🎧 Promoting Music via Spotify: A Developer and Musician’s Experience

Do Spotify's algorithms work? The answer is no!

As both an artist and a developer, I decided to test how Spotify’s algorithms work and share my real-life experience - what actually worked, and what turned out to be a complete waste of time.

📈 Spotify’s Algorithms - Accurate, But Not for Everyone

Let me start by saying this: Spotify’s algorithms do work - and they work flawlessly.But here’s the paradox: if you’re already a star, the system will amplify your presence.For emerging musicians, however, the platform is practically useless. I’m not saying this emotionally, but from a developer’s standpoint - analyzing the platform’s logic and structure.

Here is the full English translation of your text:

📱 Algorithms Are Tied to Social Media

Spotify itself states: its algorithms start promoting music only after the track is already getting traffic — most often from social media.

So, if you have zero followers on Instagram, don’t even dream that someone will hear you.

This isn’t a platform for promoting musicians - it’s a platform for growing Spotify.

The more people click on your track, the more people install the app and buy a subscription.Convenient. For the service. But not for the artist.

Algorithms - bottom line: pure business, nothing personal. If they could avoid paying artists at all, they probably would.

Spotify’s algorithms rely on external traffic - if people are coming to your track from Instagram, TikTok, etc., they’re already potential subscribers of the platform.

Spotify pays artists per stream, and without external traffic, your track doesn’t even generate the minimum payout.

That’s why the platform prioritizes those who already bring an audience, not up-and-coming artists.

💡 What About SoundCloud?

For comparison - SoundCloud really works differently.Its algorithms automatically pick songs for playlists and give feedback in the form of likes, comments, and plays.You can get real audience reaction from day one.

Maybe all new artists should move to SoundCloud?

🧨 Track Pitching on Spotify - Silence in Return

About the track pitching feature (submitting tracks to Spotify editors), I can say one thing:You submit — and receive total silence.No stats, no feedback, no transparency.

I wonder, has this feature ever worked for anyone?Is there any verified success rate for newcomers?

🔚 So, what can we say in the end?

It all comes down to a simple formula:

If you have followers on social media → you'll get streams on Spotify. No followers → no one will hear you, even if your music is amazing.

All around — paid playlists (most likely a marketing trick that artificially hypes up the platform), bots, scammers, and fake producers.All of this could be banned in five minutes — but it’s not.

This is actually a whole separate topic for an article.For now, briefly: there are a couple of services that can bring you listeners, but they won’t bring you recognition — these are SubmitHub and SoundCamps.(If Spotify worked as it should, these services wouldn’t even be necessary.)

We’ll share more details later...

💭 From an IT and Marketing Perspective…

If an algorithm doesn’t solve the needs of its target audience (in this case - young musicians), then:

➡️ The service is low-quality and does not meet user needs.Spotify is a great distribution platform.But as a tool to launch a career — it’s broken.

🔄 UPDATE: Turns out, to really make SoundCloud’s algorithms work in your favor, there’s one important trick:

Before publishing your track, you need to activate a special button - it controls whether your music gets recommended in playlists and algorithmic suggestions.

But there’s one catch:

🔒 This feature is only available to Pro subscribers.

📡 And that’s when the magic starts: people start hearing, liking, and commenting on your track.

SoundCloud truly works - if you know how to use it right.

P.S. Of course, there are exceptions when it comes to new names — but not that many.I think, for example, in our genre we haven’t really seen any newcomers appear out of nowhere so far.

UPD: Well, my assumptions were confirmed! 15.08.2025

An investigation has been launched into the sale of editorial playlists.