Inside Spotify’s Made to Be Found: Insights from the Experts

Since its 2017 launch, Spotify for Artists has been dedicated to empowering artists and their teams by giving them valuable information and tools to help them develop their careers and live off their work. Made to Be Found is one of the many fan development resources available to artists and their teams, whatever their genre, location, or stage in their career. Godefroy Pizon, Artist & Label Partnerships Lead for Spotify France, answers our questions about the Made To Be Found platform.

As an interactive educational website, Made to Be Found explores how fans find — and fall in love with — music on Spotify. It details how music goes from distribution and playlist pitching, to three key pathways to reaching listeners (editorial curation by Spotify, personalized algorithmic recommendations, and active streaming by fans). The site also includes recommended actions that artists can take along that journey to grow and engage their audiences on Spotify.

There is no mechanical, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. Every artistic project is unique and therefore appeals to a unique audience and can be leveraged and amplified by very different playlists on Spotify.

That being said, our platform offers surfaces for all aesthetics and all audiences. First of all, Spotify editorial teams around the globe are creating and updating a rich, diverse and exhaustive ecosystem of playlists. You can then trust them to know the best editorial environment for a music proposition to find the most relevant ears and hearts. We recently published an explainer video for Made to Be Found detailing how our playlist ecosystem works and how interconnected the many playlists are.

Then you have the algorithmic, personalized playlists that are fantastic levers of discovery: 33% of all new artist discoveries on Spotify happen in these personalized sessions (Discover Weekly, Radio, Autoplay, Mixes…), helping to drive future active streams from new fans.

With the editorial playlists, artist teams can pitch their upcoming release at least seven days in advance,, so that we can place the music in the right surfaces to the right audiences.

Finally, as a result of the discovery through editorial and personalized playlists, your music gets added to users playlists. When a listener does that, she/he is on the path to become a fan of yours.

We all know that building and nurturing a fanbase is the key to a sustainable career. And that a fan goes beyond a sole single. And beyond music: image, lyrics, live…

Spotify for Artists has developed great tools and actionable recommendations that are made available to all artists and their teams, in full autonomy. These tools are central to the 3 key steps of career development: discovery (reaching new listeners), conversion (turning a listener into a fan) and engagement (nurturing the artist-fan relation).

From perfecting your artist profile, connecting your social communities to your artist page, uploading Canvases and Lyrics, to listing concerts tickets and official merchandise, or creating a Marquee campaign to engage fans… it is all in S4A. And this is also what is outlined in Made to be Found: all the ways you can take control of your growth on Spotify.

During our Stream On event a few weeks ago, we announced brand new features, additional effective tools to develop your fanbase and build your business, notably Clips and Countdown Pages:
– Clips (currently available in beta) are short, under-30-second vertical videos that allow you to express your artistry and invite fans into your creative process – all while keeping your music front-and-center.
– Countdown Pages get your fans hyped for your new release: with this new tool, they can pre-save your upcoming release, preview the track list, watch video Clips you share with them, and watch the timer count down to the release moment – all in one place.

We are currently working on deploying it in France, and from previous campaigns and artists who tested Countdown Pages, we know it is impactful: on average, more than 80% of pre-savers have streamed the new release within the first week.

What is great with this wide array of tools, is that it’s all about the music: these are artistic extensions of your music, the artist-fan relation on Spotify is not about candid content you have to publish on a daily basis. Your music can become a world within the world, your artistic world within Spotify.

Well, I think there has never been a better time to be an artist. Creation, distribution and promotion have never been as affordable and accessible as today: music and image new techs and tools, social networks, DSPs… and thanks to everything Spotify developed for artists, including the Made to Be Found platform. Barriers to entry from the CD era are now gone.

But the counterpart of that for a new, indie, artist, is that you need to emerge out of a way larger and deeper pack of music propositions than it used to be. And music lovers, on their side, are exposed to way more propositions than before, too: music, videos, memes, gaming, series…

So, my advice would be to try not to get overwhelmed by it all. Beyond creating the fundamentals (personal, sincere, unique music), find your team, clearly define the roles of everyone and their specific added value to your project… and find your own rhythm! Every music and career has a specific tempo, and whatever it is, stick to it and onboard people (including listeners) into dancing to your beat. You are the DJ of your own party, you decide the vibe and tempo of the dance floor. Sorry for the lame analogy, but you’re getting my point.

And by that I also mean your own personal rhythm. Being an artist can deeply impact your mental health, and making a career should not rhyme with being exhausted or depressed. You need to find your own sustainable rhythm, as an artist, a performer and a human being. And your team should be aligned with it, and make sure it is respected.

As I was saying, for artists, fan support is their lifeblood. That’s why the Spotify for Artists team is focused on developing new tools and resources to help artists turn listeners into fans, fans into superfans, and, ultimately, earn more — not just through music, but also merch, ticketing, tipping, Fans First emails, etc. As part of that ongoing effort, we’ve integrated with Shopify giving artists even more opportunity to grow additional revenue streams, like merch. It is now available worldwide, for artists to list and listeners to access.

Shopify makes it simple for artists and their teams to manage inventory and control which items are featured on their profiles (for instance, out-of-stock items get automatically removed from your profile). As soon as you’re ready to drop new merch, you’ll immediately be able to share it with fans and capitalize on your release moments so that they can browse your merch while they stream your new music.

Listing your merch on Spotify with Shopify is easy: all you need to get started is admin access to your Spotify for Artists account and a Shopify store. By the way, any Spotify artist signing up with Shopify for the first time is eligible for a 90-day free trial of Shopify’s Standard Plan or a 14-day free trial of their lower-cost Starter Plan.

A few weeks ago we launched artists.spotify.com/merch – a new landing page which consolidates the latest info & inspiration around merch on Spotify. The site is currently English-only, but will be localized later this year.

Check out the Spotify for Artists blog where we share success stories to help scale education and information for artists and teams of all sizes and backgrounds. A great recent story is: How Magic City Hippies Sequenced Marquee, Canvas, and Discovery Mode to Develop Fans Ahead of Their New Album.

• Spotify: Jennifer Masset’s advice for Indies. Read the article
• Fundamental tips for artists on Spotify. Read the article