The Canonical Release Strategy (the Death of Waterfall)

The Waterfall Release Strategy has been dominating indie music marketing, but it’s got a big problem.

Every time you re-release a track - even with the same ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) - it gets a unique Popularity Score, which is what drives algorithmic reach. So instead of building momentum, you’re actually splitting it up.

That’s why I’m advocating for a new approach: The Canonical Release Strategy.

Background:

I just dropped a new album called The Foundation for Early Childhood Education. In the process, I released 3 singles, all using the Waterfall release strategy.

For those unfamiliar, Waterfall is a strategy where you release incremental singles leading up to an album (or EP), and with each release, you include the previous singles. This is what it looks like:

The idea behind Waterfall is that each release encourages listeners to stream previous singles when they check out the latest. When you properly associate your ISRC code with each re-release of a song, the streams aggregate and it helps build up streaming numbers.

But in the process, I noticed something unexpected. Every time I re-released River on the Sun, it was assigned a new and completely independent popularity score.

This is nothing new, Spotify actually says "Duplicate tracks (e.g. the same track from a single and an album) are rated independently" in their documentation (see "popularity"), but I'd never noticed it or heard it discussed before nor did I consider the implications.

For those of you who have taken the conversion campaign course, you know that the popularity score is an internal measure of a song’s performance on Spotify, and that there’s a very predictable relationship between popularity and algorithmic placements. Here’s what that relationship currently looks like:

It’s clear from this graph that reaching 35+ popularity score is essential for getting the most out of Spotify’s algorithm. But if each release has its own popularity score, what does that say about how Waterfall impacts momentum? I’ll show you:

Note: you can track your own popularity scores on the artist dashboard at app.magicnothing.xyz.

The blue line is the first single release for River on the Sun, the orange and red lines are the subsequent waterfall releases, and the green line is the album release. They’re all the same song with the same ISRC code.

Notice that each release has its own popularity score, and they do not aggregate. Each release is essentially competing with each other for algorithmic traction on Spotify.

You'll notice the blue line is decreasing and the green line is increasing. This is because I stopped promoting the single and started promoting the album, so the single release of River on the Sun is losing momentum while the album release is gaining momentum.

In the meantime, the maximum popularity score for the song decreased during the transitional period, and streams followed:

It's particularly interesting that the song stopped getting meaningful algorithmic traction until the album release of River on the Sun eclipsed the single release in popularity score. In fact, I got a spike on Discover Weekly literally the day after it did!

As a control, I was careful to maintain the exact same promotional strategy during the rollout of all singles and the album.

  1. Conversion Campaign to a playlist w/ River on the Sun as the first track
  2. $30/day ad spend in Tier 1 markets only
  3. I left the 1st single release of River on the Sun (blue line) in the number 1 spot until the album came out, then swapped in the album release (green line) as soon as it became available.

Spotify doesn't share explicit information about how popularity scores impact algorithmic placements, but this study suggests the maximum popularity score for a song among all releases is the most important factor.

In light of this, promoting a canonical (singular) release of a song is the most efficient way to drive algorithmic traction. Shifting your promotion across different releases of a song effectively dilutes the popularity score, and thus, the traction of the song.

Obviously, there are other considerations and situations where releasing singles prior to an album is advantageous. But hopefully this information contributes to our collective understanding of Popularity, Spotify's algorithm, and effective music marketing.

 


 

News & Current Offerings:

  1. The Conversion Campaign course and Instagram course are both available in a bundle for $60 off.

  2. We now offer custom ads services. This is a high value offering for larger budget projects ($2500/mo + ad spend). Please contact info@magicnothing.xyz with information about your goals to get started.

  3. You can track your own popularity scores, submit to playlists, and much more (soon!) in our new app.

  4. Magic Nothing Sessions is a new weekly meetup for artists with 10k+ monthly listeners or 5k+ followers on IG. This is the closest thing to a manger for $50/mo.

  5. You can schedule 1:1 Consultations with me to discuss anything you’d like.

ty4bh ✌️

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.