If you’ve been following along in our series on how to grow your Spotify listenership — from 1,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 streams — you might be wondering how to keep those streams going past the first few listens. How do you continue to drive a steady mix of new and repeat listeners on a monthly basis? Beyond that, how do you identify who’s intentionally streaming your music versus listening through it on a programmed playlist or radio mix? Spotify has a metric to track this called your monthly active listeners. In this blog, you’ll learn a bit more about why this metric is so valuable and some key tips for boosting your monthly active listener count.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Monthly active listeners are people who intentionally streamed your music during the past 28 days.
- Focus on followers, saves, repeat listening, playlist pitching, and consistent promotion to grow this audience.
- Use Spotify for Artists to identify which songs and promotional efforts are converting listeners into active fans.
- Once you reach 3,000 monthly active listeners, you can meet the audience requirement for Spotify Countdown Pages.
What are monthly active listeners on Spotify?
Monthly active listeners is Spotify’s metric for the number of people who intentionally streamed your music in the last 28 days. That means they chose your music from your artist profile, an album or single page, their own library, or one of their own playlists.
That’s different from the monthly listener count displayed on your public Spotify profile. Monthly listeners include anyone who streamed your music from any source, including programmed sources like algorithmic or editorial playlists. Monthly active listeners narrow that audience to the people who deliberately choose to listen to you.
That distinction matters. According to Spotify, monthly active listeners make up about one-third of an artist’s total audience on average but generate around 60% of streams. In other words — from a streaming standpoint — these are your most valuable listeners. They’re people who are actively playing your music, not being passively programmed it.
Growing this audience requires intentional, authentic, and consistent fan outreach and engagement.
How can I get more monthly active listeners on Spotify?
Just as you learned in our series on growing your Spotify streams, there’s no shortcut to building a real fanbase. Instead, focus on creating more opportunities for fans to meaningfully discover your music and keep giving them reasons to listen again.
Treat releases as fan acquisition opportunities
Artists often treat each release as a standalone campaign: promoting it for a few weeks, moving on, and starting from scratch with the next song. But that approach can kill momentum and make it harder to grow your audience. Instead, think of every release as an opportunity to bring new listeners into your catalog and give existing fans a reason to return. The engagement you build around one release can carry into the next, helping your audience grow over time.
Plan your releases: Build a promotion plan that covers the lead-up to release day, release week, and the weeks that follow. Keep giving fans reasons to engage until you’re ready to announce what’s next. According to Spotify, 75% of a new release’s first year streams happen after the first month. So don’t stop promoting after release week.
Pitch every eligible song through Spotify for Artists: Submit an unreleased track for editorial playlist consideration before release day. Spotify recommends pitching at least seven days ahead to qualify for Release Radar, but pitching several weeks in advance gives editors more time to consider your release.
Encourage your fans to follow you on Spotify: Spotify will plug your music to listeners that follow your account through programmed playlists like Release Radar. Encourage fans to follow you through social media, your email list, website, live shows, and merch table.
Run a pre-save campaign: Build release-day momentum by encouraging fans to pre-save your music. When the release goes live, it will automatically be added to their Spotify libraries. Learn how to reach 100 pre-saves with CD Baby.
3 ways to drive active listening
The tips above cover the first half of an active monthly listener growth strategy: driving new listeners to check out your music. The second half is all about giving them a reason to stay past that first stream.
Optimize your Spotify artist profile: When a listener discovers your track, they often visit your profile to see more of your catalog and get to know you. Any music they play from your profile counts as intentional active listening — so give them a reason to explore further. Keep your photos and bio current, update your Artist Pick to your top track or playlist, highlight new releases, and connect your social media handles.
Ask fans to support your music: In addition to driving profile follows, ask fans to save a track, share your music to their social media, and add your music to their own playlists. Remember, you’re trying to build more of your most loyal fans — pointed and intentional outreach that drives genuine engagement will result in real fans. And when they listen to your music from their own library or playlist, that counts as active listening as well.
Promote your music outside Spotify: Use any mix of social media platforms, press, live performance, and email to connect with your audience in genuine ways. Pointing interested fans to your Spotify profile will drive intentional listening.
A useful benchmark: 3,000 monthly active listeners
Reaching 3,000 monthly active listeners is a particularly useful growth milestone because it makes your music eligible for Spotify’s Countdown Pages — one of many tools in the Spotify Campaign Kit.
Countdown Pages help eligible artists build anticipation for an upcoming album or EP directly on Spotify. Fans can pre-save the release, preview its tracklist, and shop merch. When the release arrives, Spotify notifies pre-savers and adds the release to their libraries.
That can have a meaningful release-week impact. Spotify says more than 60% of listeners who pre-save an album through a Countdown Page stream it during its first week. Artists who publish their Countdown Page at least seven days before release also average nearly twice as many pre-saves as artists who publish later.
How do I reach 3,000 monthly active listeners?
3,000 might seem like a dream if you’re an emerging artist working to develop your fan base, but take it in chunks and remember — every monthly active listener punches above their weight in terms of streams. These fans are so much more valuable than come-and-go programmed listeners.
Each month, use Spotify for Artists to do the following:
- Check your monthly active listeners and assess whether they went up or down
- Identify the songs, playlists, releases, or campaigns (down to the tactics) that drove growth. If your active listeners declined, look for any correlating drop-off in your release schedule, promotion, or other activity that drives fan engagement.
- Identify where your most engaged listeners might have come from. For example, perhaps you played a big show recently, had a social media post take off, or sent a well-received newsletter.
- Plan to double down on your most effective efforts to grow your monthly active listeners.
- Don’t forget, you can bring back previously active listeners as well, which you can view in your Audience Segments breakdown in Spotify for Artists. Identify what activity might have drawn listeners to your profile and plan content, shows, and promotion that re-engages that audience. For example, you could post a recap from a successful show that earned you new listeners.
Build your Spotify audience with every release
Growing your monthly active listeners takes time, but every release creates another opportunity to find the right audience. Release consistently, promote strategically, study your Spotify for Artists data, and give new listeners reasons to actively stream your music.
Of course, the first step is getting your music onto Spotify. A preferred partner to Spotify, CD Baby makes it easy to release your music to Spotify and claim your profile to start growing your audience. Sign up for a free account today to get started.