When debating between spending on music ads vs organically promoting the music, the artists easily get stuck to choose the final decision. As an indie artist, you might have a tight budget for the music ads, but you also want a buzz result for your release. So what are the better options for your campaign? Promote yourself organically or spend for ads. This article will answer that question by evaluating the pros and cons of Organic promotion vs Spotify Ads. What is Organic Promotion? Organic Promotion means you build your social media to connect with your mass audience, and you don’t have to pay for anything. It only takes your time and effort to grow your fanbase from this method. Pros And Cons Of Organic Promotion Pros of Organic Promotion Save your budget Instead of having a marketing budget, with organic promotion, you only need to invest your time and effort to achieve your goal. From that, you can start this strategy at any point of your career, even if you are out of pocket. Control over your promotion placement Different from paid promotion, you have to pay for your ads to exist on the internet, and they will immediately disappear whenever you stop your campaign. With the organic promotion, your organic marketing campaign will always be there and sustain your branding over time. Hence, it will be your choice whether you want to keep or remove your marketing effort. If you’re unfamiliar with organic promotion, check out our blog about branding through the website. Cons Of Organic Promotion Require time to stand out We know those good things take time, and similar to organic promotion, you have to be patient and wait for your desired results. Unfortunately, it also leads to the cons of this marketing strategy. There is no guarantee for how long organic promotion can achieve your objectives. Compete with millions of artists Every day, there are millions of artists doing the same organic promotion as you. Thus, it takes extra effort and time to pinpoint what your brand identity is and who your potential audience is. Therefore, it will be a challenge if you want to stand out by using only organic promotion in this crowded industry. If you are struggling to define your audience, you can check out our article about how to target the right audience for your music promotion. What are Spotify Ads Oftentimes when we mention music promotion, Spotify Ads always appear on our top-of-mind. Spotify ads allow you to target Spotify free users who will receive the ads in exchange for 15 minutes of listening to music without interruption. There are two types of ads interactive ads and display ads. If you want to learn more, you can read our review on Spotify Ads. Pros and Cons of Spotify Ads Pros of Spotify Ads Increase your stream quickly In 2021, Spotify has 422 million monthly users with 182 million subscribers active, which means around 240 million free users can be your potential fan. Spotify Ads will likely boost your Spotify stream in a short period of time as well as increase your visibility to the group of people. Besides, you can also interact with your listeners by giving your audio message in real time. If you want to learn more, please stay tuned! We will extensively discuss Spotify Audio Ads in the next blog. Get the first access by signing up to our newsletter. Match your music to the audience’s taste The highlighted feature of Spotify Ads is Fan Targeting which is designed for the artist to set up their promotion to the fans of other artists. By that, you will have a chance to reach the listeners of an artist who have the same music genre as you. For instance, if your music genre is similar to Ariana Grande, her listeners will also receive your ad music. This feature helps you to reach your target audience faster compared to organic promotion. Cons of Spotify Ads Require a budget To run Spotify ads, you need a budget aka an investment. Different from organic promotion where you can do whenever you want, running social ads requires a budget - meaning it’s not accessible to every artist out there.. However, the better and precise your objective and targeting are, the less you have to spend on social ads. If this concept is still vague for you, check out our blog on how to pick the right Spotify Ads’ objectives. Require prior marketing knowledge Spotify Ads Studio is a tool for music marketers who already have specific knowledge about digital promotion. Thus, you need to plan carefully what type of audience you should target and which format to place ads into your Spotify Ads. Without this knowledge, your ad campaigns might not perform well and lead to numerous problems, such as the wrong target audience. Conclusion Mixed marketing combining both strategies would be the best option for your music promotion. While Organic promotion is a continuous process, you always have to do to sustain your identity among millions of artists. Spotify Ads are also a must-have item in your music career path to boost your visibility quickly. However, it requires prior knowledge to work efficiently on two platforms. Hence, at Base for Music, we simplify the process of running ads. To optimize your given budget, we will customize the targeting and which channels to reach the objective you’ve chosen as fast as possible. Our goal is to give artists access to music promotion without the fear of the unknown. By generating sponsored campaigns across popular social networks such as Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, and Spotify with us, you can reach and grow your fanbase faster. Sign up for your free account today!