Independent music promotion

I made a plays exchange platform for Musicians on Spotify

ListenExchange is a free Spotify listening exchange for independent musicians. You listen to other artists' tracks, earn credits, and use them to get listens on your own song.

That's basically it. Instead of sending a track somewhere and hoping somebody finds it, you spend a little time discovering other artists and they do the same for you.

Why I built it

I'm an independent musician too, and promoting a Spotify release can get repetitive very quickly. I was posting on Reddit, looking for playlists, trying SubmitHub and sending links around. Sometimes it worked, sometimes almost nobody clicked.

What I really wanted was much simpler:

I listen to your track, you listen to mine.

I looked for a site built around that exact idea and couldn't really find one I wanted to use. So I started building ListenExchange.

What I was using before

Spotify playlist curators

I've spent a lot of time looking for playlists that actually fit a release, then writing pitches and waiting for an answer. A placement can be useful, but most submissions obviously won't turn into one.

Reddit can be great for finding people who are genuinely into new music, but every community has different promo rules and a post can disappear pretty fast if nobody sees it at the right moment.

SubmitHub

SubmitHub makes it much easier to send a track to curators, blogs and playlists in one place. I still see it as pitching though: you submit the song and somebody decides whether they want to do something with it.

ListenExchange

ListenExchange skips the pitch. Listen to someone else's track, earn a credit, then spend it on your own track. Another artist gets your song in their queue.

I still use other ways to promote music. This is just the one I wanted to exist when the goal is very simple: get the song in front of another person who is actually going to press play.

How the listening exchange works

1
Listen to a track from another artist.
2
Earn a credit for listening.
3
Put those credits on your own Spotify track.
4
Your track is then shown to other artists to listen to.

The more tracks you listen to, the more listens you can get on your own music.

The difference in practice

I don't really see these as competing tools. They ask you to do different things, and the result you're hoping for is different too.

Method	What you do	What you get
Playlist curators	Submit and pitch your track	Possible playlist placement
Reddit	Post in music communities	Possible clicks and feedback
SubmitHub	Submit to curators	Possible feedback or placement
ListenExchange	Listen to other artists	Other artists listen to your Spotify track

The problem I wanted to solve

How do I actually get someone to press play on my Spotify track?

That was the whole reason for building this. If you have more time than promo budget, you can put that time into listening to other musicians and use it to get your own track heard. You can also browse the Music Blog or see the exchange in action on the Discover page.

If you want a broader promotion plan, read how to get more Spotify streams. If your budget is zero, see how the free Spotify streams exchange works.

Submit your Spotify track

Listen to artists. Get listened to.