 streams on Spotify. It took a while, but in the end, the strategy that I thought would work, worked well.
Early last year I released a track called ‘Vating’ on Spotify under my artist name ‘Nalla Draw’. This was a big deal for me because I was great at starting tracks but terrible at finishing anything. Also, I’m a perfectionist and worry about how people will perceive my music, so it’s easier to not release any music rather than put myself out there. Can anyone relate?
So last year I worked hard on ‘Vating‘ and on the 1st of May, 2021, I released it via Distrokid to all the major streaming services. So because I was incredibly self-conscious, I really didn’t do much in the way of promoting the track. I posted it to my Facebook feed, I posted it on the Nalla Draw Facebook Page, and I probably posted it to my Instagram. I also posted the video to the Strictly Guitar YouTube channel – at that point, I didn’t have a Nalla Draw YouTube. That would have been it. Some friends, family and work colleagues listened to it and it probably received around 30 plays in the first week, And then, crickets. It’s out of sight, out of mind.
At the start of this year, I decided to get my act together, literally.
First, I had a bit of an epiphany about my playing. I’d always been frustrated that I couldn’t play fast and I foolishly compared myself to those who could. But around the end of last year I started listening to artists who weren’t fast, but had a great sense of melody – people like David Gilmour – and I realised that this was also my strength. 30 years of playing in the church world has given me the ability to play great melodies.
Also, I stumbled down the rabbit hole of ambient music. Not just ambient drone, but downtempo music with nice chords and guitar melodies. I felt like I’d discovered ‘my people’ and realised that my music belonged somewhere.
Looking back, this was really important because it meant that I knew there was an audience for my style of music – all I had to do was create the music.
So at the start of 2022, I became more focused on creating and finishing music. I watched some YouTube videos to improve my production skills, but importantly, I forced myself to record more of my ‘noodling’ and finish tracks.
I also worked more on my musical identity. My name, ‘Nalla Draw‘ is simply my backwards name. So I’ve decided that all my song titles will be backwards names. When you write instrumental music, it’s up to the audience to decide what the song means to them, so really, you can call a song anything.
At the time, I was reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and decided to use names from that book for the tracks in my first album. And yes, I made a goal of recording an album. I haven’t finished it yet, but having a goal like this made me more motivated to create.
Next, my strategy was to release music as singles, regularly. Everything I’d ready about building a fan base talked about having a regular release schedule. This builds momentum and eventually, something sticks. Go check out some of your favourite YouTubers and look at their videos, from oldest to newest. What you’ll find is that in many cases, their early videos didn’t get a lot of traction, but there’ll be one video that did and received much higher views than the previous ones. This then gave them momentum and grew their audience so their next video benefitted. It’s the same with Spotify. Keep throwing mud against the wall and something will stick.
So, I was motivated, creating music, and I had a goal.
My first release in 2022 was called Ruhtra. It featured some ebow guitar along with a different guitar melody. I was pretty happy with this one as I was using some different sounds and arrangements that I’d learnt from watching a lot of videos and trial and error with my DAW. I’m using Ableton Live and this track features some loops, VST instruments like Omnisphere, and the Line 6 Helix Native plugin.
I released Ruhtra in April 2022 and it received around 50 streams over the first week of release. A bit more than Vating did a year earlier, but still not a lot.
So, having a clear goal of releasing music regularly, and a bunch of music I was working on, I proceeded to not follow up this release with another one in a short space of time. I think I was still full of self-doubt and wondered whether my music was good enough. I did finish some tracks in this time but didn’t release anything.
In August, I regrouped, and I set a goal to get better with my release schedule with a goal of 1,000 streams by the end of the year.
Around this time I discovered SubmitHub – a site where you can submit tracks for feedback and ratings, and also for inclusion in playlists. I knew that a key to growth was to get on to different playlists so I started spending time on SubmitHub.
I was really unsure at this stage what genre my music was and what playlist curators I should submit my song to, So instead, I just submitted it to the Hot or Not section. This is where you can listen to people’s songs, rate them and provide written feedback. As you provide feedback, you can earn SubmitHub credits that you can then use to submit your songs.
First I submitted Ruhtra and I received good feedback on this track so I knew that I was at least on the right track. Also, one person added this to their playlist called the “Indie Instrumental Collection“. This is not a huge playlist with only 15 likes currently, but it was a start. This was someone who liked my track enough to put it on a playlist and it certainly helped my confidence. The track was added to the playlist on August 3rd.
I released my third track, Nivram on August 19th. Again, I promoted it via my Facebook Page, personal Facebook and Instagram. I also used Distrokid’s Hyperfollow tool which allows you to set up a pre-save page. People click on the link, go to the Hyperfollow page and click on a link to pre-save your track to their Spotify library. The track appears in their Release Radar playlist when it goes live.
I didn’t get many pre-saves, the track received around 40 plays over its first week, and I moved on. I did get some feedback from SubmitHub, but nothing too earth-shattering. Again, I didn’t feel like this track neatly fitted with what the playlist curators were looking for so I didn’t submit it to any playlists.
I’m proud to say that I released my next track pretty quickly. When Nivram was released I uploaded Dohpaz to Distrokid and set it to release on September the 9th.
To be frank, this track bombed. I have no idea why but to date (October 2022), it’s received 9 streams on Spotify. I spent a lot of time on this track working on the guitar parts, the pads, and finding a good rhythm loop so I’m pretty frustrated that it didn’t get a lot of traction. Up to that point, I’d thought that the ‘friends and family fan club’ would give me around 40 streams over the first week, but that theory didn’t work with this one.
Nevertheless, I kept to my plan and readied my next track. And this is where it all came together.
Earlier in the article, I talked about ambient drone music. Some of the artists I followed in this genre had their own playlists and were on SubmitHub as playlist curators. I decided to release an ambient track and submit it to their playlists.
The track I released was called Nogov and I’d been working on it for a few weeks. I used the Emit device in Ableton Live to take grains out of my guitar sounds and turn these into ambient sounds. So there’s guitar, only it sounds nothing like a guitar. I added an ebow guitar to the track so there was some melody movement and smothered the track in reverb.
By now I had my release workflow under control. I promoted the track on Facebook via my Page as well as Instagram and used a Hyperfollow page for pre-saves.
Nogov was released on Friday 24th September.
This time, I submitted the track to some SubmitHub curators. I’ll do another article on how I did this, but I had a degree of confidence that this track was the type of song they were looking for. So on that Friday night, I took a deep breath and submitted my track to four curators.
When I woke up the next morning, I checked SubmitHub to see if I had any responses. One curator had passed on the song, but they provided me with some good direction around what they were looking for.
Astropilot Music had responded to my submission and they had added it to their Space Travels playlist. This playlist has around 2,200 likes and features many artists that I enjoy listening to, so I was pretty excited to be added. Over that past month, I’ve received 40 plays from this playlist. It’s not huge, but it’s 40 more plays than I would have received had I done nothing.
I’d also submitted it to Lauge’s Ambient Soundscapes playlist. This was a pretty big playlist with over 27,000 likes and Lauge is a popular artist in the ambient space, so I was keen to get his feedback.
A few days after submitting (it was a weekend), he replied and said he’d add the track to Ambient Soundscapes. This was huge for me.
Immediately after this was added I saw a noticeable increase in the streams I was receiving. I went from 44 streams on Tuesday, September 27th to 114 on the 28th. On my Spotify for Artists app I would look daily and this playlist was giving me the most plays.
It took me a little over a week, but I got my 1,000 streams.
Here’s a screenshot from my Artist page from October 8th, showing 1,225 streams.
I’m writing this article at the end of October 2022 and Spotify tells me that Nogov has 2,373 streams.
Because I finally have some streams happening, I’ve noticed that my track has been picked up on some other playlists and Spotify has now added a Nalla Draw Radio to my profile. More on this in another article.
So, how did I get to 1,000 streams? Here’s the summary:
- Set some goals around what you want to achieve. This makes it easier to get motivated.
- Do your research on musical genres. Playlists are the new radio and if you want to get on to a playlist, you need to produce the type of music they are looking for.
- Create music that fits the genre.
- Use sites like SubmitHub to get feedback on your tracks. Also, rate other tracks to get an idea of what other artists are doing.
- Release music regularly. This is easier to do if you complete a bunch of tracks and have them ready to release.
- Don’t be afraid to promote your tracks and don’t be a perfectionist. Somewhere in the world, there are people who will like your music. You just need to find them.
- Listen to the playlists that you want to get your music onto. This will help you hear the type of music the curators are looking for.
- When you submit your tracks to playlists on SubmitHub, do a personalised message. It’s not hard to do and I think it’s an important part of building a relationship.
- When you do get on a playlist, acknowledge that. Post on social media about it and link to the playlist and the playlist creator. It’s not difficult to do this and to me, it’s a polite way to say thank you.
Finally, enjoy the experience.
I know I’m not a big artist on Spotify, but I’m excited that my tracks have had a combined 2,600 streams and reached people all around the world.
This gives me more confidence with my next release, knowing there’s an audience for it.
What’s next for me?
I’m interested to see how many streams I can get this year and then make some plans for next year. I have a new release coming out in a couple of weeks and am hoping for some playlist love for this track. If that happens, I should get to 10,000 streams by the end of the year.
My plan is to release a new track every 3-4 weeks and submit them to the right playlists.
There’s more content I can add here, but I don’t want to add any more words than are necessary. I’ll write some more articles on some of these topics, but for now, I just want to document how I made my first 1,000 Spotify streams. Because a few months ago I was searching this exact topic on YouTube and wondering how I would get there, and a few months later, here I am!
And if you’re reading this and are currently only getting a few streams – don’t worry. Believe in yourself, find your audience and keep creating.