#185: My Journey to 10,000 Monthly Listeners - What Actually Works?

In this episode of Inside The Mix, host Marc Matthews takes listeners behind the scenes on his journey to reaching 10,000 monthly Spotify listeners in 2025. Reflecting on his experiences as an independent artist, Marc shares both the wins and the challenges of learning what is music marketing and how to release music independently while maintaining creative authenticity.

Starting with just 300 listeners, Marc’s breakthrough came with releasing his single Waves, reigniting his passion for sharing music with the world. He breaks down the music marketing strategies that helped him grow, from leveraging SubmitHub and social media engagement to experimenting with ad spending. He also discusses how to release your own music effectively, emphasizing the importance of strategic planning, outreach to radio stations and blogs, and the power of a waterfall release strategy to maximize listener engagement.

What You’ll Learn:

• What is music marketing and why it matters for independent artists
• How Marc grew from 300 to 1,700 monthly listeners on Spotify
• The role of SubmitHub, social media, and paid advertising in music promotion
• How to release your own music with a structured launch strategy
• The benefits of a waterfall release strategy for long-term listener growth
• Insights on pitching to radio stations, blogs, and playlist curators
• The highs and lows of promoting music independently

Join Marc as he navigates the realities of independent music promotion, shares his future plans for audience growth, and inspires fellow artists to take charge of their music careers. 

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned artist, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you release music independently and market it effectively. Tune in now!

Links mentioned in this episode:

Got a question? I’d love to hear from you! Submit a question, share your social media handles or website, and get featured in a future episode. Plus, one lucky question will win a Starbucks voucher each month!

Chapters

• 1:29 Introducing My 2025 Goals
• 1:27:30 Analyzing My Releases Strategy
• 16:17:57 Future Plans and Takeaways

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:36

Here's what I'm going to focus on going forward. I'm going to stick to a six-week release cadence. Consistency is key. Of course, the production quality also needs to be key as well. So if I don't feel like the production is up to scratch, I won't be releasing it, but I'm going to stick, where possible, to that six-week release cadence.

Marc Matthews: 0:56

You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. If you are a new listener, make sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe and give it a thumbs up if you like it as well, that would be nice. And if you are a returning listener, as always, a huge welcome back Before I dive into this episode, if you have a question that you would like myself and Tim Benson to answer on the podcast, click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description.

Marc Matthews: 1:46

You don't need a SpeakPipe account, you don't need a fancy setup. It's like sending an audio message Record up to 30 seconds, something along the lines of hey, it's XYZ. My question for Mark and Tim is and also give yourself a shout out as well, and then we'll feature it in an episode. So click that speak pipe link and share your questions with us. If you want an example of how this plays out, check out episode 175.

Marc Matthews: 2:11

So I've been looking forward to doing this episode for quite a while now, and this is a reflection episode on one of my goals for 2025. So it's kind of like my journey and what I've experienced so far. So one of my goals for 2025. So it's kind of like my journey and what I've experienced so far. So one of my goals this year was to hit 10,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Now, really, I'm not starting from zero. I've got. At the time of me setting this goal, I think it was around 300 monthly listeners. I hadn't really released anything for about a year or so and I hadn't really done anything in terms of promotion for my own music. So I'm going to go through this and I'm going to break down my experience so far. Now we're only at the point of recording this. It's the 23rd of February, so we're not far into 2025. So I'm going to go through things that have worked well for me so far and what could be better, and I'll also share the key takeaways at the end. So this is going to be great.

Marc Matthews: 3:02

If you're feeling stuck in your music release strategy Now, I'm not an expert on this by any stretch. This is just what I've experienced so far, what I've done, what has worked well, what hasn't worked well and what I'm going to do going forward as a result. So, again, not an expert on this. This is just my reflection on what I've done to date to try and hit this goal of 10,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. So if you're an indie artist or producer looking to grow your audience and make smarter release decisions, this could well be for you, so let's dive into this one.

Marc Matthews: 3:34

So this journey started with Waves the release of Waves my single in 2024. Waves the release of Waves my single in 2024. And that was in November, and it really kickstarted my desire to push my own music and release more music of my own going into 2025. And ultimately, this goal of 10,000 monthly listeners. I like to give myself targets and something to aim for, so this was one of mine for 2025. So I started by investing £50 in SubmitHub and submitted the song to various playlist curators, got about a 50% return on that, which I thought was quite good. Overall, the feedback was really really good in terms of production. It was just it's progressive half, so it's six and a half minutes, and it just didn't fit into several playlists that I submitted to, and there were also comments with regards to the melodic line of the track and I've taken that on board and it's something I'm going to think about in future releases. But I was happy with the return on that investment on SubmitHub because I noticed it did help then push me forward in terms of those just listeners and streams for that initial release sort of week or two. So overall I was happy with the return on SubmitHub.

Marc Matthews: 4:41

As part of this release, I didn't invest any money in online advertising so meta adverts on Facebook and Instagram, which I had done before, so I didn't do any of that this time In 2024, I did invest some money and effort and time into learning more about Facebook advertising and advertising using the meta platform. So going forward something to consider Didn't do it in this particular release. I also didn't actually reach out to any blogs or radio stations at all post-release. Now it did come out around December and I think in my head I sort of psyched myself out thinking, oh, no one's going to be interested in this new release, it's all going to be about Christmas music around this time. So I didn't actually do any outreach whatsoever other than uploading it to BBC Introducing and it did get featured. It got played on BBC Introducing in the southwest, which was cool, but otherwise no paid advertising and also no outreach to radio stations, blogs, webzines, anything like that at all.

Marc Matthews: 5:37

For this release I did have a social media pre-release strategy of sorts and it was really centered around engagement and getting feedback from followers on mainly on Instagram, a few on YouTube as well, with YouTube posts and just getting feedback, and also through my mailing list as well. I forgot about that on feedback on the artwork itself, and having mailing list subscribers and followers on YouTube helped me decide on the artwork itself, and having mailing list subscribers and followers on YouTube helped me decide on the artwork, which was really cool. Got a lot of engagement from that and then post release. I think I did one release post, maybe two, and that was pretty much it. So there wasn't really much of a post release strategy on any social media platform whatsoever. I didn't release a music video either on YouTube Not something I'm focusing on really at the moment, maybe in the future.

Marc Matthews: 6:26

But again, just to summarise, there was a sort of pre-release strategy on social media, but there really wasn't anything post-release. It was kind of like on the day of release it was a user-generated content of me hey, this is my release, you might like it, xyz. And then that was pretty much it. And then I actually I do have a highlight on Instagram where I've got some stories where it's been shared on playlists etc and feedback, but apart from that, nothing really, to be honest. So it was a bit weak. I say a bit. It was quite weak really in terms of social media strategy now, in terms of monthly listeners strategy. Now, in terms of monthly listeners on Spotify, I did get up to around 3,000, if memory serves, and I think that was mainly due to my Christmas Baby Please Come Home cover that I released two or three years ago, and then you get that festive bump basically when it's then just suddenly at the top of the pile due to it being Christmas, right. So I'm going to attribute that possibly to a bulk of those monthly listeners because, having gone through the strategy I employed for this release, I really fell short, I think, in what in in terms of what I could do.

Marc Matthews: 7:38

I'm thinking at the time I really just wanted to release some music because I hadn't really released anything, I think, for about a year, and I really just wanted to release some music because I hadn't really released anything, I think, for about a year, and I was just itching to get something out there. So I kind of got it to a really good level. I was happy with the production, the mixing, the mastering, got it released, but then didn't really have a plan. So it kind of performed okay, considering I didn't really have a plan. But I knew that the next release I was going to have to level it up slightly, if not a lot, to then hit my goal of 10,000 monthly listeners. So this is where my next release comes in and that is Separation, which was released at the end of January. So let's dive into my thoughts and reflections on that release.

Marc Matthews: 8:15

So, again, I invested £50 in SubmitHub and this time the response was OK. I think I got about 25-30%, so it was moderate. I managed to get on the playlist I got on before, which was cool. So I've now created a list of playlists on SubmitHub that I can submit to, knowing that there's a good chance I'm going to get featured so long as I'm still in this sort of progressive house, melodic house, deep house phase that I'm in at the moment. But overall the playlist curator feedback was very, very good, but at the same time it wasn't playlisted as much as waves, which is interesting because overall I think the production is better on separation, but maybe it's just the actual arrangement. Something to consider. Again, I think it came down to this one. Not necessarily the melodic line, but I think it was more to do with the arp wasn't really to some taste and also the vocal was quite repetitive in it. I say quite, it is very repetitive in separation. But overall I was relatively happy with the return on submit hub or in submit hub. So something I'm going to take forward and I'll continue to do.

Marc Matthews: 9:28

Moving on to my social media strategy, I won't lie, I think it was even worse this time. I didn't really do anything in terms of pre-release or post-release just a few stories and the occasional reel, and I think I did a post with regards to the artwork and there might have been some user-generated content thrown in there somewhere but really really dropped the ball on a social media strategy and it's something I need to refine, I think, going forward and actually have a plan, and I think, because I didn't have a plan and actually map out what I wanted to do and then probably just batch record some content, I just fell off the wagon. Really, I wasn't even on the wagon, to be honest, so I couldn't really fall off it. So it's something I definitely need to refine a lot for the next release. However, I did experiment with ad spend on Facebook and Instagram, notably on Stories and Reels Facebook and Instagram, notably on stories and reels. So I got rid of any other placements that weren't conducive to what I wanted to do, because you can go in and manually do it basically. But I did a broad targeting campaign, so I didn't specify any interests whatsoever and I used the traffic campaign objective and I targeted listeners in the locations of my top listeners on Spotify, which I believe United States, uk, canada, australia and possibly Germany, over the course of three weeks I had an average of 7p per link click. After the first couple weeks I removed the United States because it was the most expensive cost per click and I had pretty good engagement as well A few shares, some comments as well, and a lot of likes and hearts and everything else in between.

Marc Matthews: 11:09

And if you're interested in the video itself, if you go over to YouTube now and watch this video, I will post it on screen so you can see it as I'm talking. So it's a really short video. I think it was about five seconds in total. One thing I would do differently and somebody did comment on the video itself I would actually have the music, the song, in the background of the video, which is not what I did. It is literally just me talking and then explaining if you like this, then you might like this, but didn't actually have the video in the back, the music in the background of the video. But I was happy with the cost per click over the course of three weeks and also it was rated as good in terms of content High performing, that's the phrase I was looking for. It was rated as high performing, so something I will definitely do again.

Marc Matthews: 11:57

This time I did actually reach out to radio stations and some blogs as well. Bbc Introducing got featured on there again. So this time I used ChatGPT as my tool here and I put in a prompt, a more detailed prompt than what I'm going to explain now, but basically I wanted it to return radio stations with contact details related to melodic, house, dance music, electronic music in the United States, in the UK and in Australia as well, and, to be honest with you, I didn't get any feedback whatsoever from any of them Now, albeit I think I only reached out to about 15. I did get on Amazing Radio, though. I mean, amazing Radio is slightly different. You upload your track and then it gets streamed, it gets playlisted, basically, and so far it's been played every day, which is really, really cool. But the responses from all the others it's just been crickets. It may have got played, I don't know, but it has been crickets for the other ones. So I'm going to continue to develop that database and I will continue to outreach, because it may well be getting played. They just might not have let me know, or it may well have just gone to spam, but I'm going to continue to build that database of radio stations across the key locations for my listeners, because it could have been beneficial. I just may not have known, or it just went to spam, as I said. Who knows? But go on. Bbc Introducing I've got some regular rotation on Amazing Radio as well, which is pretty cool.

Marc Matthews: 13:24

Now the actual release strategy for Separation is linked to Wave, so I'm using the waterfall release strategy, the idea being every release is building up to an EP. So I'm re-releasing the previous song using the same ISRC code, basically using DistroKid, the idea being it will shine a light on that previous release, which it kind of did. I noticed a small bump in streams for waves when separation was released, which is pretty cool, and I'll do the same again with the next release. So waves was released on its own, separation was released with waves, and then the next release is going to be released with both waves and separation. If you're interested in the waterfall release strategy, there is a blog post I put out last year with regards to this, so you can click the link in the episode description and you can find that the idea is in doing this. There's a cascade of releases building up to an EP. Now you want them linked, right? The idea here is that it's going to shine a light on previous releases. So it kind of did and I think I'll see this hopefully more with the next release. So again, if you're interested in the waterfall release strategy, do check out that blog post and I may release a video in the future of me going through this process with my next release. We'll see what happens, but yes, that was my strategy and I noticed a small bump in streams and saves and playlist ads for Waves at the time of the release of Separation.

Marc Matthews: 14:51

Now let's look at the results of my reflection of those two releases. In the first 28 days, separation almost tripled the streams of Waves on Spotify. It surpassed Waves' total streams in just a few weeks. Spotify radio started pushing my back catalog as well. I'm seeing more exposure for my other songs and just more streams in general. From that and as of February the 23rd when I'm recording this, my monthly listeners have hit nearly 1600 listeners, which is a 322% increase from the previous month. Small fry right, small numbers, but at this growth rate I'm on track to smash my 10k listener goal in 2025.

Marc Matthews: 15:32

So what are my next steps? Here's what I'm going to focus on going forward, I'm going to stick to a six week release cadence. Consistency is key. Of course, the production quality also needs to be key as well. So if I don't feel like the production is up to scratch, I won't be releasing it, but I'm going to stick, where possible, to that six week release cadence. I'm going to analyze my ad spend, because I paused the ads after three weeks to assess the real effect on listeners and streams. So we'll see what happens there.

Marc Matthews: 16:04

I'm going to continue the waterfall release strategy. The small boost in catalog streams I think is worth building on. I'm going to expand radio outreach. I'm going to get. I'm going to dedicate more time to building a database of radio stations and I'm going to also improve my pitch, because something's falling flat there. It's not, it's not landing, so I'm going to look and refine that. I'm going to maintain my submit hub investment as well. It's a bit hit or miss, but I'm still finding it useful and I think this is important.

Marc Matthews: 16:33

I'm going to plan a proper social media pre-release and post-release strategy, as this has been significantly weak.

Marc Matthews: 16:42

I think it's time to fix it and it'd be interesting to see if that does then have a knock-on effect in terms of that growth in monthly listeners.

Marc Matthews: 16:52

So that's my journey so far what worked, what didn't work and what I'm going to improve on. And if you're an indie artist looking to build an audience, I hope this gives you some insight and into what's effective and maybe what might not be effective. Now again, not an expert by any stretch, pretty much at the beginning of this really but hopefully this insight will help in some way. And also, I think it's important to reflect and hopefully, if you can take at least one thing away is to reflect what went well, what could be improved with each release, and maybe record a video like this. You don't have to release it, but if you at least record it, you're going through the motions of analysing and reflecting on what you've done previously and then what you could do as a result, going forward. So hopefully this has helped in some way. I'm going to check back in a couple of months' time with my thoughts and reflections and maybe even some new strategies. So in the meantime, keep experimenting.