# How many are successful on Spotify with Orchestral Music?



## Dear Villain (May 21, 2018)

I'm just curious if anyone has had success in selling tracks/albums that are modern classical/orchestral (not epic/film) via Spotify, iTunes, etc. If so, have people found your music through related searches for other artists, or do you do a lot of promotion via social media and/or other channels?

I read somewhere that millions of tracks on Spotify have never received a single play. Considering it costs money to get music on such services, is it really only for commercially viable/mainstream artists? I've found that the audience for classical/modern classical music skews older, and as such, they're the least likely to be using streaming music services. How do you reach those audiences online, when many of them have barely begun to adopt CD's? 

Thanks for any input!
Dave


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## Polkasound (May 21, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> I've found that the audience for classical/modern classical music skews older, and as such, they're the least likely to be using streaming music services. How do you reach those audiences online, when many of them have barely begun to adopt CD's?



Although I work in an entirely different genre (Polka) I can relate to your problem 100% since my audience skews older than anyone else's. One thing I've learned is that you can't reach an audience online that isn't online. The overwhelming majority of people listening to my music on Spotify are in the 18-22 age group, and my music is not at all targeted to that age group. Senior citizen listeners on Spotify are virtually non-existent.

As much as I would love to go all digital with my music distribution, it would do nothing but keep my music off my audience's radar, because they don't download music or use streaming services. My senior citizen audience gets their music for free the old fashioned way: radio and TV. And when they want to buy music, they usually buy CDs via mail order.

While some of these methods may not apply to your situation, these are the top six ways I advertise my music to older people to generate sales:

#1. Terrestrial and internet radio
#2. CD distribution to retailers
#3. Promotion at gigs
#4. Print advertising
#5. Email/website
#6. Digital distribution


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## Dear Villain (May 22, 2018)

Thanks for your informative response, Polkasound! We have even more in common than you probably realize, as I'm part of an accordion and clarinet duo, named http://www.acclarion.ca 

Judging by the number of views and lack of any other responses, it's quite possible that few people are seeing any tangible results selling new classical/orchestral music to Soundcloud listeners.

Cheers!
Dave


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## robgb (May 22, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> I'm just curious if anyone has had success in selling tracks/albums that are modern classical/orchestral (not epic/film) via Spotify, iTunes, etc. If so, have people found your music through related searches for other artists, or do you do a lot of promotion via social media and/or other channels?
> 
> I read somewhere that millions of tracks on Spotify have never received a single play. Considering it costs money to get music on such services, is it really only for commercially viable/mainstream artists? I've found that the audience for classical/modern classical music skews older, and as such, they're the least likely to be using streaming music services. How do you reach those audiences online, when many of them have barely begun to adopt CD's?
> 
> ...


Just out of curiosity, what's the cost of getting on such services? I always thought they took a percentage of sales.


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## Dear Villain (May 22, 2018)

Hi Rob,

From what I understand, you can't upload tracks to services like Spotify or iTunes directly, but must go through a company like CD Baby or Distrokid, that charge per track/album fees, or annual fees for unlimited tracks. In addition, they may take a percentage such as CD Baby (9%) In reality though, it's the initial/annual "upload" fee that is the real culprit. I would imagine numerous artists never even sell enough tracks to recover the fee to upload the track. I read that over 4 million tracks on Spotify have never even been listened to a single time, let alone "sold." If you pay $40 to upload a single track, you'd have to sell that track at least 40-50 times just to break even. If only based on the tiny streaming revenue, you'd probably need to stream the track 10's of thousands of times to get a $40 payout. All this is just (very) rough math, and different services charge different amounts, so the numbers above may not be valid.


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## Kyle Preston (May 22, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> Considering it costs money to get music on such services, is it really only for commercially viable/mainstream artists?



It's not that hard to earn back what it costs to distribute your work on streaming services. Earning what I consider to be healthy profits however seems to be the domain of "mainstream" artists.

I’m going to use myself as a case study for you. Not to spam the thread with my stuff, but because there is such a glut of bad information on this subject. And I only have access to my own data - data which is more useful in these matters than gossip. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about this the past few months.





​As of today, I have 10,087 monthly listeners on Spotify. Most of them found me through playlists and because of a video game I worked on a few years ago. Almost none of them, as far as I can tell, found me through social media or from anything I've done outside of the Spotify platform. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are *abysmally* terrible at driving users to links outside of their sites (at least for us plebes) - I suspect because they design sites to keep you occupied on THEIR site. Their algorithms do not favor outside urls. They want _your_ time for _their_ advertisers. So unless you have a million followers, friends or whatever, social media probably won't help much with that, especially with classical music. Getting on playlists seems to be the way to grown an audience.



Dear Villain said:


> I've found that the audience for classical/modern classical music skews older, and as such, they're the least likely to be using streaming music services.







_(my audience)_​I'm not sure what the average age of Spotify listeners are, but there absolutely are young people who listen to modern classical music (as do I and I'm technically a millennial) via streaming platforms.

What initially worked for me was to do cover songs. That drove by far the most traffic to my artist page on Spotify. I did the main theme from the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and released it with a cover license through Distrokid.

​

Somehow, people searched for and found that piece and added it like crazy to various playlists. I did nothing at all to promote it other than posting it on YouTube. The same thing happened with a Zelda cover I did.

Choosing a distributor is really important so I'd take the time and do the research for which company is best for you. I can only comment with experience on Distrokid and AWAL; I have nothing but good things to say about both. And there are advantages to both. Distrokid's actual platform is stupid-easy to use and their turnover to Spotify, Apple, Deezer, etc is really, really fast and painless. It's a yearly subscription to join them and anyone can do it.

AWAL takes 15% revenue share and that's it. No fees or anything, they even take care of UPCs and all that business. There's an application process involved and they have some REALLY heavy hitters on their roster, so I'd make sure you're absolutely ready before pitching to them.

Anyway, if your main concern is losing money, I'd say the risk is so low that it's not even worth worrying about. Besides, if you want you could sign up with Distrokid and test your music on streaming for a year - if it fails, your out $20, if not, your not .


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## Peter Cavallo (May 22, 2018)

I've got two albums on the streaming services through CD Baby. I think I would earn more money from busking on the street. The music is modern classical and I use real string players. Nothing epic or aggressive and I find that my audience age is between 28 - 45. Leans more towards the 30's and up. Apple music is the worst for plays unless your album is Mastered for iTunes then they tend to like you a bit more. Otherwise, you are nothing to them. With Spotify, if you can get yourself on some playlists then you start to see a bit more plays. I see quite a few classical playlists so there are people listening. What you want is followers, people who follow you and play your music on a regular basis. Using streaming services is not the ability to print money, but it can get your music out to a lot of people who may just come across it one day and decide to share with friends etc. But when you get paid less than a cent per play, it means beans in the end. So, I end up selling my tracks in libraries and one sale there eclipses any royalty payment from Spotify etc.


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## Polkasound (May 22, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> I read that over 4 million tracks on Spotify have never even been listened to a single time, let alone "sold."



I have a few tracks that get played maybe once or twice a year, and others (non-polka tracks, of course) that get played almost daily. Altogether I've earned enough money from Spotify subscribers to buy four or five candy bars. (I'm not complaining though, because outside the polka circuit I'm just a drop of water in an ocean of musicians.)

My new polka CD is coming out next month, and I plan on doing digital distribution even though I already know it will be a financial loss. The reason I'm doing it anyway is for the good of the genre. Any band can sell CDs to their same dwindling fan base, but my goal is also to make my music available to _everyone_, and in 2018, that absolutely requires digital distribution.




robgb said:


> Just out of curiosity, what's the cost of getting on such services? I always thought they took a percentage of sales.



I don't know the actual costs offhand, and there are various options, but for me to get an album digitally distributed through CD Baby ends up being roughly around $100.




Peter Cavallo said:


> Apple music is the worst for plays unless your album is Mastered for iTunes then they tend to like you a bit more. Otherwise, you are nothing to them. With Spotify, if you can get yourself on some playlists then you start to see a bit more plays.



This has been my experience, too. The one and only time I noticed a short but very dramatic spike in plays is when my song about New Year's Eve made it onto someone's playlist on New Year's Eve.




Kyle Preston said:


> What initially worked for me was to do cover songs. That drove by far the most traffic to my artist page on Spotify.



Cover songs definitely do grab attention. If you look at many artist pages where they have a mix of originals and covers, the covers are typically the ones getting several times more plays. The cost of licensing has to be factored in, but it's probably worth it if it's helping drive people to one's original material.


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## nyxl (May 22, 2018)

Polkasound said:


> My new polka CD is coming out next month, and I plan on doing digital distribution even though I already know it will be a financial loss.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know the actual costs offhand, and there are various options, but for me to get an album digitally distributed through CD Baby ends up being roughly around $100.


So I'm new to distributing my music and can't really share long-term experiences, but if, like me, you don't expect your music to generate enough money to justify spending money to get it on digital distribution platforms, there are distributors like RouteNote and AWAL that don't require you to pay an upfront fee. AWAL doesn't accept everyone, but RouteNote seems to. I just released an EP through RouteNote and it's now on Spotify, Amazon, Deezer and basically everywhere, and I haven't paid anything for it. They will take 15% of my revenue, but I haven't gotten any sales reports yet since I just started using it. In any case, it's better than losing money just for getting your music out there in my opinion.
Now I don't want to do advertising for RouteNote. Their website is slow and not particularly user-friendly and their moderation process has taken more than a week for me, due to holidays apparently. Also, some stores list my artist name in all caps for some reason. But so far they have delivered what they promised and unless my music starts to see a lot more listeners (I can only dream about 10000 monthly listeners on Spotify), I'm probably going to keep their free distribution model.
All I want to say is, as Kyle also mentioned, you should always do some research about distributors and choose one that suits you, and I got the feeling that one where you have to pay $100 upfront might not be the best for you. Unless you have good experiences with CD Baby and want to stick with it for that reason.


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## Polkasound (May 22, 2018)

nyxl said:


> I got the feeling that one where you have to pay $100 upfront might not be the best for you.



I don't _have_ to pay $100, but that's roughly what I pay for everything I purchase. From a financial point of view, I don't think there are any traditional polka bands who can justify paying for digital distribution. But I do it for other reasons, so I don't mind spending the money. Besides, I like CD Baby's personal customer service. In 2016 when Amazon was flagging my music for no known reason and wouldn't accept it, CD Baby and Amazon worked together to get the issue sorted out. A rep from CD Baby kept me in the loop through the process.


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## Greg (May 22, 2018)

A lot of orchestral instrumental music has success on Spotify, especially if it gets into one of Spotify's curated playlists. You really need to build a fan base first though. Can't expect to toss an album up and get any plays based on keywords or suggestions or anything like that. Amazing music will get you basically nowhere without marketing.

Start with a youtube channel and target keywords that your music strongly represents. It's worked great for me and many others. It's harder now since youtube is pretty saturated, but you can definitely carve out a niche and grow it with time.


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## gregh (May 22, 2018)

Greg said:


> A lot of orchestral instrumental music has success on Spotify, especially if it gets into one of Spotify's curated playlists. You really need to build a fan base first though. Can't expect to toss an album up and get any plays based on keywords or suggestions or anything like that. Amazing music will get you basically nowhere without marketing.
> 
> Start with a youtube channel and target keywords that your music strongly represents. It's worked great for me and many others. It's harder now since youtube is pretty saturated, but you can definitely carve out a niche and grow it with time.


What would you recommend to encourage Youtube views crossing over in to Spotify plays?


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## Greg (May 22, 2018)

gregh said:


> What would you recommend to encourage Youtube views crossing over in to Spotify plays?



The best way I've found is to pin a comment on the video with links to your playlists and a note like "hear more music like this in my Spotify playlist." Trying to get a user off one platform and into another one is extremely difficult though. Plus Youtube actually removed my clickable Spotify links on videos because it competes with their service..


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## gregh (May 22, 2018)

Greg said:


> The best way I've found is to pin a comment on the video with links to your playlists and a note like "hear more music like this in my Spotify playlist." Trying to get a user off one platform and into another one is extremely difficult though. Plus Youtube actually removed my clickable Spotify links on videos because it competes with their service..


Bummer re stripping links. YouTube don’t pay anything either do they ?


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## Greg (May 22, 2018)

gregh said:


> Bummer re stripping links. YouTube don’t pay anything either do they ?



They pay an absolutely tiny royalty to PROs. Decent money if you monetize your videos and get lots of views though.


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## Dear Villain (Jun 3, 2018)

So, having decided to take the plunge with Distrokid, I just signed up...only to discover now, that they won't release "classical" or "soundtrack" (the only 2 categories my music would realistically fit under) through their service to iTunes and Apple Music. My only options are "world", "new age", or "electronic", according to a reddit thread in which the Distrokid owner replied to another artist who had the same issue (2 years ago!) Of course, I didn't find this article until AFTER signing up, so now I'm torn between listing my music under less than accurate categories, or keeping it under classical, only to lose 50% of the distribution to Apple. Thoughts?


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## Zelorkq (Jun 4, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> So, having decided to take the plunge with Distrokid, I just signed up...only to discover now, that they won't release "classical" or "soundtrack" (the only 2 categories my music would realistically fit under) through their service to iTunes and Apple Music. My only options are "world", "new age", or "electronic", according to a reddit thread in which the Distrokid owner replied to another artist who had the same issue (2 years ago!) Of course, I didn't find this article until AFTER signing up, so now I'm torn between listing my music under less than accurate categories, or keeping it under classical, only to lose 50% of the distribution to Apple. Thoughts?


I've uploaded all of my albums via Distrokid and assigned soundtrack as genre... Distrokid shows a big warning sign, but it works nonetheless, my albums can be found on itunes (most of my albums aren't soundtracks). Tbh honest tho 95% of my plays are via Spotify so it wouldn't make too much of a difference. That's my experience


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## Dear Villain (Jun 4, 2018)

Zelorkq said:


> I've uploaded all of my albums via Distrokid and assigned soundtrack as genre... Distrokid shows a big warning sign, but it works nonetheless, my albums can be found on itunes (most of my albums aren't soundtracks). Tbh honest tho 95% of my plays are via Spotify so it wouldn't make too much of a difference. That's my experience



Thank you for this info, Zelorkq! So, did you list a film/tv show, etc. In brackets along with the title of the album, as it says you must do? Also, how recently did you upload something to that category that wasn't actually a soundtrack, because I think they've gotten stricter with this in recent years according to some threads I was reading. 

If I do that, I'll probably get flagged (like the guy going 10 over the speed limit gets pulled over while everyone else is doing 30 over. Lol)

The fact that most plays are through Spotify is interesting to hear as I would have thought it's a 50/50 split.

Dave


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## Zelorkq (Jun 9, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> Thank you for this info, Zelorkq! So, did you list a film/tv show, etc. In brackets along with the title of the album, as it says you must do? Also, how recently did you upload something to that category that wasn't actually a soundtrack, because I think they've gotten stricter with this in recent years according to some threads I was reading.
> 
> If I do that, I'll probably get flagged (like the guy going 10 over the speed limit gets pulled over while everyone else is doing 30 over. Lol)
> 
> ...


Only one of my albums uses parentheses "(Original Soundtrack)", which is an actual OST of a video game. All of my other albums simply contain the album name, nothing else. I actually uploaded my latest compilation albums last week, with no problem whatsoever. I have no idea why they say it'll cause a problem... (Note that I cannot guarantee anything here, this is my experience.)

Haha no idea about getting flagged, it's often the honest people doing a mistake that do get caught, and not the crooks :D I did try to upload a remake of a song and got an email saying that the stores complained due to copyright infringement -> I had to take it down. I then got it licensed and now all is good. I think I'm still in the green :D

I just checked my bank stats of Distrokid (note this only reflects the $$ I get and not the plays):

Spotify: >96%
iTunes + Apple Music: 1%
Google Play: 2%
Others: <1%

This surely changes for other artists tho


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## Nick Carella (Jun 15, 2018)

Dear Villain said:


> Thank you for this info, Zelorkq! So, did you list a film/tv show, etc. In brackets along with the title of the album, as it says you must do? Also, how recently did you upload something to that category that wasn't actually a soundtrack, because I think they've gotten stricter with this in recent years according to some threads I was reading.
> 
> If I do that, I'll probably get flagged (like the guy going 10 over the speed limit gets pulled over while everyone else is doing 30 over. Lol)
> 
> ...



I actually released my first album just 2 weeks ago and it's a soundtrack. I did put the (Original Soundtrack) in the title and it got to all stores.


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## Mr. Ha (Dec 16, 2018)

I am considering putting some orchestral and soundtrack music on iTunes and Spotify through Distrokid. I have not registered any rights to my music. Do I need to do this before I put it on iTunes and Spotify and if so, how do I do that?


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## Desire Inspires (Dec 16, 2018)

Mr. Ha said:


> I am considering putting some orchestral and soundtrack music on iTunes and Spotify through Distrokid. I have not registered any rights to my music. Do I need to do this before I put it on iTunes and Spotify and if so, how do I do that?



Check out this video:


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## Parsifal666 (Dec 16, 2018)

Maybe a better question is: is ANYONE making money on Spotify making ANY kind of music? 

And when I say making money, I mean at least paying the rent every month.


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## jbuhler (Dec 16, 2018)

Parsifal666 said:


> Maybe a better question is: is ANYONE making money on Spotify making ANY kind of music?
> 
> And when I say making money, I mean at least paying the rent every month.


The video said a million streams generated $4000, so assuming that’s accurate there’s the metric.


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## Kyle Preston (Dec 16, 2018)

Parsifal666 said:


> Maybe a better question is: is ANYONE making money on Spotify making ANY kind of music?
> 
> And when I say making money, I mean at least paying the rent every month.




For me, just groceries. Depending on your distributor, a good rule of thumb (for indies) is around .007 times total number of streams (it diminishes as your popularity grows).

That .004 seems low, but I haven't seen actual numbers for someone with a million streams so I can't say for sure.

*[edit]* wow, I re-checked my numbers for the past two months and that .007 isn't accurate anymore (used to be). My avg rate for October was .0037 and .0039 for September . I imagine the rate has gone down due to Spotify's growth. Which means some of us are getting more streams (hopefully) but earning less per stream.


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