Spotify’s recommendation engine is powered by two parts of a simple equation: traffic and time.

It looks something like this:

Yes, Spotify’s algorithm is far more mathematically complex than these two components, but when we drill it down to its basic principles, traffic and time are the key ingredients.

More traffic in less time, the more popular your work becomes.

Now, most artists seem to understand that the more traffic you can get to your music, the more likely Spotify is to recommend that music to other users.

And while this is true, the second part of the equation, time, is a critical component that can’t be overlooked.

So let’s unpack how Spotify views traffic and time so we can use that knowledge to get the algorithm recommending our music like the superfan of our dreams.

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Get them listening

The first part of the equation is to get people listening to your music.

Every algorithmic opportunity on Spotify is downstream of your existing listeners, which means you must have listeners to unlock additional opportunities on the platform.

See, Spotify’s recommendation engine relies entirely on what is already happening with your music to dictate what it will do with your music in the future.

Who is listening?

How old are they?

Where do they live?

What else are they listening to?

What Spotify does with your music and how impactful that is (more on that later) has everything to do with what you’re able to accomplish on your own first.

This is why I continue to be such an advocate for ads to help artists grow on Spotify, and it’s why our agency positions the ad process as the foundation of every artist we work with.

Put simply, if you have good music and run a decent ad campaign, it is almost guaranteed that you will be able to generate enough traffic to activate Spotify’s algorithm.

And the good news is that it doesn’t take a ton of work to do this.

Depending on your genre and the quality of your music, a few hundred streams and listeners can start to move the needle on things like Spotify’s Radio and Autoplay features.

And once you have enough of the right people listening to your work, Spotify will have a much easier time pushing that work out to similar users who have expressed interest in music like yours.

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Make it pop

If the quality of your algorithmic traffic on Spotify is determined by your existing listeners, the quantity of that traffic will be directly proportional to the number of streams and listeners you have in a given window of time.

To illustrate this, let’s think of Spotify’s algorithm like a balloon.

Just as a balloon has a fixed volume of air it can contain, Spotify’s algorithm operates on a fixed window of time.

A 28-day window is a big balloon.

A 14-day window is a medium-sized balloon.

A 7-day window is a small balloon.

This is how Spotify calculates the volume of your traffic and then determines the impact of the algorithmic push it wants to give you.

Just as you can inflate a balloon until it pops, you can do the same thing with Spotify’s algorithm.

A fixed amount of air in a big balloon, and the balloon will be kind of sad and empty-looking.

The same amount of air in a medium-sized balloon and you’ll have something you can let go of that will whizz around the room a little bit (i.e. a decent algorithmic push).

But put that same amount of air in a small enough balloon and it will pop.

Spotify’s algorithm is exactly the same.

Generate enough traffic in a small enough window of time and you should expect to see an algorithmic “pop” of sorts—an outsized increase in traffic you probably didn’t expect.

But you have to start with enough air, regardless of the size of the balloon.

To put this in plain numbers, 5,000 streams within a month is great.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But 5,000 streams within 14 days is better.

And 5,000 steams within a week is even more powerful, especially for a new release.

The same amount of traffic inside a tighter window of time will lead to Spotify’s algorithm giving you more love and sharing your work with even more people.

If you can increase traffic (the numerator in our equation) and decrease the window of time it takes for that traffic to engage with your music (the denominator), you will end up with a larger number, which is precisely how Spotify calculates your popularity score.

And the larger the popularity score, the more algorithmic traffic you’ll see on Spotify.

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