I wanted to promote my band’s music on Spotify by placing a few adverts in Instagram. Here’s what happened.

Tl;DR

• It works, but I found it expensive. In total I spent maybe $200 and picked up 30 Spotify followers and 60 Instagram followers which equates to about $1.80 per follower.
  
• Promoting posts inside Instagram was a fast and easy way to advertise on IG
  
• Setting up adverts using Facebook’s Ad Manager is very hard and you need to learn the platform
  
• You need to mono control your mix: most folks be using phones so you must check your track sounds decent on these devices
  
• Use a short video clip of your track’s catchiest section. Keep the clip about 15-30 seconds long
  

Creating an advert

I used Distrokid to make a very basic 30 second video of my track. I used the strongest section of the song. Here’s the one I used for one of the campaigns:

You can also use any movie making platform, but the point is – use the best music you can and some visuals that maybe say a bit about what the viewer is listening to; and include a call to action such as “click to follow us on Spotify” or something similar (if you work in marketing, it would be cool if you could jump into the comments and advise best practice).

Once you have your advert in mp4 format you’ll need to send it to yourself via email or some other method of getting it on your phone. Otherwise you won’t be able to post it on Instagram and use the boost post feature.

Boosting a post within Instagram

Difficulty
Easy

Cost
$20

Technicalities
You need to convert your IG account to a business account but that’s simple. Next, you’ll need to post your wee video that you sent to your phone. Once you’ve done that, simply follow the instructions to promote it:

You’ll need to specify what genres you want the advert to match to and I found these to be more general than I would like: so no Synthwave category; I used proxies like Synthpop and Synthesiser music (whatever that is). So if your genre is microthrashdeathmetalgrungecore you may need to branch out a bit.

Destination of your advert
You can set whatever destination you want to so I set mine to my Spotify artist account. But you can choose to get direct messages or for folks to visit your IG profile.

Results

I ran two adverts like this with a total spend: $40 and I picked up around 10 Spotify followers and 20 IG followers which works out at $1.33 per follow.

Using Facebook’s Advertising System

Difficulty
Arrghhhhhh

Cost
$130. I spent a lot just to see what would happen because folks on Reddit be all like “blah blah you spent $15 on an advert blah blah”

Technicalities
There are clear instructions in this handy guide at Submithub. But I can summarise thusly:

• Create an advert
• Choose your audience
• Generate a Facebook Pixel (a wee bit of code that reports back to Facebook about who clicks the advert so Facebook can refine the advert’s targeting)
• Put the pixel on a forwarding website
• Point the forwarding website to your Spotify track page. This allows folks to quickly save the track if they want. This is important.

You’ll need a glass of vodka because Facebook’s Ad Manager is a confusing mess of shiny knobs, buttons and Fuck You so even creating the advert is a mission. The biggest thing to get your head around is the information architecture. Everything is geared around the concept of ‘Campaigns’ and your advert is a child of this concept so you have to wade through 3 layers of garbage to get to the advert you’re running.

Other technicalities

If you’re using the mp4 video you got from Distrokid Facebook doesn’t like it for some IG placements because of the aspect ratio. Facebook has a conversion utility that converts it but it looks fugly. Just something to be aware of.

The targeting isn’t very precise with the genres, just like the set up in IG:

The advert I ran

Results

For my $130 the advert reached 14,765 people of which 240 clicked on the advert link and were directed to my Spotify page for the song.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Of those 240 click throughs I noticed a comparable uptick in plays for the song but also a good amount of saves. Saves are important because they are like a micro follow and they’re good for the mythical algorithms.

Other stats: I estimate I gained 20 Spotify followers and a further 40 IG followers. On a per click basis that works out as $2.16 per follow so not as good as the IG boosted adverts.

Key takeaways

There are some benchmark metrics here and clickthrough rates for most adverts seem to be between 0.5% and 2%. But the cost per follower of my adverts was lame at $1.80 per follow. Brian Hazard, another blogger, was able to get his cost per follower down to $0.29. I need to accept that something had gone wrong here and I can summarise:

• The music isn’t good
• My advert targeting wasn’t precise enough even though I carefully chose country, age, music preferences
• Toneden may allow more precision with targeting and that’s something I’ll bear in mind for the next campaign
• Low interaction and click through rates might be a symptom of the fact IG adverts default to silent and my adverts lacked a clear call to action

But what do you think? Too many beginner errors? Think Synthwave is too purple? Then hook me up in the comments and if you feel like it drop me a follow on Spotify or Instagram.

Some bands play stadiums, others dodgy clubs and pubs, but Altered Sky – a rock band from Glasgow very much of the Biffy Clyro and Paramore mould – took ‘intimate venue’ to ridiculous levels last year playing homes of fans.

When I meet them today they are camped upstairs at Broadcast in Glasgow a few hours shy of their final UK tour date as Ross (bassist) explains the logic behind such an unorthodox itinerary “People on Vacation were doing a house party tour playing an acoustic set in living rooms and we thought we could do that” adding “fans really appreciate the connection I guess. It’s a lot closer than playing a gig”. Lead singer and hyper excitable Ana chips in “we learned we could fit lot of people into one room!”

The other members of the band in the stifling heat of the upstairs office at the venue are Ryan (guitar) Amy (drums) and Tara (guitarist) but they sit mostly silent as Ross and Ana do most of the talking. Last year the band managed to nab a spot on Bob Harris’s Apple Tree Sessions after a hopeful Tweet was picked up by Whispering Bob himself “he’s just like the king of music” exclaims Ana before adding with a hint of incredulity about meeting him “that’s the voice! That’s the body of the voice!”.

Tomorrow the group will ­­­­support the mighty Big Country at Clydebank Town Hall “It’s our second time, actually” says Anna about the occasion “They’re so cool! Such lads, well, old lads actually!” before Ross quickly removes the foot from Ana’s mouth, observing “I think being in the presence of someone who has been there and done it, we can learn a lot; the way they carry themselves, the way they handle the show. They exude that experience”.

Altered Sky are still not at the stage where they can resign from their day jobs and even have  to slog out a staggering 18 hours rehearsal per week when required “it fills up the time when you would be doing other things” acknowledges Ana “the practice studio becomes a second home”.

The hard working nature of the band is obvious and when I ask what’s the most important thing they could tell other aspiring rock acts, Ana advises “knowing [your] instrument inside out and really striving to be the top of your game. You have to have that effort on top to take it to the next level” with Ross explaining “playing with four other personalities makes a huge difference to how you play, that’s probably the most important thing to begin with”.

All that effort is beginning to pay off. On Kerrang radio the band were on the same play list as Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath “why are we next to these people?!” laughs Ross; and soon they are trotting off on an Asian Tour. Since Asian music is my thang I ask if they are familiar with any bands from this neck of the woods; “One OK Rock” says Ana and after a slight pause sheepishly suggests Babymetal. If anything, this wakes Amy out of her Kraken-esque silence “oooooh Babymetal!” she coos while everyone else laughs.

So what’s all this effort and 6 hour rehearsal sessions and playing in fans houses all about? Is there a long term plan for all of this? Ana fills me in “I hope the band can really make a musical mark, not just in the UK. If can we maybe get across to America, have our second album out and have a growing fan base, a couple of really really good support tours, certainly in five years I want to be touring the world on our own headline show” before beaming  “I can’t imagine doing anything else. We’re gonna do it!”

I think I’m pretty good at making predictions. I predicted Trump would turn out to be a massive douche bag and the unstoppable rise of a certain Japanese rock band. So here I’m making another one: keep an eye out for this bunch of crazy kids because they might be coming to a front room near you sooner than you think.

Altered Sky are on tour in Asia from 20th September till 18th October 2017 and are working on their next album.