How to Promote a Song on Spotify: Step by Step with Spotify's Own Tools

Promoting a song on Spotify comes down to using the tools Spotify gives you in the right order: you set up your Spotify for Artists profile, pitch the song to editors at least 7 days before release so it lands on your followers' Release Radar, get the song ready for listeners with Canvas and a polished profile, then fuel the first week with Marquee, Showcase, Discovery Mode or Spotify ads, depending on your budget. This post focuses only on promotion inside Spotify. I cover other channels like TikTok, YouTube, radio and press separately in my post on how to promote a song.

I run campaigns with Spotify Ads and handle music distribution through Universal Music Group and the Ingrooves infrastructure. The most common mistake I see is this: the artist shares the song in a story on release day and thinks the promotion is done. But most of Spotify's tools need to be set up before release.

First, the foundation: your Spotify for Artists profile

Every step of promotion runs through Spotify for Artists. Pitching, Canvas, campaigns, stats, it's all there. If you don't have access to your profile yet, sort that out first; I explain the steps in my Spotify for Artists guide.

Make sure your profile has all of the following:

• An up-to-date profile photo and header image.
• A short bio that says who you are.
• Your new song or a pre-release page in the Artist Pick slot.
• Social media links.
• Correct credits: genre, lyricist and composer, producer details.

Credits are an invisible but decisive layer. Spotify makes recommendations based on what it thinks you sound like; the wrong genre or a mismatched artist sends the song to the wrong ears from the start.

A release timeline for Spotify promotion

Most of Spotify's tools have a time window. That's why delivering the song to your distributor at the last minute means closing a lot of doors yourself. Here's the rough timeline I use:

The row people miss most often is the second one. If you miss the 7-day pitch window, you also lose the Release Radar advantage I explain below.

Pitching to editors: at least 7 days ahead

In Spotify for Artists, go to the Upcoming section of the Music tab, pick one of your unreleased songs and submit it to the editorial team. Spotify's help page recommends pitching at least 7 days before release so editors have time to listen. It also has an important side effect, which I explain below.

Rules you need to know about pitching:

• You can only pitch one song at a time. You can submit the next one after the pitched song is released.
• You can't pitch a song that's already released.
• Compilations and songs where you're a featured artist can't be pitched.
• You can edit your pitch up until release day, but there's no guarantee editors will see the change.
• A pitch doesn't guarantee a playlist spot. Editors sometimes pick a different song of yours instead of the one you pitched.

When you fill out the form, give clear information about the genre, mood, the story behind the song and your marketing plan. Instead of writing "it's a great song," explain who it's for and what you're doing around the release. I dig into what catches editors' attention in my post on getting editors' attention. After release, you can track the result under Playlists in the Music section.

Release Radar: the guaranteed side of pitching

Getting onto an editorial playlist isn't guaranteed, but one thing is: according to Spotify's help page, songs pitched at least 7 days before release are added to your followers' Release Radar. Release Radar is a personal playlist that shows each user new releases from artists they follow and like.

That's why your follower count is the hidden capital of promotion. The more profile followers you have, the bigger the Release Radar effect that comes with your pitch. From that angle, asking people on social media to "follow me on Spotify" is a simple but effective habit.

One more note: if the artist is eligible for a "This Is" playlist, you can also pin the song you pitched to it. Spotify says this happens about 3 days after the song goes live and the song stays pinned for up to 28 days.

Canvas and how your song page looks

Canvas is a short vertical video that loops full screen in place of the album cover on the Now Playing screen while the song plays. Under Spotify's guidelines, it should be 3 to 8 seconds long, in a 9:16 vertical format, as an MP4 or JPG. Canvas gives listeners a visual reason to share the song and makes its page feel more alive.

My tips for a good Canvas:

• Pick a short moment from the music video or shoot that loops well, so the start and end connect.
• Don't pile text on screen; the song title and logo already show in the interface.
• Stay in the same color palette as the cover art.

Countdown Pages and pre-save

Countdown Pages are countdown pages inside Spotify for an upcoming release. Fans can pre-save the release there, see the tracklist, watch a countdown video and browse merch. The page can show up on your profile, in search, on the home screen and in upcoming releases. On release day, people who pre-saved get a notification and the release is added to their libraries.

But they aren't available for every release:

• They only apply to new, original albums and EPs. Singles, deluxe editions, remasters and compilations aren't eligible.
• There's a monthly active listener threshold. Spotify's pages in different languages list different numbers, so check the current threshold in Spotify for Artists.
• The release must be delivered by your distributor via DDEX. The option to create the page opens within 72 hours of delivery.

If you're releasing a single, you can use pre-save links from your distributor or third-party tools instead of a countdown page inside Spotify. Pre-saves are the cleanest way to concentrate streams in the first hours of release day.

Marquee and Showcase: in-app display campaigns on Spotify

You can run two paid display campaigns from the Campaigns tab in Spotify for Artists:

• Marquee: a full-screen recommendation that pops up in the mobile app. It's only for new releases and can be used within 21 days of release. The campaign runs for 10 days or until the budget runs out.
• Showcase: a banner that appears on the home screen and in the Browse section on mobile. You can use it anytime, for new and older releases. The campaign runs for 14 days or until the budget runs out.

The eligibility rules are clear too: both campaigns require at least 1,000 streams in the last 28 days in at least one of the target markets. Marquee also requires at least 5,000 monthly active listeners in the chosen target market. There's a billing requirement as well: teams billed in the European, North American, Oceanian and some South American countries listed on Spotify's page can use them, and the card must be issued in one of those countries. As of October 2026, Türkiye is not on that list. I've gathered the details on my Spotify Marquee page.

Discovery Mode: commission instead of budget

Discovery Mode is a tool for boosting songs you choose on Spotify's algorithmic listening surfaces (such as radio and autoplay). It doesn't ask for an upfront budget; instead, according to Spotify's help page, it takes a 30 percent commission on the recording royalties from streams that come through these surfaces. Other streams stay commission-free.

To be eligible, the song must have been live on Spotify for at least 30 days, have reached a certain number of streams on these surfaces in the last 28 days, and come through one of the distributors Spotify lists. Campaigns start on the 1st of the month. So Discovery Mode isn't for the first days of a new release; it's a tool for growing a song that's already out. I explain the commission trade-off on my Discovery Mode page.

Spotify advertising: Spotify Ads Manager

In 2024, Spotify's self-serve advertising platform changed its name from Ad Studio to Spotify Ads Manager. From there, you can reach Spotify's free users with audio and video ads. You can target by age, location, interests and listening habits, which lets you put your song in front of people who resemble your listener profile. The minimum campaign budget is set in local currency and can change from time to time, so check the current figure in the dashboard.

The real job of advertising isn't just to bring in streams. Saves and repeat listens from real listeners send signals to algorithmic recommendations. But running ads without a plan is burning money: the audience, creative and timing should all tie into your release plan. I cover the setup details in my Spotify Ads guide.

Playlists: editorial, algorithmic and user-curated

There are three types of playlists on Spotify, and each is reached a different way:

• Editorial playlists: playlists curated by Spotify's editors. The only official route is the pitch.
• Algorithmic playlists: Release Radar, Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, radio. These are shaped by listener behavior; saves, repeat listens and a low skip rate are what count here.
• User and curator playlists: playlists from independent curators. Be careful here: playlists that guarantee streams or are inflated with bot traffic can harm your account.

I explain why getting onto playlists is hard and what to avoid in my post on Spotify playlists and obstacles.

Common Spotify promotion mistakes

Working with artists, I see the same mistakes come up again and again. Most are small, but they have a big effect on results:

1. Delivering the song to the distributor late. If a song is uploaded three days before release, the pitch window is gone, and so is the Release Radar advantage.
2. Rushing through the pitch form. Picking genre and mood tags at random and leaving the story field blank makes the editor's job harder.
3. Paying services that sell guaranteed streams. Bot traffic corrupts the song's data, and Spotify can take action against this kind of artificial streaming.
4. Running ads with no targeting. An ad shown to everyone means spending money on people who will never listen to the song. Define similar artists and priority cities first.
5. Putting everything on one song. Spending the whole budget on one release and then going quiet for months wastes the momentum you built. Releasing regularly means showing up regularly in your followers' Release Radar.
6. Neglecting your profile. If a listener coming from an ad sees an empty bio, an old photo and an outdated Artist Pick, they leave without following.

None of these mistakes take a big budget to fix; most can be avoided with a plan.

After release: read the data, choose your move

Promotion doesn't end on release day. In Spotify for Artists, look at which cities people are listening from, which playlists are driving traffic, your listeners' age and gender breakdown, and the song's save rate. This data tells you your next step: narrowing ads to the city that's responding, running Showcase once you're eligible, or adding the song to Discovery Mode a month later.

There's also the 30-second threshold: for a stream to count on Spotify, the listener has to stay on the song for at least 30 seconds. That's why pushing a song to a broad but uninterested audience doesn't really work; reaching the right audience is what matters.

When you build your Spotify promotion with these tools inside one plan instead of one by one, the effect multiplies. In the campaigns I run with Spotify Ads, we set the timeline and target audience first, then line up the tools around them. If you have a new release coming, we can look at it together.