Understanding the Spotify For Artists Dashboard

A brief overview of the different sections within the Spotify For Artists Dashboard.

The Spotify for Artists Dashboard

Spotify for Artists is the easiest way to manage your presence and get to know your fans.

All artists can access the Spotify for Artists Dashboard. Using the dashboard is one of the most effective ways to measure your marketing efforts.

The Spotify for Artists Dashboard is made up of four components: Home, Music, Audience, and Profile.

We'll briefly dive into each below.

Home

The Home section provides artists with a snapshot of their Spotify presence.

They can see how many fans are currently listening to their music in that very moment.They can see the latest blog posts from Spotify. They can see their Last 7 days stats for listeners, streams, and followers. They can see their top 3 songs by streams. And they can see the top 3 playlists their music is being streamed from.

Music

The Music section of Spotify for Artists provides you with information about specific tracks. You can learn the following at the song-level here:

• How many listeners have listened

• How many streams occurred

• How many times the song got saved

• What sources your streams are coming from

• The top countries your fans are streaming from

• The top cities your fans are streaming from

• The playlists your song is on

This is where artists can determine their "Save Rate" or "Saves to Listeners" ratio in this section. The biggest advantage the Music section has at the moment is that you can use custom date ranges.

This is also where you can pitch Spotify's editorial team for playlist placement.

Audience

The Audience section of Spotify for Artists provides you with information about your entire catalog.

You can learn the following artist-level:

• How many listeners have listened

• How many streams occurred

• How many followers gained

• Gender breakdown of your listeners

• Age breakdown of your listeners

• What sources your streams are coming from

• Other artists your fans are listening to

• The top countries your fans are streaming from

• The top cities your fans are streaming from

This is the best place to track your Spotify follower growth. You can watch a video on how to do so here:

Profile

Your artist profile is your homepage on Spotify. It’s where all your music lives. It’s also where fans can discover more about what’s happening with you—hear your newest releases, dig deeper with one of your playlists, find out where you’re touring, even buy your latest merch.

You can learn more about how to customize your profile here.

Why Spotify Followers Matter

Spotify Followers are not a vanity metric, but a distribution channel.

Followers are listeners who hit follow or ❤ on your artist profile.

Followers get your new music in their Release Radar playlist and in their personalized new release emails.

They also hear about your upcoming concerts in our concert recommendation emails, on the homescreen of their Spotify app, and on their concerts page which features a list of upcoming concerts in their area.

Increases in your followers and a strong "saves-to-listeners" ratio up your odds of placement in Spotify’s Algorithmic Playlists.

This results in higher stream counts and more new followers over time because your music is organically placed in front of more fans for discovery. Sustained spending on Instagram Story Ads through ToneDen’s Spotify Growth Playbook ensures your Spotify following and inclusion within Spotify’s Algorithmic Playlists grows.

Algorithms know that something that spikes almost always falls soon afterward—which isn’t a good return on investment. Your investment is much better spent on slowly and steadily building and retaining your audience.

In this video, we'll cover why Spotify followers are important and how Spotify uses follower data to better distribute your music via Spotify's algorithmic and editorial playlists:

Saves and the Saves to Listeners Ratio

One of the biggest sources of streams is from Saves.

Saves are the total number of times listeners on Spotify have saved your music. This can happen in one of two ways:

• They hit + or ❤ to save your music to their library & favorites.

• They add your music to one of their playlists

You can go to Songs in Spotify for Artists to see the number of times each of your songs have been saved.

The Saves to Listeners Ratio or Save Rate is the number of users who have saved a song relative to those who have listened to the song.

For example, your Save Rate is 30% if 300 people save a song after 1,000 people listen to it.

This is one of the most important metrics that Spotify looks at when evaluating a song.

A high Save Rate or Saves to Listeners ratio improves your chances of your song being selected by the Spotify Editorial team.

You can watch a video overview of Why The “Saves to Listeners Ratio” Matters & Why Spotify Saves Are Important here:

Source of Streams: Explained

Different stream sources on Spotify play a vital role in how new fans discover your music and how current fans continue to stream your music.

Your Profile and Catalog

These are streams from one of your profiles or direct releases. A few examples of these streams include:

• Typing an artist name into Spotify and streaming a song from their profile

• Typing an song name into Spotify and streaming from the song name

• Streaming a song from an artist profile or song page after clicking on a smart link

• Streaming a song from an artist profile or song page after clicking on a link on an external website

Listener's own playlists and library

These are streams that come from a user's personal playlists. A few examples of these streams include:

• Streaming a song on your "Liked Songs" playlist (Saves) on Spotify

• Streaming a song from a personal playlist you've created

Other listener's playlists

These are streams from another listener's personal playlist. An example of this stream includes:

• My friend made a playlist called Workout Music and included one of your songs. I streamed your song while listening to his playlist.

Spotify editorial playlists

These are streams from playlists made by Spotify's editors. An example of this stream includes:

• Your song gets placed on New Music Friday. I streamed your song while listening to this playlist.

Spotify algorithmic playlists

These are streams from playlists made by Spotify's algorithms. An example of this stream includes:

• Streams that come from fans who listen to your music on Discover Weekly.

• Streams that come from fans who listen to your music on Release Radar.

• Streams that come from fans who listen to your music on your Daily Mix.

• Streams that come from fans who listen to your music on On Repeat and On Repeat Rewind.

• Streams that come from fans who listen to your music on Spotify Radar.

Other

These are streams from smart speakers, TVs, and wearables.

In this video, we'll cover Spotify's various stream sources and how they influence the discovery and promotion of your music within Spotify's ecosystem: