#200: How I 10x’d My Spotify Monthly Listeners as an Independent Artist

Wondering how to grow monthly listeners on Spotify as an independent artist, without gimmicks or burnout? In this episode, I break down my journey from 300 to nearly 3,000 Spotify listeners in just six months using real-world strategies.

Learn why reducing SubmitHub costs led to more playlist features, how extending Facebook ads to three weeks boosted algorithmic reach, and why static images outperformed videos on my socials. I also share the powerful impact of genre consistency in building curator trust and break down my waterfall release strategy across four singles.

You'll also hear about unexpected growth after pausing paid ads and how Amazing Radio’s free rotation helped sustain exposure. Plus, I unpack the truth behind playlist submission gates and whether new followers actually stick around.

If you’ve searched “how to grow your Spotify audience without spending a fortune” or “do playlist gates actually help Spotify follower engagement,” this episode is for you.

Whether you're a bedroom producer or an established artist, this is your roadmap to smarter growth, without sacrificing your creativity or sanity.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

Presave 'Darklight' on Spotify

Listen to Marc Matthews on Spotify

Listen to Dystopian Progressive House

Listen to Synthpop & Synthwave Breakthrough

Chapters

• 1:09 How I 10x’d My Spotify Monthly Listeners as an Independent Artist
• 2:49 Recap: My Previous Spotify Release Strategy and What Changed
• 3:25 Case Study: Results from “4-Minute Warning” and Playlist Promotion
• 11:00 The “Half-Life” Strategy Shift and Facebook Ad Optimisation
• 18:09 Analysing Listener Growth and Genre Consistency on Spotify
• 24:51 Final Takeaways, Growth Tips, and Community Invitation

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:35

In just six months, I 10x'd my Spotify monthly listeners with a steady and consistent release schedule. However, could I improve this by intentionally building relationships with radio stations through targeted outreach? 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, and welcome to Inside the Mix.

Marc Matthews: 1:15

This is part two of my journey to 10,000 monthly Spotify listeners. So, if you haven't listened to part one, go and listen to episode 85 and then come back to this episode. Alternatively, you could just listen to this episode and then go back to episode 185. So, as I mentioned then, my goal this year 2025, is to reach 10,000 monthly Spotify listeners, and I started at about 300. So this episode is about what went well, what didn't go well, what I've learned since my previous release and releases, and what I'm going to do going forward. Whether you're an indie artist or producer looking to grow your audience, build momentum and, importantly, avoid burnout, there are some key takeaways in this episode for you and I almost forgot to mention click the link in the episode description and get free weekly tips to level up your music production, direct to your inbox, and create that music that is playlist worthy and radio ready. So let's do a quick recap from the end of episode 185. And this is what I committed to at the end of that episode. So in my list here a six-week release cadence, which I've managed to keep up. Analyze ad spend impact, which I've done. Maintain a waterfall release strategy, which I've done. Expand radio outreach this is about getting featured on radio stations and I actually took my foot off the gas with that if I ever had my foot on the gas with that to, to be honest, I haven't really done a great deal of that. Continue to submit hub testing, which I've done. And improve my social media strategy, which I think I have done. So let's dive into how that played out with my most recent releases. Okay, so let's start with my third release, which is 4-Minute Warning. So that was released in March 2025. I've got my list here of notes from that. So SubmitHub Investment so what I've been doing is I've been investing up to £50 in SubmitHub to get playlisted. That's what we do on SubmitHub, right, and £50 got me some moderate results. It got me on.

Marc Matthews: 3:14

What I'm noticing now is because I'm maintaining a particular genre of music, so it's kind of melodic, progressive house with some trance and old school elements in it. I'm now able to. I've curated a list of SubmitHub curators that I can submit music to, knowing that there's a good chance I'm going to get on their playlist now, which is quite nice. I've established that relationship with them and that is meaning now I'm getting on some bigger play playlists through that consistency, which is quite good. The first song I released, waves I was. It was a stab in the dark really. I was throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks. But now I'm on the well technically the fourth release when we get to the end of this episode. I've now curated that list of submit hub curators that I can reach out to, which has enabled me to spend less on my next release, half-life, which we'll go into in a minute. So, in summary, with SubmitHub I'm noticing some success, getting on some bigger playlists but also spending less at the same time, because I've managed to create a small group of playlists that I've got a good chance that I'm going to get featured by them, which is helpful.

Marc Matthews: 4:17

Then we have Facebook and Instagram ads. So for my notes here, I ran for two weeks. I ran this for two weeks and I used a broad targeting. So there was no targeting whatsoever in this advert. I was using the caption and the copy basically of the ad as the targeting, and what I find is it takes a bit of time but gradually it will start going out to the right people, and I also switched it to landing page views for the objective. Now that did mean in a lower ROI I was noticing that it was costing more per click, but ultimately what I found was, over time, once I get beyond the first five to seven days, I was starting to notice that I was getting more traction, more engagement on the ads and also my radio plays were going up as well, which could be linked. So, yes, I was getting. It was costing me more per click, but I was noticing better results from that.

Marc Matthews: 5:10

And in the previous episode, episode 185, I had used targeted. If I remember rightly I'll have to go back and listen to 185 targeted, or rather not retargeting. I created a look-alike audience. That's what I was going for and I, a B, compared it against broad and I found that broad was better. So that's what I'm gonna roll with going forward. If you want to see what that advert looked like, I'll put it on screen now on YouTube so you can check it out.

Marc Matthews: 5:37

But basically I used the. I used the same format for all of these, albeit I record a different video and it's just me saying if you like this, this and this, then you might like this. And then I play a bit of the music and it's just me walking in various situations. I try and get something interesting in the background, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's just literally if you like this, this and this, then you might like this. And when I say this, this and this, is usually some interesting description of the song, so like a groovy bass line or maybe somebody a bit more interested in that, to be honest, or something along those lines, not just like if you like house, progressive house and melodic house, make it a bit more interesting, and it seems to work. It does seem to work. I find that you have to give it two or three weeks before to really kick in, and I only invest like five pounds a day in that, but it does seem to help.

Marc Matthews: 6:24

Then we have blog and radio outreach and I did land on bbc introducing in the southwest again haven't quite made it to bbc introducing the sort of top tier, but who knows but I did next to no outreach to radio stations. I don't know what it is. I need to get on it because I do have a small list of radio stations, uh, in the uk, australia, the us and a few in europe as well, um, that I reach out to or had reached out to with previous releases, but it's just something that just I don't know what it is. I need to practice what I preach and just not wait for motivation and just get on and do it. But that is something I need to improve and get featured on other stations because, yeah, I got featured on bbc uh, which is like on a thursday and a saturday, which is great, and amazing radio as well.

Marc Matthews: 7:08

I've got a free account with amazing radio. So if you don't, if you haven't got amazing radio, do go get. Do go sign up, because with a free account you can submit one song and it will just continuously get playlisted. I submitted separation. When did I release that? At the end of january and every week I get an update on when it's being played and it's in regular circulation on various shows on amazing radio. So, um, top tip here, folks, if you, if you're not signed up to amazing radio, get signed up and, at the very least, with the free account, you can have one song just on repeat, which is useful. You're not signed up to Amazing Radio, get signed up and, at the very least, with the free account, you can have one song just on repeat, which is useful. You're getting out to listeners without having to do anything. I just uploaded it once and then that was it. You can then. I'm not an expert on Amazing Radio by any stretch, but if you sign up and pay a monthly membership, you can upload more music. Basically, that's the idea and I haven't done that. I'm just maintaining separation on there, which was my January release in 2025, and that's just continuously churning away and getting getting played each week. So one to do now. With the rest of it going forward, I really need to pull my finger out and do some blog radio station outreach. Then we have social media strategy. So, pre-release social media strategy I involved followers via polls for the artwork.

Marc Matthews: 8:25

I wanted to use the artwork for four minute warning. I'd already chosen the name, but certainly the artwork for it, and that worked well. I like using polls. I've been using them more and more specifically on my YouTube channel as well, because I find it really does help with getting a bit more engagement and some traction. So I was doing that.

Marc Matthews: 8:41

In the lead up to it, I was using stories a lot, in particular, with four minute warning because of the title. I was able to do like put a jacket potato in the in the microwave four minute warning. Or I'm going to preheat my air fryer four minute warning, or something like that. Or I'm going to fill my cafeteria with with coffee and then I'm going to set a four minute warning, or something like that. Or I'm going to um, fill my cafeteria with with coffee and then I'm going to set a four minute warning for when it's ready. And I was able to use that and and get some engagement via um stories on on instagram. It worked quite well in the build up to the release.

Marc Matthews: 9:13

Then, post release uh, I've got a high volume, low return. So what I was finding there is I was, I had a, a plan, if you will, and I was releasing every day, but I felt like I was just ticking a box and I thought I need to put something out. I need to put something out, I need to put something out. And it didn't result in burnout, but I got pretty fed up with it by the end of, because I go for like a 30 day cycle 15 days before the release and 50 days afterwards, and specifically when you're not seeing a great deal of engagement with the, with the posts, and I'm going to put that down really to the fact that I was just releasing stuff because I thought I had to, rather than thinking, actually, this is decent and I should put this out. And I was getting disillusioned with it and I quickly realized, actually, you know what, next time, I'm going to use the content calendar I've got and I use that to track what goes well and what doesn't in terms of views, in terms of likes, comments and shares and saves, and make a note of what content works, and then I'm going to double down on that next time and get rid of the stuff that don't. For example, going live really didn't work for me, probably because I don't have a big enough audience on instagram, so I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

Marc Matthews: 10:23

Then with the next release, I'm just going to double down on what works and release less in terms, or rather post less but post better in theory, and that's why I learned a lot from four minute warding I got. I got fed up for one of a better way, putting it to be honest, with social media and posting. So for the next release, half-life, which we'll get to in a minute, I really did double down on what worked well rather than just posting for the sake of it. Then we come to listener impact. So my monthly listeners peaked at 1,300, which was less than separation. Now, that could be.

Marc Matthews: 10:57

I think you've got to take into account the song. Maybe the song wasn't that's good. Maybe it just didn't land as well as separation, for example. Or was it down to my shift in social media and putting more emphasis on that? Or was it the ad that I ran on Facebook? Not entirely sure. Could it be related to the waterfall release strategy? Probably not. I'm still determining whether or not that is working or paying dividends. So if you're not sure what the waterfall release strategy is, I do have an episode on this, episode 189. So go check out episode 189 if you want to learn more about the waterfall release strategy and I use DistroKid for it, but you can use any distributor. So, really, the key takeaway from this particular release. So this is four minute warning. There is a link in the episode description if you want to give it a spin.

Marc Matthews: 11:47

Decent performance, but weak social media, weak blog, radio station outreach. I say weak social media, more along the lines of burnout, to be honest. So it was time to shift focus and that's what I did with Half-Life. So let's dig into that one, my fourth release, half-life dropped in May 2025. So with that one, my fourth release, half-life, dropped in May 2025.

Marc Matthews: 12:07

So with that one SubmitHub, to begin with, I only invested 20 quid this time and I landed on more playlists, going back to what I said right at the beginning, because I only reached out to those that I've been successful with previously. And also, importantly, I keep a mental note and I should write this down because I like tracking things of playlists that I get some playlisted on with SubmitHub that I actually get a return on because there are playlists. I find that when you get playlisted, you may get a handful of plays right, but there are some where you do get a really good ROI in particular. So I made a note of the ones that I get a good ROI on and also I've got a good potential to get playlisted on. So that's why I spent less with better results. And I've only been able to do that, really, because I'm now four releases in and it's they're all the same genre, whereas before I was releasing synth pop, I released some some really some r&b, some house, um, some sort of like synth rock, all sorts of stuff. But now I'm focusing on one genre, ish. I'm finding that I'm able to. I'm carving out a space for myself, let's say with, with these curators, quality over quantity.

Marc Matthews: 13:22

With social media. I posted less. I still did my 30 days, but I didn't post every day. I use stories more now as well. I like using stories because it's more sort of rough and ready. You have to think about it so much, and I really do like stories.

Marc Matthews: 13:36

But what I found with, in particular with mine, that I was getting better engagement with pictures, images, than I was with video. So that's something that I did double down on with this particular release and I'm probably going to continue doing for going forward as well. So I probably posted almost half of what I did before and I find that I probably had more engagement. My followers weren't up a bit. I'm not. I'm not bothered about massing, amassing a vast array of followers, to be honest. I just want people to be sort of engaging with what I'm posting, rather than building a huge bank of followers who don't necessarily engage with what I'm posting. So I'm finding that images seem to be working best for me, and also stories, so I'm gonna lean into that even more with my next release again. Then we have Facebook ads well, instagram ads as well Facebook Instagram and I spent five pounds a day again, but I did it over three weeks because I'd spent less with SubmitHub and thought I'd reinvest that into Facebook ads. When I say Facebook ads, I mean Instagram as well, but I'll continue saying Facebook ads just for the purpose of this.

Marc Matthews: 14:45

I didn't know it did notice I got a lower engagement. It might have been the video itself. To be honest, the video itself was just me pointing three times. There wasn't really anything much interesting in the background. So I think I need to improve the video quality going forward and possibly the copy for the advert. But what I did notice is because previously I'd done two weeks and now I've gone up to three weeks.

Marc Matthews: 15:06

I've experienced the most radio plays. I'm approaching 1,000 radio plays per day, which is quite interesting, and I think it was over five songs, and the five songs are going to be if I remember rightly, it's Waves, separation, 4 Minute Warning, half-life and Lost and Found, which is from my EP in 2023. So I'm seeing that I'm getting more and more radio plays each day and I'm not saying I'm attributing that to doing a three-week ad, but it could well be linked to that. Now I did get on a pretty big playlist as well through SubmitHub, which obviously is going to help, but I'm noticing that leaving. I'm going to do this again with the next release.

Marc Matthews: 15:45

I'm going to leave the Facebook ad running for three weeks and maybe even four next time, and just to see if I see that boost again with Spotify radio plays, we'll see Waterfall release strategy, so I'm continuing with that. I noticed that there's a nice I want to say bump, but it's kind of like a continued bump, if you will A high shelf, if you will a high shelf, if you will uh, for four minute warning, which continues to do nicely. It's not getting as many plays as half-life, but it's continuing to um get a nice amount of plays, as is separation. Waves less, and I might well be due to the fact that waves is six and a half minutes whereas the other ones are sort of three, three and a half minutes. Possibly I'm not entirely sure, or it might just be that waves isn't as good a song as the other three. But again, continuing with this, I'm going to do the waterfall strategy for at least one more release, probably two more. At least one more with the next one, which is going to be called dark light. Spoiler alert the next tune is going to be called dark light and I'm working with a singer that I've worked with in the past, so keep an eye out for that one that's going to be out. I'm aiming for june, the, not the 13th, june, the 20th or 21st, whichever, whatever friday that is, it's the friday of that week anyway, so keep an eye out for that one there. So that's going to be via the release strategy, waterfall release strategy again. So, still continuing to experiment with that Proactive radio outreach.

Marc Matthews: 17:07

Again, I did very little on this. I don't think I did any, to be honest. You know what. I even created a press release. I do this for every release A press release, a long one, a short one, a press release pack and everything. I have it all ready to go. I just never use it. I just get sidetracked. I think I release it, I then do all the promote, promo stuff, which radio outreach is part of, and then I move on to the next one. So I really do need to like, sort that out. I just need to carve out space and think, well, I'm going to do nothing else, but that got on. Bbc, uh, introducing again which is great continuing the amazing radio rotation of separation. I might switch it out and try one of the other songs. I think I might do that as soon as I stop getting rotation on Amazing Radio with Separation, but I'll continue as is so.

Marc Matthews: 17:53

Really, with Radio Outreach, not much to speak of other than the fact that I need to pull my finger out and do more of it and then see if that also has an impact on the amount of monthly well, it's Spotify listeners. That's what I'm aiming for, isn't it? So see if that has an impact. So again, in short, I need to pull my finger out and do more of it. Now, this is an interesting one and I should have done this sooner, but I remember why I didn't. It's because I didn't want to use Spotify to log into the website, but I bit the bullet and I did it, and that is daily playlists.

Marc Matthews: 18:28

So my good friend, r9 Tim Benson, told me, or said I need to get on that because I have a playlist of over 100 followers. So I was like, ok, well, I'll upload it and then I'll use that and then you have gates on it, basically submission gates, and the submission gates are to follow me on Spotify, follow the playlist and also to save my most recent release, which is Half-Life. Now, as a result of that, it's showing promising early results and it's having a positive knock-on effect. So I've got more followers, more saves on Half-Life that doesn't necessarily mean they're listening to it, though and also more followers on the playlist, but again, doesn't necessarily mean they're going to listen to it. I mean I always listen to my playlist. I listen to it every day, um, because I've curated it and it's music that I like, so I listen to it every day, which kind of makes sense if you're creating a playlist, right.

Marc Matthews: 19:15

What I'm interesting to see is now that I've got more followers probably over 100 more followers. To be honest, I've only been doing about two, possibly three at this point of recording this on the 1st of June is, with those extra followers, will I get more initial plays when the next single drops? Because in theory, will I be in more release radars? I imagine I will be More radio plays. So we'll see In my next part three, the trilogy of my review and reflection, we'll look at that and see if it's made any difference. But daily playlist really good, really good, I'm finding again, doesn't necessarily mean people are going to listen to the song that's been saved or they're going to listen to my playlist. But I'm intrigued to see what happens with regards to having more followers. But are they engaged followers, is the question. So we'll leave that hanging and see what happens in part three when we look at the next review.

Marc Matthews: 20:13

So here's the biggie growth. So with half-life at the time of recording this. So this is june, the first. Now I did say right at the beginning I 10x and I pretty much have 10x'd. To be honest, I've gone for 300 to just under 3,000 monthly listeners since the turn of the year. So I'm hoping that sort of continues and then I 10x'd again, which would be nice that put me up to 30,000 by the end of the year, which would be quite pleasant, but I'll take 10,000.

Marc Matthews: 20:39

This is all about me just trialing what goes well, what doesn't go well, so I can share it with you folks listening, watching this if you're watching this on YouTube, and then you can try something similar or similar approaches yourself also. Alternatively, going off on a bit of a tangent here, it's just quite good to do like reflection, record it because getting it down in video or in notes I've got video and notes here because I'm reading from my notes it's just quite good to reflect, so you're not continuing to do the stuff that doesn't work, which I am guilty of a lot of the time, to be honest. So that's why I really like doing these particular episodes. But anyway, I digress. So I got up to just under 3,000 monthly listeners at the time of recording this, which is great it has. I haven't hit the 5,000 target I wanted for June, so I'm 2,000 short, which is quite a lot really, but it's significantly better than the 300 I had at the turn of the year and I'm hoping that it will continue.

Marc Matthews: 21:32

So with my next release, which is coming out on the. As I mentioned, there is the week. It's either the 20th or the 21st of June. I'm hoping that this I think it's the 20th I'm hoping to continue that steadied growth. When I look at my listener growth or listener performance over 12 months on Spotify, every time I have a release you have that bump, if you will, on that graph and I'm seeing that the volume, the length of time and the amount of listeners is going up every time, which is really really cool, which is great to see. So what I'm doing appears to be working.

Marc Matthews: 22:11

Now, obviously, you are at the mercy of the songs that you create as well. So I like to think that this is my first sort of foray not first, but it's my first, I guess. Yeah, first real in-depth foray and stickability mainstay in sort of house, melodic house, progressive house and that sort of sphere of music which I'm really enjoying. So I'm going to continue doing that. But, in short, biggest Spotify bump came with this particular release and interestingly, I've got my notes here. I forgot to mention this I noticed that I had more radio plays and I had more listeners after I paused the ad as well. So around the app for three weeks and then in the preceding, um, the proceeding week, rather not preceding preceding week, I think that's the right word. I noticed more listeners, so interesting. I've got here my notes, possibly due to the algorithm, the rebalancing I have no idea what I meant by that, but worth experimenting with further.

Marc Matthews: 23:15

I'd like maybe I'll do one release where I don't run any ads and see what happens, and maybe that time I've spent refining the ad, creating, creating the ad. I'll do more on radio outreach but either way, I haven't quite hit my goal of 5,000. In six months I'm up to 3,000, but it's significantly well. It's 10 times more than what I had at the beginning of the year. A quick recap so I've got this titled air quotes results. So we went from I say we I went from 300 to just under 3,000 monthly listeners. Now in six months, or just under six months, I've maintained a consistent release schedule to build momentum Strategic ad spend possibly, I think, influenced Spotify radio algorithm, quality, focused content, improved engagement.

Marc Matthews: 24:04

So I doubled down on what worked and got rid of what didn't work. When it came to posting on socials, waterfall release strategy model contributed stead, contributed to steady growth. Juries out on that one, but I am seeing that the previous releases are continuously continuing rather to get streams and listeners and saves, and direct radio outreach needs to be improved for exposure and credibility. I've got here on my notes. So basically I just need to have some form of plan for targeted outreach. So when it comes to the third review and reflection episode, I'm aiming to have something to to report on, something positive when it comes to radio and blog outreach.

Marc Matthews: 24:51

So while we're on that topic, next steps. I'm going to explore the timing effect of pausing ads because remember, remember I said about that bump that I had in half-life after pausing the uh, the Strengthen radio station relationships with consistent outreach, as I mentioned just now. I need to do that. I need to double down on quality first, social media. So I'm going to double down really on I really like stories, I love stories on social, so I'm going to double down on that as well.

Marc Matthews: 25:18

In particular, reinvest in SubmitHub. So I say reinvest in SubmitHub. I'm probably going to continue with what I've been doing so far, which is like the 20 pounds, so I'm probably going to invest less, so maybe I need to remove the word reinvest, but I'm going to continue to invest in submit hub. I also want to build out another playlist as well. So I'm going to build another playlist specifically for sort of dystopian house music. So if you do have any music that you want to feature on this playlist, ping me a message on instagram at inside the mix podcast and with a link to that song, and I'll add it to that playlist and I'll put a link to the playlist below as well. So there we go, folks.

Marc Matthews: 25:57

That closes the chapter on part two of my journey to 10 000 spotify monthly listeners. Hopefully it's been of some use to you. I'd love to know your thoughts too. Send me a message on Instagram at InsideTheMixPodcast. Alternatively, if you're watching this on YouTube, just leave a comment what you think went well, possibly where I need to improve or what I could improve. Or maybe you've got tips on what I'm doing well and how I could improve that even further, or maybe tools and techniques that I should consider as well. And obviously, if you put it on the comments on YouTube and everyone else is going to see it, if you message me on Instagram, I'll share that as well in future episodes. And, of course as well, do click the link in the episode description and get those weekly tips direct to your inbox to level up your music production as well, folks, and until next time, stay inspired, keep creating and don't be afraid to experiment inside the mix.