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Promoting a release without losing it
Which paid promotion is legitimate, which gets your track charged and removed, and how to tell two near-identical websites apart before you pay one of them.
11 min read · checked September 2026
Two very different things share one word
When people say "paying to promote music", they mean one of two things that could not be further apart.
The first is advertising: you pay a platform to show your release to real people, some of whom listen. That is the same trade as an ad on Google or Instagram, and it is entirely legitimate. Spotify sells it themselves.
The second is buying the streams themselves: you pay somebody and a number goes up. It does not matter how the site describes it — "organic promotion", "playlist placement", "marketing campaign". If what you are buying is a number rather than an audience, the plays come from software or from paid accounts, and the platforms detect it.
You were right to think of it as advertising — advertising on Spotify is real and it is allowed. The problem is that the second kind sells itself using the language of the first, on websites that look the same.
What Spotify actually sells
Bought from Spotify, inside Spotify for Artists. This is the whole list — anything not on it is somebody else selling you something.
| Tool | What it is | What it costs | Who qualifies |
|---|
| Marquee | Full-screen message on the Spotify mobile app to listeners who have shown interest in you. New releases only, within 21 days. | A budget you set. Runs 10 days or until it is spent. | At least 5,000 monthly listeners in the market you target, and 1,000 streams there in the last 28 days. |
| Showcase | Banner on Spotify's Home and Browse. Works for older releases too, any time. | A budget you set. Runs 14 days or until it is spent. | At least 1,000 streams in the last 28 days in the market you target. |
| Discovery Mode | Tells Spotify's algorithm to favour chosen songs in radio and autoplay. | No cash. You accept a 30% cut of the recording royalty on streams that come through it. | At least 25,000 monthly listeners and 3 eligible songs. |
| Editorial pitching | Submitting an unreleased track to Spotify's own playlist editors. | Free. | Anyone, one unreleased track at a time. Pitch at least a week before release. |
Checked September 2026: Marquee and Showcase are sold only in Europe, the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South America — and the payment card has to be issued in one of those countries too. They are not available to buy from India. Discovery Mode's country list is much wider and does include Asia. Availability changes, so check Spotify for Artists rather than taking this paragraph as current.
That leaves most artists releasing from India with editorial pitching, which is free, and Discovery Mode once they are large enough. If somebody offers to sell you a Marquee campaign from India, they are not selling you Marquee.
What gets your track charged and pulled
Spotify's own words are that paid third-party services which guarantee streams are not legitimate. That is the test, and it is a good one, because the guarantee is the tell. Nobody can promise you plays by real people — real people decide for themselves. A number can only be promised if it is being manufactured.
- "Guaranteed 50,000 plays" — the plays are generated, not found.
- "Playlist placement, X per playlist" — placement bought with money rather than earned by a curator's taste, usually on playlists whose own listeners are fake.
- Panels selling streams, saves and followers next to Instagram likes and YouTube views, priced per thousand.
- Anyone who needs your Spotify login or your Spotify for Artists access. No legitimate service does.
- "Organic growth" or "real-user promotion" quoted at a fixed number of streams. The word organic does not change what is being sold.
If the streams come from real accounts rather than bots, it is fine.
It is not. The rule is about listening intent, not about the technology. Plays from paid or incentivised accounts that were never going to choose your song count as artificial, and are detected the same way — a burst of listening with no matching engagement anywhere else.
What happens if it goes wrong
Worth knowing exactly, because the consequences are not what most people assume.
- The artificial plays are stripped out of your numbers, so you paid for streams you do not keep.
- The royalties attached to them are withheld — they were never real earnings.
- Spotify charges a penalty of €10 per affected track, per month, for as long as the track stays flagged.
- The track can be removed from playlists, and in bad cases removed from the platform.
The penalty is not charged to you. It is charged to us — the platform bills whoever delivered the track. We then have to recover it from your earnings, which is a conversation neither of us wants and which starts with money you have already spent somewhere else.
So our position is simple and we would rather say it now than after: if a release of yours is flagged for artificial streaming, we take it down straight away, the penalty is charged against your balance, and a second occurrence closes the account. Every month we wait is another charge per track.
If you have already paid for something like this — before you signed with us, or without realising what it was — tell us rather than waiting to see. A track we take down early costs one month. One we find out about in a report costs three, and looks very different.
Telling the two apart before you pay
Four questions. Any one of them settles it.
- Is a number promised? A real ad platform sells you exposure and cannot tell you how many people will press play. A stream seller quotes you a figure. The figure is the giveaway.
- Who takes the money? Spotify's tools are bought inside Spotify for Artists, on Spotify's own billing. If you are paying a third party for something that happens on Spotify, ask why Spotify is not the one charging you.
- Would you be comfortable if the curator's audience were listed? Legitimate playlists have real followers who can be looked at. Ask who listens to the playlist you are being sold a place on, and watch what happens.
- Is it priced per thousand? Real promotion is priced by budget and reach. Manufactured engagement is priced per unit, because units are what it makes.
There is a legitimate middle: pitching services that put your track in front of real curators and journalists who then decide freely — a submission fee or a per-pitch cost, with no promise of the answer. Paying somebody to be listened to is fine. Paying for the outcome is not.
What actually moves a release
Not a consolation list. These are what the paid options are trying to imitate.
- Pitch to Spotify's editors before release. Free, and the single highest-value thing available to a new artist. It also feeds Release Radar, which reaches your existing followers whether or not an editor picks you.
- Deliver early enough to pitch. A release handed over three days before the date cannot be pitched at all. Two to four weeks is the difference between having this option and not.
- Advertising off-platform — Instagram, YouTube, Meta — is ordinary advertising and carries none of this risk, because you are buying attention rather than plays.
- Your own audience first. Saves, playlist adds and repeat listens by people who chose you are the signals the algorithm reads. Bought plays have none of them attached, which is precisely how they are detected.
- Release consistently. Every release reactivates the last one. This is unglamorous and it outperforms every campaign an independent artist can afford.
If you are unsure about a service, send us the link before you pay. We will tell you what it looks like from here, and we would much rather spend ten minutes on that than take your release down later.
Where this comes from
Checked September 2026. Rules change and pages move — if something here no longer matches what you find, tell us and we will correct it.
General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Where money or rights are at stake — a cover licence, a dispute, your tax position — get a professional who can look at your actual situation.
MusicMCN