How to get more monthly listeners on Spotify

Monthly listeners is the number under your name on Spotify, and the one most artists check first. It moves for clear reasons: how often you release, how many people follow you, how many come back to a song after the first play, and how many arrive from playlists and posts. This guide goes through each of those and what you can do about it.

What monthly listeners counts

Monthly listeners is the number of different people who played at least one of your songs over the last 28 days. One person playing your song 50 times is one listener. The window rolls forward every day, so a listener from five weeks ago drops out unless they come back.

That is why the number climbs around a release and drifts down after it. Spotify for Artists shows more detail than the public number: its audience segments split your listeners into monthly active listeners (people who chose your music in the past 28 days, from your profile, your release pages or their own library and playlists), previously active listeners and programmed listeners, who have heard you on playlists, radio and autoplay.

Both kinds count toward monthly listeners. The difference is how long they stay. A playlist can bring a wave of programmed listeners that leaves when the song rotates off. Listeners who follow you, save your songs and come back on their own are the ones that hold the number up between releases.

Release regularly

Every release is a new reason for Spotify to put your name in front of people. Your followers get it in their Release Radar, your profile shows something new, and the song starts its own life in the algorithmic playlists. Long gaps between releases let the 28-day window empty out.

A steady run of singles, each given its own moment, usually does more for the number than one large release followed by silence. It also builds a catalog: a new listener who likes one song has more of yours to play next, which turns a single visit into a habit. Our guide to singles, EPs and albums covers how to shape a run of releases.

Turn listeners into followers

A follow is a standing invitation to hear your next release. Spotify says that listeners are 3 times more likely to stream an artist's music in the 6 months after following them, and followers get your new music through personalized playlists like Release Radar and the What's New feed.

Ask for the follow, plainly, wherever people hear you: in posts, at shows, in your bio, on the page a pre-save link leads to. When you pitch a song in Spotify for Artists at least 7 days before release, Spotify adds it to your followers' Release Radar. The Release Radar guide explains how that playlist fills, and turning listeners into followers goes further into the follow itself.

Saves, playlist adds and repeat plays

Spotify's personalized playlists, Discover Weekly, Radio and the rest, are built by algorithms that look at what people listen to, when, and which songs they add to their own playlists, along with the habits of people with similar taste. A listener who saves your song, adds it to a playlist or plays it again is telling Spotify the song is worth hearing.

That signal is what carries a song past the people who already know you. It is why the first weeks of a release matter: the listeners you bring in early shape who Spotify plays the song to next. Asking fans to save the song, beyond playing it once, is one of the most useful things you can say on release day. Our guides to Discover Weekly and the Spotify algorithm go into how this works.

Editorial and listener playlists

Spotify's editors build thousands of playlists by genre, mood and culture, and the official way to reach them is a pitch from Spotify for Artists before the song is out. A thoughtful pitch with real detail about the song gives the editors something to work with. The editorial pitch guide covers how pitching works and why timing matters.

Listener playlists matter too. Spotify notes that the playlists fans make show how your music resonates and can influence other playlists. Fans, friends, other artists and curators in your scene adding your song to their playlists all count, and each add feeds the algorithm as well.

Posts that send people to the song

Most new listeners find a song somewhere other than Spotify: a short video, a story, a friend's share. Posts work best when the song is in them, playing, with the link one step away. A clip of the hook, the story behind a lyric, a moment from the studio: each gives someone a reason to go and listen.

Timing counts here as much as content. Posts in the weeks before release build interest and pre-saves, posts around release day send people to the song while it is new, and posts in the weeks after keep it moving while the algorithmic playlists are deciding where it goes. Our music promotion guide goes through each channel.

Where Audora runs these steps

Each of the moves above has a right moment around a release, and Audora gives each one its date. What every track gets shows the full release; for monthly listeners, these are the parts that matter most:

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• every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers, and Audora dates the release to give the editors time;
• your own moves (your pitch in Spotify for Artists, the pre-save, the Canvas) come up on the release's calendar on the day they matter;
• a promotion campaign is planned around the release, with every post written in your voice, the caption, hashtags and the picture or video it needs, and you approve what goes out;
• every playlist your song is on is shown back to you, editorial, algorithmic and listener-made, alongside plays and saves from the stores' own reporting.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram (Stories included) and Facebook Pages post automatically, and nothing goes out until you approve it. Stories carry no link sticker, so your release link goes in your bio.

The exact steps for your release, dated to your release day, are in your Audora account. Audora keeps adjusting them as it learns what works best for its artists, adding steps, dropping others and moving them earlier or later. Start with the guide to getting more listeners for how all of this fits together.