Promoting your music and growing a fanbase as an indie artist can be complex and mind-boggling for many; the variety of services that are supposed to make the task easier is overwhelming at times, and if you start adding on the subscriptions, they will cost you an arm and a leg. One of the first steps for me was to identify which of the marketing tools were necessary for my music journey, bringing real value to my campaign.
Feature.fm is a platform that combines digital advertising and smart links to support your marketing efforts; in this article, I will look at all aspects of the platform and analyze whether it is worth spending your time and money on it so that you don’t have to do all the research yourself.
Let’s check it out.
What is a smart link?
Before we get into the details of Feature.fm, let’s quickly catch up on what smart links are and why they are helpful. In today’s world, if you don’t exist online, it’s almost like you don’t have a career; multiple social channels and streaming platforms help musicians worldwide gain attention and build a fanbase. Still, your fans need to navigate the jungle of information, and you want them to get to your website and social channels effortlessly.
Here is where the smart links come in handy – a smart link is a customizable and shareable landing page including links to all your digital channels; it could be a website, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube channel, or merch store. Even more importantly, it allows you to track traffic on your channels to understand how your audience interacts with the content and help you achieve the best results.
You’re probably familiar with LinkTree – it’s perhaps the most popular bio-link service used across various industries. Feature.fm offers a similar type of service but is more developed and focused exclusively on music.
When would you want to use a smart link? Every time you release new music or publish a music video you can include a single link on your landing page, allowing your audience to directly select the link to the streaming platform they want to use.
Smart links are also a great way to offer rewards such as downloads, special streamings, or previous of an EP or an album.
Now that you know exactly how to use a smart link, we can move on to Feature.fm and its offer, which goes beyond smart links.
Feature.fm: Overview
Feature.fm, an “all-one-marketing “solution for artists, was launched in 2013 by Lior Aharoni, Zohar Aharoni, and Lior Shapsa. Lior and Zahar Aharoni were also co-founders of EQuala, a social radio app.
The platform started by offering “sponsored song” ads on Deezer and 8Tracks; today, it provides various advertising services and a smart link landing page creation to help you grow your following on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
Feature.fm: Service
When you enter the Feature.fm page, you will find different solutions for your marketing campaigns in the top bar:
Smart Links and Landing Pages
There are a few options here worth mentioning: smart links, pre-saves, bio links, and action pages.
Smart links provided by Feature.fm allow you to list all platforms where your audience can listen to and interact with your content via one elegant (if not to say smart) solution. It will even let you build a mailing list directly from the landing page. Pre-save links work almost in the same way as smart links; instead of directing the audience to listen/download your music, they will have a pre-save button.
Landing pages are easily customizable, and you can add new links, change the links, or change the order, as well as customize the artwork or text. Feature.fm has hundreds of integrations (including the most popular platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Tidal, Soundcloud, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.), so there is little chance that you won’t find your platform on the list. Links can also be customized for each platform.
You can track the data and remarket your campaigns by installing tracking pixels.
Facebook Pixel: Everything Music Artists NEED To Know
You can promote feature releases by creating pre-save links that will go live as smart links as soon as you release the music, and DSPs will be added automatically. A downside is that on the Artist and Artist Pro plans, you get up to 50 pre-save email notifications per month; after you use the allowance, each extra notification will be charged at $0.005/message, which makes running pre-save campaigns on Feature.fm a quite an expensive adventure.
Why would you want your audience to pre-save a link to your release before you publish it?
For one, if many people pre-save your music, it will improve your performance on Spotify, and the algorithm could push your songs into the Spotify playlists (Discover Weekly, Radio, etc.). It also increases your chances of getting on editorial playlists (Note: your song needs to be on Spotify at least four weeks before the release date to qualify for Spotify editorial playlists).
The landing pages have a faster loading speed than most similar services; the difference might be a fraction of a second with a fast Internet connection, but it grows up to 3-5 seconds if a user has a slow connection. Ultimately, it will result in more page visits and a better click-through rate.
Action pages are a fantastic tool that allows you to engage your fans by suggesting an action you want them to perform; it could be pre-saving an upcoming release or subscribing to your YouTube channel. In return, you can send them a custom link with a reward, such as a private download or a promo code. There is also an option to list multiple options on a single landing page (so, for example, they can choose if they want to follow you on Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal).
Bio-link service allows you to integrate all links that you created with Feature.fm via a drop-down menu.
The smart links service also includes tour links (will link to your event on Bandsintown), podcast links, and short links (basically a link shortener).
Fan Base Management
This section focuses on connecting with your fans and collecting and managing your contacts; you can group your mailing list into segments (e.g., Spotify followers, influencers, super fans, etc.). Feature.fm has Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign integrations, and you can sync the contacts collected through smart links with each of these email platforms.
Performance Analytics and Insights
Feature.fm analytics provides a daily overview of visits and clicks, broken down by different channels and countries, which could be configured manually. All data is displayed in charts and graphs, making it visually accessible and easy to read.
Imagine you run ad campaigns on different channels, let’s say on Facebook, Instagram, and Google Display; you can use a designated link to track the click-through rate of each of the campaigns separately, while with other service providers, you would need three different links to measure the same results.
When you select which platform you want to promote the links on, it will automatically separate analytics for each platform and show you where most of the traffic comes from, including visits and click-through rates on the selected date range. While it may not seem like a deal-breaker at first, if you run a lot of ads, it can make your life much easier.
The same level of analytics is available for smart links, bio-links, pre-saves, and action pages.
You can also track organic traffic on each of your channels alongside the ad campaign results.
Running your ad campaigns on Feature.fm
Feature.fm used to have the option to run ad campaigns on Deezer and Audiomack; unfortunately, the Deezer promotion has been discontinued as of July 5 this year, and Audiomack is unavailable as of the time of writing. The website says: “Temporarily unavailable due to high volume. Check back soon!” This means that the Sponsored Song feature on Deezer is no longer available, although the Audimack Sponsored Song should be back soon (as soon as Audiomack updates its inventory, as the company’s representative told me).
They currently offer advertising on 8tracks, an Internet radio and networking platform, as well as popular music websites and blogs. Additionally, the combined Facebook and Instagram promotion has been recently introduced and is currently available in beta, which means that you can now promote your Spotify music with Facebook ads using Feature.fm.
Setting up a campaign is a pretty straightforward process; you just need to:
Go to your dashboard.
Click the pink + sign to start a new ad campaign
Select the campaign that you want to use.
Feature.fm: Price
Feature.fm offers a free plan and three paid plans:
The free plan for “curious artists with limited access to basic features” includes an artist bio link, unlimited pre-saved links, and unlimited released smart links with 7-day historical data access into link-level analytics.
Artist Basic at $8/month for “developing artists with access to the features you need to get started.”. Note that you will only see this plan after creating a profile.
Artist Plan at $19/month for “growing artists with access to advanced marketing tools,”
Pro Artist Plan at $39/month for “professional artists with full access to the most powerful features.”
All paid plans include unlimited links, clicks, and artist folders.
Each paid plan comes with a seven-day trial of the Pro Artist Plan, meaning even if you subscribe to the Artist Plan, you still get to try the Pro plan for free.
It also offers three business plans:
Marketer at $99/month “for growing businesses with access to manage your marketing across multiple artists.”
ProMarket at $199/month “for professional marketers with access to the most advanced features for marketing your roster.”
Enterprise – custom plan allows various customizations and integrations, depending on the needs.
Feature.fm: Customer Support
Feature.fm offers customer support via email, in-app chat, and a help center where you can find tutorials and articles on how to use the service. On the Artist and the Pro Artist plans, you can benefit from one-on-one onboarding.
Feature.fm: Pros and Cons
Pros:
Includes action pages.
Fast page loading speed.
Great tool to run pre-save campaigns on Spotify.
It uses its algorithm to match your music with the targeted audience.
Detailed analytics on the pro plan to help you make informed decisions about your marketing campaign.
Supports multiple users on business plans.
Nicely looking and intuitive landing pages.
Cons:
Limited analytics on basic plans.
Sponsored songs on Deezer are no longer available.
Pricey, compared with similar services, like Hypeddit.
Complex process of setting up a custom domain (which is a must-have if you run Facebook ads).
The Free and Basic Artist plans do not support custom domains.
Final words
If you run a lot of ads and you have the budget to pay for a monthly subscription plan, Feature.fm is a great choice to consider; it gives you access to in-depth analytics that you won’t get with other similar services, and it allows you to run Facebook Ads and promote your music to various websites and blogs.
The ability to add multiple users and view analytics individually for each artist’s campaign makes it a worthwhile solution for professionals and labels. Still, Feature.fm can also be a good option if you run ads for your own music.
All in all, Feature.fm is an excellent tool to promote your music across various platforms, run pre-save campaigns on Spotify, track your performance, and target the right audience.
It’s by no means the cheapest tool available, and if you are just looking for a smart links service, you will find other budget-friendly options (for example, Hypeddit or Linktree), but I would recommend that you take advantage of a free trial to understand if it works for you.
Have fun!
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