Start here before you spend money

1. Claim and clean up Spotify for Artists. Confirm the correct artist profile, artwork, bio, links and release mapping.
2. Pitch every eligible unreleased track that deserves a campaign. Spotify’s editorial pitching tool is free. Submitting at least seven days before release also gives the selected song a path into your followers’ Release Radar.
3. Give people a reason to follow. Put a clear Spotify follow/profile link on your website, release pages and relevant social posts.
4. Use Artist Pick and profile surfaces. Point first-time visitors toward the release, playlist, event or catalog entry that best represents what you want them to hear next.
5. Turn on Fan Support if it is available to your account and market. Spotify says it does not take a cut of contributions; the connected payment provider may have its own fees.
6. Connect Shopify if you already have appropriate merch. Do not invent a merch business merely because the integration exists. Start with products that already make sense.
7. Check whether full-length video upload is available. Spotify began rolling direct full-length music-video uploads through Spotify for Artists in beta in 2026.
8. Only then evaluate Discovery Mode, Marquee, Showcase or Spotify Ads Manager. They solve different promotion problems and have different economics, targeting options or eligibility requirements.

Five ways Spotify can contribute to artist income

There is also a sixth business effect: Spotify can introduce listeners to an artist who later joins an email list, visits a website, buys a separate product or hires the creator. That is not Spotify revenue, but it can be more valuable than the stream itself.

1. Streaming royalties: stop thinking in a fixed “per-stream rate”

Spotify says it does not pay artists a universal fixed amount for each stream. It allocates recording and publishing royalties using streamshare, then pays eligible rightsholders. What an artist or songwriter ultimately receives depends on the applicable distributor, label, publisher, collection society and other agreements.

Spotify’s current recorded-music eligibility rules also matter. A track must reach at least 1,000 streams during the previous 12 months and meet a minimum unique-listener threshold that Spotify does not publicly disclose before it is included in the recorded-music royalty pool.

Spotify’s royalties guide · Track monetization eligibility

2. Free Spotify promotion: use this before paid campaigns

3. Discovery Mode: no upfront media spend, but not free money

Discovery Mode lets eligible artist teams identify music they want Spotify to prioritize for consideration in eligible personalized recommendation contexts. There is no upfront campaign budget, but Spotify applies a commission to recording royalties generated from streams that occur in Discovery Mode contexts.

That makes Discovery Mode economically different from a normal ad buy. You are trading part of the recording royalty generated in those contexts for potential additional recommendation exposure. Placement is not guaranteed and listener response still matters.

Spotify Campaign Kit

4. Marquee vs. Showcase: Spotify’s paid display campaigns

For display campaigns, Spotify currently requires an artist team to be based in a supported market such as Canada and to have at least 1,000 streams in the previous 28 days in at least one target market. Marquee has an additional threshold of at least 5,000 monthly active listeners in the selected target market. Current display-campaign budgets begin at approximately $100 USD equivalent.

Display campaign eligibility · Campaign budgeting

5. Spotify Ads Manager: paid reach beyond Marquee and Showcase

Spotify also promotes music through Spotify Ads Manager, where artists and teams can run audio or video advertising to Spotify listeners. This is a conventional paid-media option rather than a royalty-tradeoff tool like Discovery Mode or an in-app display campaign like Marquee and Showcase.

Use Ads Manager when you have a clear audience, creative asset, destination and measurement plan. Do not treat paid impressions as proof that a song is building fans; judge the campaign by what qualified listeners do next.

Spotify: Promoting your music

6. Spotify + Shopify: sell around the music, not just the stream

This is one of Spotify’s most important non-royalty tools for independent artists who already operate a store. Spotify for Artists can connect to Shopify and publish eligible merchandise into the Spotify artist experience.

Spotify says artists can publish up to 250 Shopify items to Spotify. Merch can be associated with releases and surfaced across areas such as the artist profile, release pages and the Now Playing experience.

Spotify’s merch guide

7. Fan Support: a direct support option

Fan Support allows eligible artists to connect an approved external fundraising or support destination to the Spotify artist profile. Spotify says it takes no cut of the contribution. The payment provider may charge its own fees, and availability can depend on market and account eligibility.

Spotify Fan Support overview

8. Concerts and ticketing

Spotify can surface eligible live events through supported ticketing partners and listener-facing discovery experiences. The ticket sale itself is handled by the connected ticketing provider, but Spotify can help put the event in front of people already listening to the artist.

For artists who perform, this creates a useful chain: listener → artist profile → event discovery → ticketing partner.

9. Full-length music videos: a new 2026 revenue and discovery layer

In June 2026 Spotify announced beta access for direct full-length video uploads through Spotify for Artists. Eligible artists can upload official music videos, performances, studio sessions, covers and other supported full-length music video.

Spotify says these videos are royalty-bearing and can be chart-eligible. Access is being rolled out gradually, so do not assume every artist account has the feature yet.

Spotify: Upload full-length videos

What about Spotify embeds on your own website?

A Spotify embed is useful, but it is not an affiliate program. If you embed somebody else’s track as a genre or production example, you do not earn their Spotify royalty.

If the best example is legitimately one of your own tracks, using your own Spotify release can make the educational page do two jobs: teach the reader and create a path into your catalog. The larger opportunity is often what sits under the embed.

Do not confuse promotion with artificial streaming

Spotify explicitly warns against services that guarantee streams and against paid services that guarantee playlist placement. Artificial streaming can lead to corrected counts, withheld royalties, playlist removal and action by distributors.

Use promotion you can explain: real listeners, real targeting, transparent campaign tools and traceable traffic.

Spotify’s artificial-streaming guidance

Which Spotify tool fits which goal?

The order I would use

1. Fix Spotify for Artists setup and profile identity.
2. Pitch every eligible release worth pitching.
3. Add Spotify follow/profile links to your own relevant pages.
4. Activate Fan Support if available and appropriate.
5. Connect existing Shopify merch if you already have a real merch offer.
6. Use your own music as website examples when it genuinely fits the lesson.
7. Check full-length video access.
8. Evaluate Discovery Mode track by track.
9. Spend on Marquee or Showcase only when you meet the eligibility threshold and have a specific campaign reason.
10. Use Spotify Ads Manager only when you can define the audience, creative, destination and success metric before spending.

Reviewed September 17, 2026 against current Spotify for Artists and Spotify Support guidance. Feature access, eligibility, supported markets, campaign thresholds and payment terms can change. Check the linked Spotify documentation and your own Spotify for Artists account before spending money or planning a release around a specific feature.