Thanks to the digitalization of music and the downtick of physical media, music pre-order campaigns as we know them are gone. People still buy CDs and even vinyl records, of course, but with the popularity of streaming services and digital downloads, fans aren’t exactly lining up at their local record store to get a CD copy of a brand-new album.
Instead of focusing on pre-orders, many musicians (especially those on Tik Tok) are changing their focus to pre-save campaigns. In this article, we will cover what it is and how you can pre-save on Spotify.
What is a Pre-Save Link?
A pre-save campaign is a promotion method used to raise awareness and generate engagement before a song or album is released. It’s similar to a pre-order, but in this instance, instead of fans pre-purchasing the album, they are “pledging” to add it to their library. When the music is released, it appears in the listener’s library, and they become a follower.
Pre-saving isn’t an automatic feature among streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. To utilize this strategy, you will need to use a third-party tool. Depending on how you are distributing your music currently, you may already have access to this feature.
When it comes to promoting your pre-save link, you want to generate a lot of hype around your release, just as you would any other product launch. You can release song teasers on social media and run giveaways leading up to the launch.
Benefits to Utilizing Pre-Save
Because pre-save widgets are third-party apps, services like Spotify don’t actually see or use that pre-save data; however if you garner enough pre-saves and a lot of people stream your music upon its release, it can have a positive effect on algorithmic playlist placement.
Here are some benefits of creating a pre-save campaign:
- Encourage more listeners: the more users you get to pre-save your release increases the likelihood that they will listen to it, increasing your streams.
- Actionable promotion: promoting your upcoming release is good, but promoting a pre-save link gives your fans a tangible action to take that is free for them.
- Increase your presence: when a new release has a high stream count, this tells Spotify that the music is popular and worth sharing.
- More follows: when a fan pre-saves your music, they will follow your profile on release day
While song saves, artist follows, and stream counts all send positive engagement signals to Spotify’s algorithm, please keep in mind that pre-saves themselves will not help you land on editorial playlists. In fact, pre-save links can actually hurt you if those fans unfollow you, skip your songs, and remove the saved tracks from your library.
Creating a pre-save campaign should just be one part of your marketing strategy and not your sole strategy. Make sure that if you are utilizing pre-save links on Spotify and other streaming services, you are engaging your fanbase in other ways, as well.
Some ways you can continue to keep your fans engaged are through active social media pages and product giveaways.
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Sure, pre-save links help your streams, but we all know that streaming doesn’t pay the bills. But you know what will help to pay the bills? A free storefront at MerchBooth.com. We allow entertainers to sell their custom merch directly to fans, so you can worry less about money and spend more time rockin’.
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