Ryan Waczek:
Building your profiles with fake numbers at the end of the day, doesn't really lead to a career in my opinion. And if it leads to any opportunity, it's probably a short lived opportunity at that. That's why when artists promote music and I recommend a path and when I help them promote their songs on Spotify, I really emphasize the fact that look sure you can get on playlists that maybe bump your numbers, but are bot run. But that's not really the goal. The goal here is to, yes, increase your numbers to invigorate your profiles. But to do that with real people.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with the constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music, but I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician. And it's only getting better if you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music. We're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution for today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right. So I'm excited to be here today with Ryan Waczek. So Ryan is the founder of Indie Music Academy. It's a channel that has generated over 1.2 million views on YouTube, over 220,000 readers of his blog, where he really covers music industry royalties, organic Spotify promotion, and overall business mindset for musicians. And I've had a chance to connect with Ryan over the last few months. He's in a mastermind group that I'm part of, and he's just a really solid dude. And we actually partnered up for Spotify playlist collaboration, where I got a chance to kind of test his services and see how they worked. And I'm afraid to say that they're awful and everything that you're about to learn from him is total crap. No, I'm just kidding. It is great. I've been really impressed with it so far.

Michael Walker:
And so definitely excited to talk with you today and cover some ground that we don't talk about a lot. Which is surprising because in the modern musician industry, Spotify is really the main streaming platform right now. And it's something that there's pros and cons in terms of the way that streaming has allowed artists to really kind of distribute their music so easily and get in the ears of people around the world, which is so amazing. And there's some challenges around kind of turning that into a long term marketing channel with in terms of Spotify, not necessarily being super friendly with getting people off of Spotify. At the same time, being the platform that is the place that the majority of people listen to music it's so, so important to have a presence there and to actually understand how to be successful on Spotify. So I'm super excited to have you on here today. So we can actually talk about this more and...

Ryan Waczek:
Glad to be here. Thanks Michael.

Michael Walker:
It was kind of a long introduction, but I wanted to make sure to give you a proper one. So Ryan, could you share a little bit about yourself and maybe tell your story for anyone here who maybe their first time hearing about you.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah, absolutely. So I started pretty traditionally, just like all other independent musicians, in high school was in a band, I played rock and roll, played guitar. My dad was a music teacher, so I learned guitar at a pretty young age and was singing at home. And I did one day that I wanted to pursue music deeper and I got my four year degree in music performance. And what I found out after graduating is that even learning all the music theory and learning music formally, there was still a big gap in the practical application of how do I get my music out there. How do I get my music heard, even though I took production classes and I learned pro tools. The next step after that recording is made, was still a huge gap in my mind. And so that's kind of where I was upon graduation.

Ryan Waczek:
Even with the four year degree, I was like, "All right, I have these songs that I've written. I have these skills to make the music, but I don't think I learned any skills on how to get my music out there." And so there's kind of a little lull in my story where I ended up becoming a barista at Starbucks and probably served coffee to thousands of people. When my music was only a getting heard by just friends and family, and then bounced around from job to job. And I was kind of soul searching and trying to figure out what's music going to look like for me while I'm holding this music degree, but working at Starbucks. And I took a video editing job at a surgery center. So I was kind of doing a whole bunch different things.

Ryan Waczek:
And thankfully though, I was still performing. I still had a job at my church doing worship on Sundays. So I was playing music there, but it all kind of came to a head when I actually got a job in a marketing department at a startup. And that was really cool for me because I started to learn marketing principles. I started to learn Facebook ads and SEO and all these things that I didn't learn in music school. Didn't even know to learn until I was in that experience. And while I was there, that knowledge was seeping into my music brain. And I was thinking, "Oh my gosh, I wish I knew this sooner. How can I apply these principles to music?" And that's what caused the rebirth of me focusing on music now that I had this marketing mind and the thing that I want to encourage all the listeners to believe is that marketing is creative too. And once I may you that connection where the marketing side and the music side go together, they're two different types of creativity, but it's kind of both, or they're both using the creative mind.

Ryan Waczek:
That's what kind of reignited this passion for music, because now I had the avenue to get my music heard once I learned a little bit about marketing. So that kind of leads us to today where what I try to do at the Indie Music Academy is to contextualize these marketing principles and strategies for independent musicians and put it into words and into programs that make sense for musicians. And so marketing, isn't this big, mysterious thing that's just for businesses or startups, but it's actually useful for us as Indies. That's basically the story leading up to today.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, man. And I feel like that story, there's probably so many people who are listening this that can kind of relate to that, kind of starting out, working at Starbucks being a barista. For most of us, we didn't become a musician because we thought "what's the easiest way to make as much money as possible. I know it is going to be being a musician." Right? It's one of the most challenging places to figure out how to actually have a sustainable income and how to treat it like a business. But I think you're right, that intersection of entrepreneurship and marketing and business, along with music isn't necessarily something that... In the past it has been separated. Right. It was sort of like the record label was like, "We'll do all that yucky marketing business stuff", right? You don't do that.

Ryan Waczek:
And then musicians get a very small percentage of the goods that they produce. Because they're not in charge of any of the marketing or the distribution. But...

Michael Walker:
But I think that you're right, that there actually is finding that place where you can reconnect with the integrity or the authentic authenticity of marketing being a really core part of who you are. It's not necessarily something you want someone else to take care of. It's like asking... It's like trying to outsource your marriage, right. It's like there's somethings that you just don't do. They're so integral to who you are.

Ryan Waczek:
Marketing is like building the relationships with your fans. Right. And it's actually a really good analogy because if you outsource that, especially in the beginning do want to have that relationship be personal.. Just like a marriage, right. If you outsource that to someone else, you're not really in control of how that relationship is being formed in the beginning. So that's actually an analogy I never thought of it, that's excellent.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Yeah. I like that analogy a lot when it comes to building relationships and thinking about is the same thing, same analogy for if someone you haven't built a relationship with them yet, then you don't want to just walk up to a new fan and be like, "Hey, buy my merch or buy my t-shirt." Right. It's like asking someone to marry you before you start dating. Cool man. So now having a lot of experience, not just for yourself, but also working with hundreds of thousands of musicians now that you've impact, would you say are some of the biggest mistakes or common challenges, especially when it comes to Spotify and building an organic, an authentic presence on Spotify.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah. Spotify's a tricky one because usually the flow of traffic is towards the music. Right. So if we're making content, we're sharing our life, we're sharing our story, sharing the behind the scenes and we're trying to flow fans towards music. Right. Spotify's an interesting one because we can either towards Spotify using Facebook ads or content. That's kind of the normal marketing direction, but then there's also the reverse flow because Spotify has an algorithm, right. You can trigger that algorithm or you can get on playlists. Right. And you can generate traffic on the platform. And then our thoughts go, "how do I get people to see my other stuff?" Right. Because Spotify's a little bit of a closed system, right. And so that reverse flow is an interesting challenge because Spotify doesn't really have any way to link your website. There's no way to link to a freebie or any kind of fan magnet to build your list.

Ryan Waczek:
Really, all we have are the Spotify artist profile, there's the bio. And then thankfully, at least they give us a couple of links. We can link to Instagram and Facebook and maybe Wikipedia if that exists and that's it. So Spotify's a really interesting one. And what I try to focus on is clarifying where Spotify exists in the music ecosystem. Right? I don't want artists to think that Spotify is everything, but Spotify is not nothing also.

Ryan Waczek:
And so having a healthy, balanced view of Spotify I think is really important where it's a part of the full picture, but it's not everything. And so to answer your question, "how do you prioritize Spotify with everything else in your music ecosystem?" I think it should be an important part, but maybe secondary to some of the more core, long term marketing goals, like building your mailing list for example. That is a long term non platform specific marketing goal, where if Spotify goes away or if your social media choice goes away one day. Right now, maybe you're using Instagram every day, but maybe Instagram goes the way of MySpace and it just ceases to be relevant. Right? The, the thing that you're going to...

Michael Walker:
Whoa, whoa, hold on. Wait. MySpace isn't relevant anymore? Oh crap. My top... Sorry to throw you off...

Ryan Waczek:
Tom. I'm sure Tom still thinks MySpace is really, really cool.

Michael Walker:
They never left his computer. He is so stupid.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah. But because of just the volatility of the internet and social media, we don't know what's going to happen, but we do know, at least historically that email will probably stick around, right. Email has been pretty constant. We all use email every day pretty much. And so that's almost like the backup of your music career, just like how we back up our computer and we want to keep our files safe. We kind of want to keep our music career safe too. And that's what the mailing list is in my mind. Or even if Spotify goes away one day, which probably won't happen, but even... Who knows what's going to happen, right. We didn't really foresee that CDs would go away. Even though now it seems inevitable, but we have no way to know. And so that's basically where I place Spotify. It's extremely important, but it's not the most important thing to focus on in the whole music ecosystem.

Ryan Waczek:
So what I try to encourage artists to do is to pick one social media that's going to be the focus, right? And everywhere else, you can kind of repost or repurpose. And pick one streaming platform that's going to be kind of included in your content and social media strategy. Because I almost see Spotify as a streaming service and social media kind of combo platform, right? The numbers kind of matter. We want it to visibly look good. It's kind of cool that we earn royalties even though it's not that much, but at the end of the day, Spotify exists as a tool for engaging fans for visibility and for discovery. And beyond that, there are much more powerful platforms to build relationships on. So it's a tool, it's great, it fits in a limited way, but it's not everything.

Michael Walker:
That totally makes sense. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think it's really helpful to kind of have context and I think the way that you presented it is really a fair, objective way of looking at it. And sometimes it's easy to view Spotify as sort of, I don't know, the end all, be all or it's sort of like a representation of some of those... It's not necessarily "vanity metrics", but in some cases it can be used like that. Then it's so easy to want to generate fake views basically just for the sake of feeling like the numbers are bigger than they are. But I think it's really helpful to kind of have that authentic approach to what you're describing of really making the main focus, building relationships.

Michael Walker:
And Spotify's a part of that ecosystem. That's a part of a place where fans connect with you and listen to your music. But it sounds like what you're saying is that really the most important thing is to build a relationship on a platform that you can own, that's agnostic so that if Spotify dies or MySpace comes back, and Instagram and TikTok all dies back. Tom is sitting on the throne. That no matter where they are, that you have this relationship with your audience, that you can connect with those people.

Ryan Waczek:
Exactly. And you brought up a really good point because no matter what platform it is, Spotify or Instagram them or YouTube, there's always that kind of lingering nagging mindset where it's like, "Well, if I just get my numbers up." It's true, especially with Instagram followers, there are sites that I won't mention where you can go and you can buy Instagram followers. And you can do the same with YouTube and you can do the same with Spotify too. And you can just buy those bot followers and you can buy those bot streams that bumps your numbers up. But at the end of the day there's no human behind those numbers, right. And so whenever we have that number talk, right? The visibility, right? I think numbers play a part. Obviously they do right. Booking agents look at your numbers. Record labels look at your numbers.

Ryan Waczek:
But if those numbers don't represent humans, if those numbers don't have any kind of substantial backing, just like how... Well not anymore, but the dollar used to be backed by gold, right? And so if your numbers are backed by fans, well then actually, you can actually live up to the promises that you are making with those numbers, right? If a booking agent is going to book you based off of those numbers, you're basically promising the booking agent something. Or if you get signed to a record deal there's a contract in place. A written contract, but also understanding in that relationship between the label and the artist that I hope that these numbers are real so that you can make our investment back because that's what the label wants. And if you don't make that investment back, you'll probably get sheltered dropped eventually. Right?

Ryan Waczek:
So building your profiles with fake numbers at the end of the day, doesn't really lead to a career in my opinion. And if it leads to any opportunity, it's probably a short lived opportunity at that. So that's why when artists promote music and I recommend a path and when I help them promote their songs on Spotify, I really emphasize the fact that, look sure you can get on playlists that maybe bump your numbers, but are bot run. But that's not really the goal. The goal here is to yes, increase your numbers to invigorate your profiles, but to do that with real people. Right?

Ryan Waczek:
And the reason for that is not just for success during this campaign now, it's a good mindset for success on all platforms, regardless of what your goals are. Because if you don't have the fans to back it up, I think that's just leading to a very dark and disappointing future. Whenever something, some kind of opportunity comes along, it's not going to be a real opportunity. I really am afraid of artists that do receive visibility and do receive just opportunities because of their numbers. But then they just can't back it up, because it wasn't real to begin with.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast. So I can tell you about a free special offer they're doing right now, exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast. Or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. So right now we're offering a free two week trial to our music mentor coaching program.

Michael Walker:
And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're going to get access to our entire music mentor content vault for free. The vaults organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and last but not least the business. When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth master classes from a network of world class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business. On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds where our highest level of modern musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music.

Michael Walker:
Then once a month, we're going to have our music mentor spotlight series. And that's where we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top of music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast but they're live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly. On top of all that you'll get out access to our private music mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of music mentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this, this community where you can network with other artists and link up, collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career.

Michael Walker:
So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now and sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing contents, connect with the community and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our, supporting the show. So don't miss it out, go sign up for free now and let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, yeah. That's so important and what comes to mind is as you're sharing that too, is because I think that what you're saying is so on point in terms of the numbers, it's not like the numbers don't mean anything. The numbers, they mean a lot. Numbers are representation of the amount of people that you're reaching and that you're impacting, but the only thing and what matters just as much is actually the depth of connection or the engagement. The real relationship that you have with those people. So maybe if there's a mathematical equation or a term, it would be "your impact equals the amount of people multiplied by the depth of connection that you have with those people."

Ryan Waczek:
Right.

Michael Walker:
Right. So you could have a thousand fans, but you completely changed their lives and your music is everything to them. And that could be way more powerful than a million fans that are basically bots or there's no real connection or no real relationship there.

Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely.

Michael Walker:
So let's zoom out a bit then because well, a couple of things I would love to dig into is because I think that you have such a healthy mindset in terms of looking at how musicians can think about Spotify in an authentic way and building organic campaigns that help boost that. Really taking it as a piece of the overall strategy. So I'd love to hear, to zoom out and see an overall framework or what your view at high level, what those steps are. But then also I'd love to hear specifically when it comes to Spotify what are some strategies that people can use that, does it in the right way, right? That does it in an authentic way that really is able to build a deep relationship with those people as much as possible, but is also able to give them a presence on this platform where like it or not, there are quite a few people who pay a lot attention to Spotify and those numbers are important.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah, definitely. So for me, there's really two ways to grow Spotify. Three ways I should say, right. There's always the organic content method and that works. That goes without saying, but organic content, I feel like is dismissed in the conversation a lot, but I do want to mention it because I almost dismissed it myself. Right. Organic content is the first way to grow by regularly posting on your social medias of choice and engaging with the people who are connected with you there. So that is first and foremost. But putting that aside, there are a couple of paid methods that can grow your Spotify faster. And the two are Facebook ads and Spotify playlists placements. And we've all heard of those before now. The difference between the two are almost night and day, right? The Facebook ads, you are marketing off platform and you're trying to transition those fans from one platform to another, right?

Ryan Waczek:
So for example, if you're running Facebook ads on Facebook, you're interrupting whatever scroll they're currently binging, right? And then you're trying to switch over to the Spotify app. So it's an app switch there. Playlist placements are in app marketing basically, right? So they are already on the Spotify platform. They are looking for music and if they choose a playlist and your music is on that playlist, then your music is the answer to their need for music in that moment. So those are two ways where they're basically opposites. And then also the effectiveness of the two marketing strategies are curiously different too. So if your goal is to get a lot of streams on a song, well Spotify playlists are the most cost effective way to do that. Right? Streams are cheaper and that's because there's no app transition and people are engaging already on the app in a big way.

Ryan Waczek:
Cost per stream is much cheaper with a Spotify playlist. Now moving over to Facebook ads because of that transition from one platform to another, the costs go up. It's just harder to do. That's a marketing truism where whenever you are trying to transition platform, it's just going to be more expensive because there is always drop off that your clickthrough rate is going to be dependent on the quality of that ad. There's so many more factors, but because of all those hoops that the visitor has to jump through to get to Spotify, they actually are a more engaged and higher quality visitor. And so you're more likely to get follows on your Spotify through using Facebook ads. And so, because they're so different, I recommend using both in conjunction because they kind of attack the same problem from two different angles. Spotify playlists are great for streams and Facebook ads are great for engagement and follows. Actual clicking the follow button on your profile and increasing that metric with real people, I should add.

Ryan Waczek:
And so working together, you really have a nice little combo. And the great thing too, is that they both can trigger the Spotify algorithm, which I think is the ultimate goal of Spotify marketing. If we go back to what I said earlier about the flow of fans, right? If you're using Facebook ads, you're trying to get your fans to flow onto the platform. But then if you trigger the algorithm, you don't really need that flow from another app anymore. Spotify is generating that traffic and those streams in app because of the Spotify algorithm playlist. And I think that's the ultimate goal because you don't have to pay extra to transition platforms. You don't really have to worry about the drop off involved. And in case a listener has never done Facebook ads drop off is when someone clicks on the ad, but then ever makes it to the destination.

Ryan Waczek:
And that increases your cost because you paid for that click, but you're not getting the marketing result that you want. And so I think the ultimate goal is to live in that in-app traffic space, where you are engaging the existing audience, that's already using the Spotify app. Either with third party playlists through getting great Spotify placements, and then eventually hopefully triggering the Spotify radio algorithm, release radar algorithm. All of these algorithms that are engaging the existing Spotify users, because it's honestly just more cost effective and easier to engage people who are already on the app in the first place. That's basically my mindset on that.

Michael Walker:
Oh yeah. Yeah. That's so good. Find this topic so interesting too. And a few things that you mentioned that I think are especially on point. When you talked about how it's ultimately, it's just going to be more difficult to transition someone from platform to a different platform. And what that reminds me of is sort of like Newton's laws of motion, an object in motion tends to remain in motion. So if someone's kind of currently in motion on Facebook and that's a platform they're scrolling through the newsfeed, it's going to take different type of energy. It's going to take... It's literally going to take friction to take them off of that platform. Because an object in motion tends to remain in motion in the same way. Versus when you're describing Spotify, they're already in that motion.

Michael Walker:
They're already on Spotify. They're already using the platform. So it's more streamlined. And one thing that the shameless plug, but actually it's not really a plug because it's not available for everyone yet. Depending on when you're listening to this. But when it comes to the advertising and getting people to Spotify from off platform, that's one of the reasons that we developed the street team software and the fan magnet, fan funnel. It was really to help with that process in terms of building their own audience, but having a more cost effect because really if you're paying for ads to get people off of Facebook, then the only thing that matters is how much does it cost you for them to take the action? And then how much are you earning per action that they take?

Michael Walker:
So if the action that you're getting them to take is to click off and go to Spotify, then the value that you get from that action is however many times that person ends up streaming the song based on them clicking. Which if they streamed it like 10 times, which is kind of a lot for a new person to go listen and they streamed 10 times but it's possible then that's still a few pennies.

Ryan Waczek:
Right.

Michael Walker:
Right. Versus if like, you were describing in terms of building your audience, having a mailing list. That the value of a subscriber on your mailing list is so much higher in terms of the earnings per person, that it can be a more cost effective way. If you're running ads and yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts on this too. But if you're running ads, would you recommend that people send traffic directly to Spotify or would you recommend that they have sort of a intermediary where they're growing their own contact list and then interfacing with Spotify from there? Or what are your general thoughts around that?

Ryan Waczek:
That's a really fantastic question. I think the answer is that you don't have to just choose one. You don't have to just have one Facebook campaign going, you could have multiple marketing goals that are running simultaneously. And so if one of your marketing goals is to grow Spotify then yeah. I think it's great to run traffic to Spotify. I would make sure that you're using some kind of tool like the street team app or some kind of tool that you can put your Facebook pixel on. And so you can start building your Facebook audiences in the background based off of the clicks. And it's a really important step that you definitely don't want to miss. But the funny thing though is that the cost to transition platforms is pretty much the same. What I've found is pretty much the same, regardless of what that destination is.

Ryan Waczek:
And I'll say it in a clearer way. What I've found is that if you're trying to get followers on Spotify and you're running ads to do that the cost per follower is a really similar cost to, or it's a really similar cost as the cost of getting an email subscriber, which is kind of funny. So the cost per follower could be 1, 2, $3 on Spotify, but it could also be 1, 2 or $3 to get an email list subscriber from Facebook ads as well. And so that's a really interesting choice to make. It's like okay, if let's say I have $3 to obtain an email subscriber or to obtain a Spotify follower, which one is more valuable in the long run. And that's a really interesting question. I tend to lean that the email subscriber is more valuable, especially if you're paying $3 to acquire that or $2 or $1. Whatever it ends up being in your marketing situation. At the end of the day, it's really hard to make these decisions because if your goal, if your number one goal is to grow Spotify and everything else is secondary, well, then it obviously makes sense to run ads to Spotify.

Ryan Waczek:
But if you're like me, and if you kind of believe in having that fan base backup, just like how you back up your files on your computer, right? And you do want to grow your mailing list and you do want to learn how to engage with them through storytelling. And you do want to eventually sell products and maybe pitch your Patreon membership or eventually sell that t-shirt or whatever it is, right. Then maybe the best thing to do in the long run is to actually build your list and spend that three to dollars on acquiring the mailing list subscriber instead. So it's a very interesting conversation, but at the end of the day you don't have to choose one. You can have two campaigns going and you can be growing your mailing list and you can be growing your Spotify followers at the same time.

Ryan Waczek:
And obviously we all don't have unlimited marketing budgets, but maybe it's a 70/30 thing or a 50/50 thing. It really depends on your goals and what is important to you. And that those goals can adjust and change. It's never set in stone. So, but it's a really great question that I thought a lot about. It's interesting how much more useful an email list subscriber can be compared to a Spotify follower where you can't message a Spotify follower. You can't really get them to buy anything and unless if you've activated the marque tool in Spotify, it's really hard to retarget your Spotify fans. So we're in a really interesting time. I really hope Spotify increases their just abilities to use in general. I really wish that they had more options for websites to link to in your bio.

Ryan Waczek:
I really wish that they had the ability to at least send some kind of message or some kind of notification. And they're kind of solving that with the marque tool, but it's only available to artists with 10,000 streams in the US per month, which disqualifies a lot of artists who are just starting out. So yeah. Spotify's in a weird place. It's not a very good marketing tool, even though it's a great app to listen to music on, we're kind of stuck in a pickle where we kind of have to grow that platform in a vacuum right now. And it's really hard to get people to flow in and out of Spotify. So yeah.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. I love this stuff. Yeah. That's super interesting. And yeah, I was a weird kid in high school. I like math. So when I see math equations, you were talking about the mathematical equation for measuring the amount of fans times the depth, but when it comes to paid tra... I think that's one of the reasons that I'm such a big fan of paid traffic is because it really is just like a big math equation. And when I say big math equation, it can seem really complicated, but really it's not that complicated. Right. It's just like two, it's two pieces of math. It's like, how much does it cost you to bring this person in? And how much are you earning per person that you bring in? Right.

Michael Walker:
That's the only two things that really matter. And so I think that's an interesting barometer to kind of look at the different platforms that you can drive traffic to. Right? Base of the bottom line is how much are you going to earn more sending someone directly to Spotify platform? Are you going to earn more sending them directly to your mailing list? And like you're describing, I think it's just night and day. That it's like you're going to earn much more per phone numbers slash email address that you have.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Of course need to actually do the work of connecting with those people and building something valuable for them and making offers that are actually valuable to them. But your ability to do that is just much more connected having a mailing list. And you can use that, like you described earlier you can use that mailing list, no matter what platform you want to be on, whether it's Spotify or Apple music, or Instagram or TikTok or MySpace. You have that audience that you can, as things evolve and as they change, you can bring them to whatever platform that you want to engage with them on from that point.

Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that it's also important to do a self check and to make sure that you're not using any single platform as a crutch for your career. And Spotify can definitely be that, Instagram can be that where you're... What I mean by a crutch where you're focusing just on the growth of that platform, not necessarily on the growth of your business, of your income, right? And so you can easily get in the mindset of "I'm just going to post more on Instagram. I'm just going to increase in followers. I'm going to engage more on that platform." But if you never learn the skills of storytelling, or if you never end up going through the product creation process, right. If you don't build this, the rest of your business surrounding your music then you can kind of get stuck in this hamster wheel of just platform maintenance and just engaging on one platform that's never actually bringing life to your music career.

Ryan Waczek:
And Spotify can be a crutch too. Where you're marketing on Spotify, you're paying for Facebook ads to grow it, or you're getting on Spotify playlists and getting more and more playlists, and more and more streams. And more and more ads, and more and more followers on Spotify is your number one goal. But at the end of the day, that can be a crutch too if you're not thinking of products to create. If you're not learning how to story, tell and create warm up content and engaging your fans in a way that can eventually lead to sales because sales are required for income. And so any platform can be a crutch like that.

Ryan Waczek:
And so that's also an important thing to realize when you're establishing your Spotify marketing plan. It's like, okay, how am I going to incorporate Spotify into my overall business goal? And one of your business goals can be to grow Spotify. That's fine. And just like how one of your business goals can be to increase follower count on Instagram. Those are all great goals, but don't forget about those income goals. Don't forget about revenue and product creation, and storytelling and engaging your fans. Most likely through mailing list, are extremely important too.

Michael Walker:
So good. Yep. Absolutely. So having had direct experience now, working with you and using the Spotify services that you offer, I would love to hear you talk a little bit about... Let's imagine that someone who's listening this right now, they've kind of built the infrastructure where they have some of the core business fundamentals, they have their mailing list. They're starting to engage on one of their social media platform and they have some traffic that's coming in. They're doing a good job, kind of with the initial foundation and their biggest thing now is they're like, "I would like to just boost my Spotify numbers in a way that's organic and authentic, but that's one piece of the equation that I haven't sort of figured out yet." Could you describe of the service that you guys, you created and how that works and what kind of sets it apart from maybe different types of things that are out there right now?

Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. So yeah, the service that we offer is a 100% organic influencer marketing based Spotify promotion service. That's the long name, right? And the reason that I emphasize all of those things are because they're, of course we all know about the pay to play and then the bots and then the fake numbers and the fake streams. And this is not that. It's influencer marketing, which is a completely in line with the Spotify terms of service method, to get more streams and to get more followers on your Spotify profile. And so basically the way that it works is we find the playlists that are organically ranking in the Spotify search results. And we specifically pitch and target those lists to place your music on. And there's a big reason why we really focus on just the playlists that rank in the Spotify search results.

Ryan Waczek:
And the reason for that is because if it is ranking for certain keywords, it's guaranteed that the listeners are engaged users on Spotify. And I'll paint a picture of this, if I get my song placed on a playlist called relaxing music, for example, and if I type in that term relaxing music, and that playlist is the first result, it's guaranteed to get clicks and streams. Not only that, but Spotify has a search algorithm to us like how Google does and YouTube. And so the way that the search algorithm works is that it rewards playlists that are full of engaged users that have great music, and it rewards them by putting them up in the rankings, by raising them up towards the top of the search results and then playlists that are not engaged and are... They're basically punished by pushing them down in the rankings too.

Ryan Waczek:
So we're using Spotify's own search ranking algorithm to hone in on the most valuable playlist on the platform. And it also guarantees that we're also getting some of the most engaged users on the platform. That's basically our philosophy. We have a playlist vetting procedure that we run through all of the playlists that we pitch too. And that includes things like looking at the growth metrics and chart metric, which is an advanced Spotify analytics software. And we look for all the red flags, like dips and followers because that's the sign of Spotify purging the bot accounts, right? So if a playlist has a massive dip on a single day, then we know, "Oh, shoot, this playlist was probably grown with bot accounts, and this is one to stay away from." And the funny thing is that Spotify does these bot purges kind of platform wise to on a single day.

Ryan Waczek:
And so you can kind of see in multiple playlists like, Oh yeah. If we just look on April 23rd, for example, that was the day of the Spotify bot purge and it's kind of funny to see, wow, all these playlists had a huge bot falling. And so that's one of the first things that we look for is a smooth with growth line. If a playlist is ranking first in a search result, it's getting followers on autopilot and that's just how SEO works. If you're visible and you're getting engagement every single day, you're going to get predictable growth and streams every single day. And if your music is on one of those playlists, that's how we can get predictable traffic and engagement on your songs. So that's basically our philosophy and how we structure our promotion campaigns and how we like to just ensure that things are done safely within the Spotify terms of service and gets a good result.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Man, I didn't even know some of the stuff that was involved with that. That's so interesting in terms of the purges that happened across all the different playlists. The one thing that I think you mentioned, but it's such an important thing, is that what you're doing is... Yeah, it's organic, it's real and it's within Spotify's terms of service, right. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what's the danger of some... Because I know personally quite a few musicians who have lost their songs on Spotify, essentially because they used a different service that maybe they didn't even realize was like a fake listener or a fake Spotify platform. So yeah. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that too.

Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I would encourage everyone to just read the Spotify terms of service themselves, because it's really good knowledge to have just as you're moving and waiting through the murky waters on Spotify. But basically there's two main points...

Michael Walker:
Ryan, I... Just one second. I am never going to read the Spotify terms of service, but that's why I love you and why I think you're so awesome. And it's so valuable to have people like you, so you can interpret those for me, because I'm never going to read the Spotify terms of service, but it is important.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah. Basically everyone, please get on my nerd level. No, just joking.

Michael Walker:
Everyone just listened to Ryan, is what I say. We need aggregators that we can trust that are able to interpret some of these things so that it is more accessible too.

Ryan Waczek:
Yeah. Well, actually that was a pretty good time to mention that I do have a couple of documents that I made. They're on the Indie Music Academy website specifically on the Spotify promotion page that you should check out. They're just simple Google docs, but they're almost like research papers that I've written with screenshots and analytics and in-depth case studies. And also I break down the Spotify terms of service and kind of organize it in a little more user friendly way. And those two Google docs are obviously they're just free to view you just click on the link and they just exist on the Spotify page right now. So definitely check that out if you want a user friendly version of all this information, but the two main points to remember about violating the Spotify terms of service are first and foremost, you don't want to use bots because Spotify calls that stream manipulation.

Ryan Waczek:
And so anything that uses a computer or uses some kind of server to artificially generate streams, that's definitely against the Spotify terms of service. And I'm not sure how Spotify decides the punishment, but there is always a risk in violating the terms of service. And so, as you mentioned, you definitely don't want to get your music taken down. I've also seen pretty scary screenshots of a Spotify removing followers from an artist profile. It's actually a really interesting graph where maybe you have a thousand followers and then in one day your followers go from 1000 to 200 because they just purged all of your fake accounts. And so if you are an artist who paid for those fake accounts, it's almost like, "Wow, what a total waste of money." Maybe you were like, "Oh well. I know they're fake, but I'll use this to get a booking" or "I'll use this for some other purpose", right.

Ryan Waczek:
But at the end of the day, it's not going to last. And even though maybe for a specific goal, it might have been worth it at the time. It's not going to be worth it once Spotify takes it away, you'll just be paying for something that won't exist anymore. That's the first part of the terms of service. And the second part is that it's actually against the Spotify terms of service to pay to get on a specific playlist. And that's an interesting thing that we structure our business to actually make it in line with the terms of service. So I'll paint a picture. If you really like a playlist, if you discover a playlist that's a perfect fit for your music, maybe that's through DMing someone on Instagram or through another service. If you actually pay that playlist owner for a placement that's against the Spotify terms.

Ryan Waczek:
And so as a Spotify promotion agency, we step in as your ambassador and as your promotion manager. And we actually do the pitching on your behalf. And here's a super important thing that makes us in line with the terms of service, we actually don't pay for any particular playlist. What we do is we pitch to the influencer and the influencer decides the final destination of the song, that's the best fit it for your music. So we actually do not pick any particular playlist. What we do is find an influencer that has many playlists, that has a huge following on Spotify because that's their thing. That's the one thing that they're experts in, right? And one of those things that they're experts in is staying at the top of the Spotify search rankings, because that's their thing. They just, they live and breathe Spotify playlists.

Ryan Waczek:
And so what we do is we secure the relationship, but the influencer decides which one of their many playlists, your song best lives on because as the curator and as the owner of their own playlists at the end of the day, they're the experts and they want their playlists to be fantastic listening experiences. And so that's how we stay in line in the Spotify terms of service which we're very transparent about that. We have all of this information publicly facing on our Spotify page.

Ryan Waczek:
And yeah, we're just very proud of how well it works for artists and how we're able to just get these songs in some of the most valuable playlists on Spotify. Because at the end of the day, if a playlist is nowhere to be found, if it's in the bottom of the search rankings, if there's literally no physical way to discover that playlist on the Spotify app, it's not really a valuable playlist to get on. And then that also makes me question, how are those plays being generated if it's really hard to find the playlist and are you having to pump some kind of low quality ads onto there, or are you using bots or engagement schemes? And so we try to eliminate just all of those questions entirely by focusing just on the high ranking playlist that Spotify is already rewarding in the search results.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Yeah, that's totally makes sense. And yeah, I really appreciate you. And what you guys to do, I think in terms of the landscape, because as musicians, especially right, we have... Part of the reason that we make music is because it reflects who we are and it feels very personal and because of that, I think that a lot of us... It's really... One of our biggest fears is our music being totally unappreciated or putting it out and there's zero listeners. Therefore it's so easy to fall prey to some schemes that are sort of like get more playlist streams or get more views. And even if they're not necessarily long term building a real relationship. So that's where I really appreciate your transparency around looking at Spotify as a holistic approach to their business and doing it in the right way, in a way that's not going to get their account banned, but actually is a part of a bigger music career. So I think it's awesome. So yeah, man. Thank you for taking the time to talk today and walk through all this stuff.

Ryan Waczek:
Pleasure.

Michael Walker:
And for anyone who's listening or watch this right now, who wants to learn more. Or you talked about those free documents and anyone you might be interested in Spotify promotion, what's best place for them to go to learn more?

Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. Yeah. So the website is called IndieMusicAcademy.com. That's I-N-D-I-E Music Academy. And you can navigate directly there, throw it into the Google search. And there's a lot of, first of all, there's a lot of free stuff. If you're interested in learning music marketing, if you want to get a free workshop, I also have free song release checklists and all kinds of just very useful things available. Just my free gift to you for just checking out the website and for listening to this podcast too. And if you want to check out the Spotify specific stuff, there is a link on the website called music promotion, and that'll take you to our done for you music promotion services, just like the Spotify campaigns that we've been talking about all this time. And so that's the link that you'll find all those case studies and free research, Google documents that I've put together with the screenshots at the analytics and our philosophies and stuff like that.

Ryan Waczek:
That's really useful. You can also sign a campaign there and amongst many other things. And we also have a training link for our more formal music marketing trainings. And that's definitely a place you'll want to go if one of your goals is to understand all the mysteries behind the music industry regarding royalty collection, music copyright, all of that stuff. We have on that. And we also have trainings on engaging your fan base. We have a training on storytelling and we have a training on even how to write better songs. So all of that is available at the Indie Music Academy website. And if you have any questions, just feel free to reach out to me. And I'd love to answer any question you might have and yeah. Thanks for your time, Michael.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, man. Thanks for being here and doing what you do. Again, the fact that you've done the work for so many of us when it comes to reading Spotify's terms of service, royalty collection and kind of demystifying it. I think it's so important to have also someone that is looking it that is trustworthy and transparent about the things. Super valuable. So I appreciate you. And like always we'll put all the links to everything in the description, so you can go have easy access to check it out and yeah, until next time.

Ryan Waczek:
Thanks so much my friend. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at its episode. Make sure to check out the show notes, to learn more about their guests today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First if you hit subscribe, then that will make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends, on your social media tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take the music career to the next level. The time to be a modern musicians now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.