Having a great tour requires a lot more than Redbull and good vibes.
It involves a lot of planning, promotion and strategic insight. Thankfully, booking a tour is becoming easier to pull off with the help of Spotify and SoundCloud analytics. Along with promoting your profiles and optimizing the traffic on these platforms, you can gain a lot of success from simply knowing how to properly use the endless amount of tools these sites offer. These tools give you insights into your fan base to help you decide things like where you should prioritize your shows and what songs your fans want to hear. If you want to make your tour the best it can be, it helps to gather some background info about what your audience loves and wants to see more of.
Before you hit the road, here are some pointers to help you out.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud Pro offers some awesome tools to help you see into the minds of your listeners.
With Soundcloud Stats, you have the ability to see which tracks your audience listens to the most and where those plays are coming from.
After signing in, you can find these stats by clicking “view all” on the stats module located on the right side of the page.
This view is where all your recent plays, likes, comments, reposts and downloads live. This data offers insight that can help you make decisions concerning where your shows should be and what to prepare for different venues.
For example, maybe you’re able to see that there’s a ton of people in Atlanta feelin’ your newest release, so now you can make sure to book a huge show there as a stop on your tour and curate your set list accordingly.
Spotify
Spotify also has some great features to help you out with things like this.
Spotify For Artists rounds up a ton of information about your listeners like their gender, median age, geographical region, and more with their insanely useful analytical tools. Someone who’s looking to tailor their upcoming tour dates and locations with the insight from these platforms will supremely benefit from this in so many ways.
Artists can use this data to plan bigger gigs in areas with a higher concentration of their fans, create merch for a specific audience in that area, or make the gig easier to get to in areas where your popularity isn’t as strong.
Some Extra Notes
Spotify and SoundCloud aren’t the only platforms you should be keeping in your arsenal. With BandsInTown and Songkick, your fans are kept up to date with notifications and emails when you’re in their town. Songkick also has a feature that will show your tour dates on your listener’s Spotify while they’re listening to your music. Tools like these are awesome resources to help your fans stay in the loop with what you’re up to while making it easier than ever to seamlessly share your content.
You Got This
Touring is about evolving. Every show offers new opportunities and connections that’ll help you improve as you move forward. Proper planning can make or break your performances, but thankfully there are tools available for artists to make the best out of these experiences and learn from what works and what doesn’t.
The best of the best in the industry use these analytics with great success, why shouldn’t you?