Rise Spotify Exposure Campaign Review

I’ve spent over $10K on Rise campaigns since 2021.

15K of my 32K followers on Spotify are from Rise, and every one of them automatically pre-saves each of my new releases.

That translated to 181K saves when my album came out last month:

12 tracks x 15K listeners = 181K saves on release day!

You can read all about my ongoing Conversion campaign in my 2021 review of Rise, but it works like this:

Rise runs genre-specific ads directing to Tout, their music discovery site. Users are presented a series of song snippets in a hot or not format to generate a custom playlist tailored to their individual tastes.

Tout requests Spotify permissions such that when a user “likes” a track, they automatically follow the artist and opt in to all future pre-saves.

The key point being, every follow and pre-save is from a user clicking “Like” after seeing/hearing my music specifically.

With my $225 per month subscription, Rise guarantees 256 new followers, and will adjust the rotation of the track on Tout to ensure that guarantee is met.

That’s the Conversion campaign in a nutshell. It’s great for amassing followers, but not ideal for generating streams and monthly listeners in the short term.

That’s where the Exposure campaign comes in.

Rise has always recommended running both campaign types in tandem. In fact, they now offer Song Launch campaigns starting at $450 that combine the two campaigns at a discount.

They also recently added another campaign type: Active Listeners, which is more of a traditional Meta campaign using your own creatives. I haven’t tried that one, but I suspect it would perform about as well as my own campaigns.

Anyway, here’s how the Exposure campaign works:

Rise creates ads with your music that direct to an in-house genre-themed playlist that contains your track.

While I’d never tried an Exposure campaign before, friends and readers who had generally weren’t thrilled with their results. The chief complaint was that they paid to promote Tout’s playlist, not their music.

To be fair, free users on Spotify can’t listen to a specific song on demand, so it makes more sense to direct them to a playlist instead.

While of course the track did receive streams through the playlist, in most cases the artist could’ve a better cost per stream with Meta ads or even Spotify Showcase.

Recently, Rise expanded their Playlist Network with 250 mood and genre playlists, and added playlist pitching to Exposure campaigns.

Would that extra playlist consideration make the Exposure campaign worthwhile?

Rise let me take it for a spin to find out.

Rise Exposure Campaign Creation

I’ll briefly walk you through the campaign creation process, but I don’t want to bore you with every single screen.

I went with my previously released song “Where Tigers Are Said to Roam” because it had already established itself as a winner in ads, and I didn’t want to risk a bad song tanking the campaign.

Color Theory · Where Tigers Are Said to Roam

First you choose between a single campaign or a subscription and select a campaign type:

Then you set a budget. They gave me a $250 credit, so…

Next you pay, and the campaign is created. It’s official!

After that you provide some info on the artist and track, give them Reader access to your Spotify for Artists account, and you’re good to go!

The next day, I got an email saying my campaign was live and results were viewable in my dashboard:

Nothing left to do but wait…

Rise Exposure Campaign Results

Each week I received a campaign report by email telling me how many engagements I got that week.

Wait, back up… engagements?

So far I’ve been talking about Exposure campaigns in terms of streams, because generally that’s what we look for in our Spotify campaigns.

But the thing is, Rise can’t guarantee streams. That goes against Spotify’s terms of service. Instead, they guarantee engagements on the ad.

What are post engagements? According to Meta, they are:

Post sharesPost reactionsPost savesPost comments3-second video playsPhoto viewsLink clicksProfile clicksProfile followsLocation clicksHashtag clicksPoll sticker clicks

For example, I’m running an engagement campaign on my latest Facebook and Instagram posts. So far today I’ve gotten 1029 engagements for $6.93:

Of those engagements, all but three were 3-second video plays. I also got two likes and one comment.

Therefore I think it’s reasonable to believe that the vast majority of engagements on your Rise ad, which is also a video, are 3-second video plays.

Speaking of which, here’s what my ad looked like:

It directs to this playlist:

Why cooking music? I’ve never bothered to ask.

After about five weeks, I got an email saying my campaign had reached its engagement target:

They guaranteed 625-2500 engagements, and they delivered. Barely.

In addition to the Electronic Pulse playlist above, which generated 650 streams, I was also added to this playlist on their extended network:

Similar to the placements I received from Moonstrive Media, the playlist consists of genuine 80s hits and little old me. While it would be deeply flattering to teenage Brian, it likely confuses Spotify as to who my real fans are.

While placing me alongside actual 80s artists isn’t doing me any favors with the algorithm, it did net me nearly 3K streams:

Each of the two playlists has 130K followers, which blew past their guarantee of 40-55K reach.

In total, the campaign produced 3381 streams of my track, which is visible in my Spotify for Artists data if you squint a little:

Whenever your song is used in Meta ads, you’ll see an uptick in Shazams and metrics across all platforms. In my case, considering that there were only 5.3K impressions total, I wouldn’t expect anything to jump out in the data.

Rise Exposure Campaign Conclusion

Is the Rise Exposure campaign all it’s cracked up to be?

Two things are certain: 1) it delivers what it promises and 2) it’s better than ever.

The problem is, what it promises is post engagements, which I happen to be getting for 2/3 of a cent today.

The real value relies on playlist placements, which they can’t guarantee. But hey, you can easily spend double that at Playlist Push and come back empty-handed.

Rather than opting for an a la carte Exposure campaign, you’re better off taking their advice and combining it with a Conversion campaign.

The new $450 Song Launch Package includes both Exposure and Conversion campaigns and guarantees at minimum:

625 – 2500 Engagements250+ Followers250+ Pre-Saves / Song SavesInternal Playlist PitchVerified Partner Playlist Pitch40K-55K Playlist Follower Reach

I’d say that’s a much better bet.

As for me, I’m sticking with my Conversion campaign subscription. I already promote my own playlists and run my own Meta ads, so the Exposure campaign is redundant.

Want to try Rise for yourself? Use code PASSIVEPROMO here for 10% off any one-time campaign.

I’ll make a small commission, which will contribute to further experiments. Note that you have to create your campaign in the same session for it to count.

Be sure to come back and share your results in the comments!

Questions? Leave them below! If I can’t answer them, I’ll make sure the Rise team sees them.