I Spent $874 Promoting One Song. Was It Worth It?

I spent $874 promoting one song.

After one month, “I Surrender” had generated 2,788 Spotify streams.

I haven’t made anywhere close to $874 back in streaming royalties.

If I looked at this campaign strictly as money spent versus money earned, the conclusion would be pretty simple: it didn’t work.

But I don’t think that tells the whole story.

Starting Over After 35 Years in the Music Business

I’ve worked in the music business for more than 35 years.

I’ve been a DJ, worked in radio, worked for record labels, promoted artists and records, produced music, and spent years on the venue and live entertainment side of the business.

But there’s something different about this campaign.

For the first time, I built and managed a fully independent marketing campaign around one of my own releases.

“I Surrender” was released on August 7, and in many ways I’m having to introduce myself all over again as an artist.

That changes how I look at the $874.

I wasn't simply buying advertising hoping to generate enough Spotify royalties to immediately recover my investment.

I was trying to build an audience.

What Did $874 Actually Generate?

After the first month, “I Surrender” had:

2,788 Spotify streams

1,867 individual listeners

146 saves

98 playlist adds

And across my entire Spotify artist profile during the campaign:

Listeners increased 17.5%.

Streams increased almost 20%.

Saves increased nearly 50%.

Those numbers don't suddenly make $874 profitable.

But they do give me something I didn't have before.

Information.

The Data May Be More Valuable Than the Streams

I now have a much clearer picture of who is responding to my music.

I can see which countries are listening.

Which age groups are responding.

Which advertising creative holds people's attention.

Which audiences aren't responding.

And, probably most importantly, which audiences are worth going back to.

That's important because “I Surrender” isn't the end of the campaign.

There are remixes and additional releases coming.

Instead of starting from zero every time I release something, I'm beginning to build an audience that I can reach again.

A Meta Click Is NOT a Spotify Stream

There's another distinction I think is important, especially when artists talk publicly about advertising results.

A Meta click does not equal a Spotify stream.

If someone clicks my advertisement and lands on Spotify, all I really know is that they reached Spotify.

I don't know from that click alone whether they listened to 30 seconds of the song, played the entire song, saved it, added it to a playlist or immediately closed Spotify.

That's why I don't judge the success of this campaign by clicks.

I look at Spotify's own data.

Listeners.

Streams.

Saves.

Playlist adds.

Repeat listening.

Audience growth.

Those numbers tell me much more about whether somebody actually connected with the music.

Supporting Radio Instead of Just Celebrating It

There was another objective behind the campaign.

“I Surrender” started receiving radio airplay.

Instead of looking at that airplay as the end result of promotion, I started thinking about how I could use advertising to support it.

If a record starts getting exposure in a particular market, why wouldn't I put additional marketing behind that market?

Radio exposure creates awareness.

Digital advertising can reinforce that awareness.

Streaming gives me another way to measure whether people are responding.

For an independent artist, connecting those pieces can be incredibly valuable.

So, Did I Waste $874?

If the only measurement is Spotify royalties generated during the first month?

Absolutely.

The math isn't remotely close.

But that's not how I'm measuring this campaign.

I'm looking at what I know today that I didn't know before spending the money.

I have real listeners.

I have saves.

I have playlist adds.

I have audience growth.

I have advertising data.

I have audiences I can retarget.

And I have a much better idea of where I should—and shouldn't—spend my next dollar.

The real test of whether the $874 was a good investment won't necessarily be answered by “I Surrender.”

It may be answered by the next remix.

Or the next single.

Or the release after that.

Because those campaigns won't be starting from zero.

The Bigger Lesson

One of the interesting things about doing this after more than three decades in the music business is realizing how much the mechanics of building an artist have changed.

We have access to an incredible amount of data now.

But having data and knowing what to do with it are two very different things.

I'm still learning.

That's actually one of the reasons I'm sharing these numbers publicly.

I want to document what happens when an independent artist spends real money promoting music—the successes, the mistakes and everything I learn along the way.

So, would I spend $874 again?

Yes.

But probably not exactly the same way.

And that's really the point.

The first campaign gave me data.

The next campaign gets to use it.

Sometimes the first campaign isn't about making your money back.

It's about learning who your audience actually is—and giving your next release a better shot than the last one.