Spotify Streams vs. Spotify Monthly Listeners: What’s the difference?
09 January 2024
Music artists these days are in dire need of Spotify music promotion to gain more listeners. However, what do you need to proceed, listeners or streams? Let’s find out.
Are you a music artist, or a fan? Either way, you may have wondered why Spotify streams and monthly listeners differ from each other. Each of these elements or metrics is very important for the growth of a music artist on Spotify. Let’s take a deep dive and have a better understanding of what it actually means.
How does Spotify count online streams?
Spotify counts one full stream if the song is being played for more than 30 seconds by a user. Therefore, every time someone listens to track more than 30 seconds, it generates a stream. These streams are generated organically and with Spotify music promotion, the number goes higher significantly. Notification of the streams is received via Spotify for artists. The more number of streams an artist can generate, the more royalty will be gained. So, if you are an artist, you should focus on stream count to improve your earning.
However, do not try anything sketchy as Spotify can ban you from the platform if there are any inorganic activities of bot-generated streams. The platform also does not count streams for the songs if it is muted. If a single song is played more than 30 seconds separately, Spotify will count two streams for each.
What does it mean by monthly listeners on Spotify?
A lot of people have this question as it can be seen whenever you check for an artist and go to the profile, it is written right there. This category is specially built with “unique individuals” who stream your music at least once within a 28-day timeframe, or let’s just say for a month. The unique listeners can change every month and it does not matter whether the song is played multiple times or not. Monthly listenership helps to find out the number of distinct listeners rather than the frequency of plays.
What are the differences between Spotify Streams and Spotify Monthly Listeners?
If seen from a simple angle, Spotify stream are referred to how many times people listen to particular song and Monthly Spotify listeners is more like how many people has listened to this artist for last 28 days. So, even if a fan listens to you once and someone listens to your music for 1 long week on repeat, both of them are monthly listeners. However, the fan who has been listening your songs on loop, have helped to generate more streams.
Therefore, all kinds of listeners can help you grow whether they listen to you daily or not. Both Spotify Streams and Spotify Monthly Listeners can help you grow and it is designed that way to cater to the listening habits of the listeners.
Few Things to Keep in Mind
• If the same audience continuously plays your music, your monthly listeners would be fewer but the stream count would be very high.
• The number of Spotify streams is always cumulative.
• When you witness a growing number of streams and listeners, it is a good sign that you are becoming a recognizable artist on the platform.
How Spotify Streams and Spotify Monthly Listeners can affect an artist?
Spotify Streams and Spotify Monthly Listeners are crucial numbers for musical artists as they help to get more royalty and popularity. Spotify also compensates music artists according to the number of streams they receive compared to all streams on the service. The compensation depends on country, currency, and subscription type to the subscriber. The monthly listeners are also a great way to know whether you gaining more exposure of any music lovers who have discovered you yet or not.
An artist is more likely to be on popular Spotify playlists based on the streams, followers, and monthly listeners they have. Therefore, an artist’s ranking on Spotify like Top Artists, and Top Tracks, etc are highly influenced by monthly listenership, which helps to improve their exposure and reputation.
Which is more important? Having More Streams or Having More Listeners!
There is no doubt that having more streams is more important than having more monthly listeners. Streams help to generate more royalty and in order to earn, streams are very important. But in order to grow, you need organic exposure as well. Therefore, focus on your listener-to-stream ratio or repeat listen rate. It will help to push your music to the top of the Spotify Algorithm. According to a recent data, around 78.4% artists on Spotify are currently have less than 50 monthly listeners, yet everyone is doing good with the royalty. You need atleast 10,000 and 50,000 monthly listeners to become successful on this platform.