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The State of Music Streaming

Writer's picture: Heavy Metal Hippie AshHeavy Metal Hippie Ash

We wrote another post about this last year and it honestly shocks me to see how much bigger of an issue this has become. The latest stats show that 99,000 tracks are being uploaded daily to streaming services which sounds very exciting! What opportunity there must be for new music to be discovered and I absolutely agree with this sentiment. What I am concerned about though is the fact that there are 200,000,000 - two hundred million songs on streaming platforms, and many of them have less than ten downloads per year. That rings alarm bells for me. As music lovers, we are lucky to have an endless amount of songs at our fingertips. More than we could ever listen to in our lives which truly is absolutely incredible.


We have also had the ability to create and upload our own music brought directly to our fingertips with free software like GarageBand, trials of paid software, and in general, we have all the tools at our fingertips. We of course know the story that Billie and Finneas started making music in their bedrooms and are obviously global sensations.


It’s opened all of our eyes how accessible this could be to everyone. But there are pieces that I find are generally missing - we still need some skill or talent in making music, and there’s a lot of behind the scenes pieces to releasing music that aren’t as simple as clicking upload that I wonder if maybe it hasn’t been executed correctly either within the platforms to upload, or on the external side of marketing.


Of those 200,000,000 songs, approximately half of them are played less than ten times per year. This was also the point that they have been discussing removing them from platforms as well so there’s a lot to ponder when you’re doing your own uploads.


Have you done the external work: Making sure it is mastered properly for streaming, and that is has been mixed well to start with, having a song that sounds awful just because of poor production will be a quick way that your song will not be played, and get blacklisted from playlists.

Recently, I’ve been speaking with a new band about getting more traction behind their latest release. We put a mini plan together for their social strategy to make sure it was getting plays, and we were definitely short on time. But within the first couple days, they were over 1,000 on their song - higher than their other releases to date.

If you’re not putting that external work to cut through the rest of socials and get yourself out there, you are not going to to see the streams you want… that’s a whole other topic - maybe for next week! ;)


And lastly on external work - have you been getting feedback from people on the single? I think this is key, to get people that you trust to have a listen and provide honest feedback. Because then you can make informed decisions whether to go ahead, to hold off on release, or scrap it all together. We also sometimes truly have to accept that - maybe this song isn’t good enough - by that I mean apart from the actual production, is it something people can connect with? That’ll move them? If not - that - is okay too. We make art because it feels right for us and it’s important that we love it. But if you’re looking for commercial success, sometimes certain songs are out of that realm. There is truly nothing wrong with that. In addition, send out advance copies everywhere you can and ask them to review the song, the album whatever. It’s important!


INTERNAL Work - There’s a LOT we can do to set the meta data up in our profiles to make sure that we are getting the best chance to have get ears on our songs. This means, making sure your streaming accounts have every single thing filled in and also have a nice long bio filled out. Keep your photos up to date and make sure that it is easily findable. I definitely had a time where I met with a band, they uploaded their stuff on streaming, but it was unfindable. There’s so many things you can do to up your changes. Profile optimisation is massive. Can’t say that it means you’re going to get millions, but it will make a difference.



How are you going to shift things so your 2025 is a whole new year? Let me know what you’ve got in the can and what we can help you with!!


Let’s make sure you are getting those streams that your song deserves!


Peace & Love,


Ash

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