Which countries should I try to grow in on Spotify?
Which countries should I target with my ads?
Do I target everyone or just a few of them?
All of these are questions I’ve gotten over and over again, and all of them are valid.
How you choose to grow on Spotify depends on a variety of factors—your location, the language of your lyrics, your genre, etc.
But no matter which countries you target for growth as an artist, there are a few sort of “rules” I’ve come up with as I’ve tried and tested things over the past few years.
Playing well together
I’m sure most of you have seen this spreadsheet:
If not, you can access it here.
This is the list of countries I use to target my Facebook ads for growth on Spotify.
But why does this list exist in the first place? Why list these countries out into tiers instead of just placing everything into one group and targeting a huge swath of territories where people are listening to music on Spotify?
Well, the short answer is that not all countries play well together inside Facebook’s ad manager.
If we group every country together into one list, only a handful of them are going to get any of the budget (looking at you Brazil and Mexico).
The reason for this is two-fold: population and cost per impression.
It’s all about competition
The more people a country has, the more opportunities there are for your ad to be served up as an impression, and, therefore, the more opportunities there are for someone to click through and listen to your songs.
This is the primary reason India will absolutely dominate your ad spend if you include it alongside any other countries (and the reason I have it in the “Do Not Target” list).
But it’s not just population that makes the difference. It’s also the cost to put that ad in front of people.
The short version of this is that ad impressions are priced based on competition. The less financial competition there is for attention, the lower the cost to get that attention.
So if you have a country with a lot of people and low financial competition for attention, then you have a perfect storm to maximize your impressions and, most likely, your click-throughs to Spotify.
This is amazing if it’s a country where you want to grow, but if you want to see growth in multiple countries, you have to take steps to mitigate this phenomenon.
Enter the tiers.
Each of the tiers you see in the spreadsheet above has been stress-tested to ensure one or two countries don’t dominate every dollar of your ad spend.
But impressions and ad spend dominance are just one side of the coin here.
The other side is revenue.
Payout per stream
Not only are each of these tiers grouped according to CPM, but they are also split out to maximize revenue should you choose to prioritize it.
Because every country where Spotify is available pays out a different amount per stream:
In tier 1, for example, you’ll find 13 countries that all play well together within the same ad set.
They have relatively similar (ish) population sizes as well as similar payouts per stream.
This means you can spread your ad spend across these nations without suffering a financial setback if one of them takes off more than the others.
The same can be said for tier 2 and for tier 3.
These country tiers are always a work in progress, and there is still room for improvement in this list, but rest assured these lists have been created with purpose over an extended period of time.
And as I improve them, you’ll hear about it.
For now, I hope this helps you find success on your music marketing journey.
Which countries should I try to grow in on Spotify?
Which countries should I target with my ads?
Do I target everyone or just a few of them?
All of these are questions I’ve gotten over and over again, and all of them are valid.
How you choose to grow on Spotify depends on a variety of factors—your location, the language of your lyrics, your genre, etc.
But no matter which countries you target for growth as an artist, there are a few sort of “rules” I’ve come up with as I’ve tried and tested things over the past few years.
Playing well together
I’m sure most of you have seen this spreadsheet:
If not, you can access it here.
This is the list of countries I use to target my Facebook ads for growth on Spotify.
But why does this list exist in the first place? Why list these countries out into tiers instead of just placing everything into one group and targeting a huge swath of territories where people are listening to music on Spotify?
Well, the short answer is that not all countries play well together inside Facebook’s ad manager.
If we group every country together into one list, only a handful of them are going to get any of the budget (looking at you Brazil and Mexico).
The reason for this is two-fold: population and cost per impression.
It’s all about competition
The more people a country has, the more opportunities there are for your ad to be served up as an impression, and, therefore, the more opportunities there are for someone to click through and listen to your songs.
This is the primary reason India will absolutely dominate your ad spend if you include it alongside any other countries (and the reason I have it in the “Do Not Target” list).
But it’s not just population that makes the difference. It’s also the cost to put that ad in front of people.
The short version of this is that ad impressions are priced based on competition. The less financial competition there is for attention, the lower the cost to get that attention.
So if you have a country with a lot of people and low financial competition for attention, then you have a perfect storm to maximize your impressions and, most likely, your click-throughs to Spotify.
This is amazing if it’s a country where you want to grow, but if you want to see growth in multiple countries, you have to take steps to mitigate this phenomenon.
Enter the tiers.
Each of the tiers you see in the spreadsheet above has been stress-tested to ensure one or two countries don’t dominate every dollar of your ad spend.
But impressions and ad spend dominance are just one side of the coin here.
The other side is revenue.
Payout per stream
Not only are each of these tiers grouped according to CPM, but they are also split out to maximize revenue should you choose to prioritize it.
Because every country where Spotify is available pays out a different amount per stream:
In tier 1, for example, you’ll find 13 countries that all play well together within the same ad set.
They have relatively similar (ish) population sizes as well as similar payouts per stream.
This means you can spread your ad spend across these nations without suffering a financial setback if one of them takes off more than the others.
The same can be said for tier 2 and for tier 3.
These country tiers are always a work in progress, and there is still room for improvement in this list, but rest assured these lists have been created with purpose over an extended period of time.
And as I improve them, you’ll hear about it.
For now, I hope this helps you find success on your music marketing journey.
Which countries should I try to grow in on Spotify?
Which countries should I target with my ads?
Do I target everyone or just a few of them?
All of these are questions I’ve gotten over and over again, and all of them are valid.
How you choose to grow on Spotify depends on a variety of factors—your location, the language of your lyrics, your genre, etc.
But no matter which countries you target for growth as an artist, there are a few sort of “rules” I’ve come up with as I’ve tried and tested things over the past few years.
Playing well together
I’m sure most of you have seen this spreadsheet:
If not, you can access it here.
This is the list of countries I use to target my Facebook ads for growth on Spotify.
But why does this list exist in the first place? Why list these countries out into tiers instead of just placing everything into one group and targeting a huge swath of territories where people are listening to music on Spotify?
Well, the short answer is that not all countries play well together inside Facebook’s ad manager.
If we group every country together into one list, only a handful of them are going to get any of the budget (looking at you Brazil and Mexico).
The reason for this is two-fold: population and cost per impression.
It’s all about competition
The more people a country has, the more opportunities there are for your ad to be served up as an impression, and, therefore, the more opportunities there are for someone to click through and listen to your songs.
This is the primary reason India will absolutely dominate your ad spend if you include it alongside any other countries (and the reason I have it in the “Do Not Target” list).
But it’s not just population that makes the difference. It’s also the cost to put that ad in front of people.
The short version of this is that ad impressions are priced based on competition. The less financial competition there is for attention, the lower the cost to get that attention.
So if you have a country with a lot of people and low financial competition for attention, then you have a perfect storm to maximize your impressions and, most likely, your click-throughs to Spotify.
This is amazing if it’s a country where you want to grow, but if you want to see growth in multiple countries, you have to take steps to mitigate this phenomenon.
Enter the tiers.
Each of the tiers you see in the spreadsheet above has been stress-tested to ensure one or two countries don’t dominate every dollar of your ad spend.
But impressions and ad spend dominance are just one side of the coin here.
The other side is revenue.
Payout per stream
Not only are each of these tiers grouped according to CPM, but they are also split out to maximize revenue should you choose to prioritize it.
Because every country where Spotify is available pays out a different amount per stream:
In tier 1, for example, you’ll find 13 countries that all play well together within the same ad set.
They have relatively similar (ish) population sizes as well as similar payouts per stream.
This means you can spread your ad spend across these nations without suffering a financial setback if one of them takes off more than the others.
The same can be said for tier 2 and for tier 3.
These country tiers are always a work in progress, and there is still room for improvement in this list, but rest assured these lists have been created with purpose over an extended period of time.
And as I improve them, you’ll hear about it.
For now, I hope this helps you find success on your music marketing journey.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.