When I 1st start posting music, I used Soundcloud, to become familiar with the transition from playing c.d.’s to streaming.
At that time, the policies for paying for promotions were different, and this was before Spotify began offering playlist placement opportunities.
I began to pay for promotions that guaranteed a threshold of streams/listeners. For about a year I paid for campaigns that guaranteed 5000/10,000 streams/listeners, and I would always surpass the amount each time, but there was no organic growth, no type of playlist placements.
The policy for paid promotions on Soundcloud are not as strict as they are on Spotify, and it has been stated in literature, about buying your way onto a Spotify playlist.
Going into my second year of having my profile on Soundcloud and my paid campaigns were bringing in large numbers, and I had never been flagged for artificial streams.
I had released “Disconnected…”, and I wanted to test a theory on these paid campaigns, I would normally pay for a campaign with a threshold of 5000/10,000 streams, this time I promoted my single “Dispensary”. It had already been receiving big numbers on Soundcloud, so I paid for a promotion that offer 50,000 streams, and that was the only campaign I paid for with a threshold that high.
Once the campaign ran, “Dispensary” received over a million streams, and then it was flagged for artificial streaming; my distributor suspended my account with no refund, took my album of the platforms, and conducted an investigation on the streams.
When it was said and done; their investigation concluded that my streams were not artificial, and they had to pay me.
Of course, I went to another distributor and released 5 albums until they discontinued their services. I already had subscription services with my 1st distributor, that included distribution in my plans I’m back with my original distributor again, and the relationship is pretty good.
Im sharing this posting, because that experience created my demon with promotions (that’s for another blog).
For many years, I was reluctant to approach promotions, because of the experience above.
This summer 2026, I began to pay for promotions again, but this time I did Spotify playlist placement campaigns, and they are paying dividends. The difference is that I’m not paying for profile ad promotion, I’m being placed on playlist that are bringing me organic growth and statistics.
The successes of my summer campaigns remind me of the performance of my “Dispensary” campaign. I knew I had something special, and I’ve got the goods; it started right out the gate, most of my songs received high numbers before and after promotions, and when I had big numbers, I felt confident that I would have a place int this game.
I know I have talent, and my statistics, and fan support, and comment gave me validation for some time now.
Im going to continue to build off the momentum of my successful playlist campaigns; I’m going to explore social media digital ads, and reinforce any campaigns that I have going.
The success from my campaigns inspired me to create a dedicated page for my campaigns, because the website didn’t offer any type of literature to help you understand the process, and the services; which gave me nothing to gauge my campaigns.
I have paid for three successful campaigns and now I’m on my fourth; and I learned a lot, and I’m still learning this process with my latest campaign.
Visit my “Songtools.com” page to refer to any of my playlist placement campaigns and checkout the playlist that I’m on.
