Spotify growth services

On social networks a bought figure is a signal and nothing more. On Spotify the stream is also the unit royalties are paid in, so the three services here differ in how close they sit to money. Plays are streams. Monthly listeners are built from listening, since the figure counts people who streamed in the last 28 days. Followers touch no stream count at all.

The rules attached to streams are strict. At the time of writing a stream counts after 30 seconds, a track earns recorded-music royalties only once it reaches 1,000 streams in the previous twelve months, and Spotify can remove streams it judges artificial, withhold their earnings, pull tracks from playlists or from the service, and charge the label or distributor per track in flagrant cases. A distributor may pass that charge on under its own terms.

Our line follows from that. Nothing bought here is for crossing the royalty floor, earning a payout or anything else that turns a bought number into money, and a track that has not reached 1,000 streams through its own listening is the wrong track for plays. If getting paid is the reason to buy, do not.

A listener sees three figures, and each keeps its own time. Monthly listeners cover a rolling 28 days, so that figure falls back whenever listening stops, whatever caused it. The follower total moves slowly and stays unless people unfollow. A track's play count accumulates unless Spotify strips streams out, and appears at all only once the track passes 1,000.

They are also read against each other. Plenty of people hear a song on a playlist without following, so listeners often outnumber followers, and a profile where followers dwarf listeners reads as an act whose audience has gone quiet. A song with hundreds of thousands of plays under an artist with a few hundred monthly listeners raises the obvious question.

Everything else lives in Spotify for Artists: saves, playlist adds, where each stream came from and the detail about who is listening. Those dashboards are private to the artist's team, and they are what professionals ask to see, which is why bought activity counted there matters more than it first appears.

An independent release brings a few weeks when more people than usual land on the profile, from a premiere, a poster, a bio link or a playlist. The figures are read hardest then, so anything ordered belongs just before that window or inside it, and the 28-day clock decides most of the rest.

Four to six weeks out

Followers, so the profile carries a settled audience figure before the announcements start. Pitches to Spotify's editors have to go in at least a week before release day, at the time of writing; keep bought figures out of the pitch itself.

Release week

Monthly listeners, timed so the 28-day window covers the weeks the campaign runs rather than the weeks before it.

Once the single is out

Plays, only on a track already past 1,000 streams through its own listening, and only in step with the listener figure.

Between releases

Nothing. Quiet figures in a quiet month look normal; a sudden jump with no release behind it does not.

The fair use of these services is narrow: how a profile reads to a listener who has just arrived and is deciding in seconds whether to press play. Every other reader of Spotify figures is making a decision that involves money or trust, and Spotify's user guidelines forbid inflating play and follower counts in the first place. We will not sell for any of those uses, whatever the size of the order.

If you are unsure whether a use is fair, ask who acts on the number. A listener acts on it by listening, which costs them a few seconds. A curator, an editor, a label or a booker acts on it with a slot, a playlist decision, a contract or a fee, so a figure we delivered should never be quoted to them, sent to them or ordered with them in mind.