TLDR: Our guarantee is more of a money-back policy to protect your money rather than a guarantee of results. Bad quality recordings that get rejected won't get the promised number streams and we will refund in that scenario. 

This is correct, “guaranteed streams” have a bad reputation because it usually indicates that you’ll just have your song thrown into the “bot machine” until you get the guaranteed number you pay for. 

AKA — these other guys guarantee that you'll get "results" because they know the streams are fake and they can manipulate the numbers.

Our guarantee works in the opposite way, let me explain:

• Our process involves real humans.  We contact influencers and pitch your song onto highly active playlists. (Influencers are people who own popular playlists on Spotify)
  
  
• Since musical taste varies from person to person, each campaign will have a very different outcome depending on the song that you submit with us. We have no clue how many streams you'll actually get, and sometimes songs get flat out rejected by the influencers resulting in NO placement. 

So why have a guarantee for an exact number of streams?

Well, for us “guaranteed streams” is more of a money-back policy rather than a guarantee of results. 

Since we use real organic promotion, we can NEVER guarantee "results"— but we CAN protect you and your money.

There is always a chance that your song might get rejected by some influencers, we don’t want you to pay for promotion and come away empty handed. Every song is different and we will continue to pitch your song until the guarantee is met. 

But here’s the great thing about it—if for some reason we can never get your song placed or hit the guarantee, then we refund you the difference. 

That way you never take on any risk when deciding to work with us.

Are you looking to book more shows? Engage more fans? Grow your audience? Have a promoter take notice? Even with clever marketing tactics, artists can only go so far with free strategies and word of mouth. Nearly every artist on radio and Billboard charts are utilizing some variation of paid marketing strategies to improve their results. Combined with your other strategies, promoting your music with Spotify playlists will help to take your song and your brand outreach to the next level.

The Indie Music Academy is currently the only Spotify Playlisting solution in the world to offer entirely organic and authentic audiences through a network of playlists ran by the world’s top curators and influencers. These playlists were grown using digital advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is compliant and legal on all streaming platforms. Our competitors and other playlist networks are overrun by computer generated fake streams or “bots” as they are typically referred to. Typically these other companies sell you on “reach,” rather than a guarantee. When a service offers “reach,” they simply are referring to impressions. This does not mean that people are actually listening to your song. That service may sell you a package with one million listener reach, but only one thousand of them may actually click on your song to listen. With our minimum guarantee, you receive reliable results because we will continue pitching your songs to curators until the minimum is met or exceeded. 

There are an overwhelming amount of risky bot-driven playlists on Spotify and we would never want to risk jeopardizing your music career with a bad placement.

So with our campaigns we shoot for quality over quantity.

It’s better to have one dynamite playlist than to have 10 “not so great playlists” that might have bot activity so we try to reach your campaign goal with as few placements as possible. 

This might be different from what you might have experienced with other playlisting companies, but they do not vet playlists with the same scrutiny that we do. We follow a rigorous “Playlist Legitimacy Checklist” that actually disqualifies many playlists from our usage.

But we do this on purpose to protect you the artist, so you can be 100% certain that you will not endanger your career by working with us.

We wholeheartedly stand by this “less-is more” approach and will continue to pitch your song until the guaranteed number of streams is reached for your campaign.

Pitching to playlisters is a creative process and some of the most active playlists are some of the hardest to get on. So please allow for 30 - 90 days for us to complete our campaign goal for your song.

Our process is very manual and is executed by our small team in Nashville and Los Angeles. 

Real humans handle all the listening, planning, and pitching for our clients, so as you can imagine, the process is not instantaneous.

Our influencers take the time they need to make sure your song finds the best placement so typically this takes 10-15 business days, (that’s Monday to Friday) sometimes when we have a high volume of placements to make it may take longer, don’t be alarmed we are going to find your song a home.

I know it can be scary paying for something and then a week later there are no visible results. But that is just the reality of pitching to real humans (and not just using bots) it takes some time. And rest assured, our 100% money back guarantee has no expiration date and if we can’t hit your campaign goal, you are covered and completely safe.

Remember, it's completely normal for some songs to not be a fit for Playlist Promotion no matter how "good" the song is. 

If your song gets repeatedly "denied" by influencers, you will receive a full refund (even though we put in weeks of work pitching your song). 

Great question! When working with us, you’ll notice one big difference compared to other playlisting companies—we go for quality over quantity.

You might expect from a playilsting company to get you 10-15 placements on playlists with names like “Viral Pop” or “Rap Hits Today” that imitate the names of what you’d think would be a popular playlist by straight up copying the Spotify Curated Playlist names. 

But those playlists are highly suspect and we take a different approach. We don't shoot for a variety of placements because it's way too risky. Far too many playlists have bot activity and do not meet our Playlist Legitimacy Checklist.

Instead we target a few high-value & high-traffic playlists that rank high in the Spotify search.

If a Spotify Playlist can’t be “discovered” by an average user, then there is no way to validate that the traffic is high-quality and beneficial. This is why we place a heavy emphasis on Spotify Search Engine (SEO). 

We only pitch to influencers who have playlists that Organically Rank in the Spotify Search Engine for validated keywords. 

Playlists that do not rank in the Spotify Search Engine could have bot activity, low-quality Facebook traffic, or other types of risky and unethical practices. 

To get a behind the scenes look at our process, click here to read our in-depth Playlist Pitching Procedure.

We will always place your song in a playlist that is a good “fit.” However, genre is a very non-specific term on Spotify. (Just think of how many songs fall into the category of “Pop”).

So we approach things a bit differently and find placements based more on vibe, sound, & feel so your song will feel right among other songs that all appeal to the same type of listener—this gets you heard by the RIGHT AUDIENCE.

Remember, playlists are curated EXPERIENCES. And not all experiences are sorted by genre.

In fact, there is a misconception that has developed online that “you should only be in playlists that are an exact genre match.” 

While this is a good general rule, it has given birth to playlist scam artists creating bot driven playlists with titles like “Viral Rap Hits” and “Pop 2022” claiming that these playlists are what you need to “trigger the algorithm.”

We highly recommend that you don’t fall for this tactic because most of those playlists are widely unknown to the core Spotify user base and are artificially pumped full of fake streams and low-quality Facebook ads.

We believe that the most important qualifier for a “worthwhile” playlist is whether it ranks in the Spotify Search Engine because those are the most active and engaged listeners on the platform, period. 

So our order of operations goes: 

1. Playlist Ranks in the Spotify Search
2. Good match with your song as far as vibe, sound, & feel
3. Then genre takes a back seat

Remember, in order to stay within the Spotify Terms of Service, the influencer needs to be the one to decide where the song best fits. These influencers work with music professionally so you can trust they will make a good choice.

Hope that helps you understand our process. To learn more about how exactly we choose playlists, read our in-depth Playlist Pitching Procedure.

Yes! We love scheduling promotion campaigns in advance. If your song is not yet released, you can still complete the checkout process by placing a “Preview Link” (SoundCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or other) rather than a Spotify link. 

This will complete your order and get the process started with our team.

The next step happens the night before the release date. Most distributors provide a Spotify URL the day before your release. When you have that Spotify Song URL, simply email us your Spotify link to the song and we will have everything we need to begin!

We are proud to state that our marketing practices fall 100% in line with Spotify’s Terms of Service.

The Spotify Terms of Service (TOS) state that no artist can pay for their song to be put on a specific playlist.

This is why it’s dangerous to use non-established & sketchy companies who are more than willing to break this iron-clad rule, and risk your music getting taken down off of Spotify.

That’s why it’s our #1 priority to operate 100% within Spotify’s Terms of Service. For two reasons: to protect you as an artist, and secondly so we can uphold our reputation as the best boutique Spotify Playlisting option anywhere in the world. 

Here’s how we ethically work on your behalf to promote your music:

We are structured as a Spotify Promotion Agency and when you check out, you are hiring our services, expertise, and friendly team to reach the desired campaign goal. Your money is NOT sent to ANY playlister once you hit the checkout button. 

The type of campaign we run is simply an influencer marketing campaign which is not against Spotify's Terms of Service because it's a legitimate form of marketing.

On the other hand, paying a playlister directly in exchange for a spot is considered “Streaming Manipulation” in Spotify’s TOS. We do not do this and we NEVER recommend paying a playlister directly for a spot on a playlist. 

When promoting your song, we don't solicit any particular playlist or give any guarantee that you'll get a placement upon payment. Instead what we do is reach out to influencers who (independently from our desires) decide if they want to push the song to their audience. Once we share a song, it is completely up to them if they want to include it in a playlist they own (they can reject any song we show and often do). It's the same exact process as Submithub & Playlist push who also operate within Spotify's TOS with a similar “agency structure.”

We don't guarantee streams for any artist simply through purchasing a package. There is an approval process once you checkout and we refund artists who supply poor quality songs and recordings.

However, what we do guarantee is that if we feel we can meet the “guaranteed number of streams,” we will continue to pitch to influencers until we've hit the desired goal. 

So the guarantee is a satisfaction guarantee on our end once you're approved, not a guarantee of results on your end as an artist. 

Great question! Any artist can purchase a promotion package but low-quality submissions that we can’t work with are usually refunded shortly after purchase.

Here’s the reason behind why we work this way:

Although we are the best Spotify Promotion company available, we don't have a magic wand to provide streams for every single song. The hard truth is that songs that are not a great fit for Spotify Promotion are denied by playlist owners. 

Here's why denies are possible:

• Our service only consists of 100% Organic Pitching to playlist curators.
• This means we have a 32% song rejection rate from the curators.
• If you song is rejected this WILL delay our promotion timeline while we request alternative songs from you to promote instead.

We pride ourselves in offering a high-quality service that brings label-quality promotion to all independent artists, but there's nothing we can do to "force" influencers to want your song on their playlist.

Thankfully, we have a 100% refund guarantee if your song is declined by all playlist curators, so you will never be left in a worse situation when working with us. 

Our refund policy is clear, simple, and fair. Best of all, it never expires.

If we can’t place your song for any reason, we will give you a 100% refund. Even if we try to pitch your song for a year and we can’t get an influencer to back your track, you will still get a 100% refund because we could not deliver on our “guaranteed streams” promise.

See how we place the risk completely on our end? Either we deliver, or you don’t pay.

If we deliver equal to or greater than the number of streams for your package type, there will be no refunds since we completed our job in its entirety.

In the off-chance that we were only able to partially complete your campaign goal, we will then offer a partial refund equal to the percentage of streams we were able to acquire for you.

For example, if you purchase a 10,000 stream campaign and we can only find influencers that provide 5,000 streams, we will give you a 50% refund.

But here’s the great thing, our “stream guarantee” means that we will continue pitching your song as long as it takes to hit your campaign goal—even if this means months or years. So in most cases, a partial refund is not necessary—we will just continue to work harder and longer to get you the streams you need.

We want to place all the risk on our shoulders so that you don’t need to worry about whether or not you’ll get your money’s worth. You’re in good hands with us! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out anytime by emailing [email protected].