How to Use Your Listener Cities
Published · updated · by Loopin
The city list is the most actionable panel in artist analytics and almost nobody does anything with it. Five things to do, in order of what they return.
Chase the mover, not the leader
Your top city is usually where you live. The one worth acting on is whichever climbed most since last month, because a climb has a cause: a playlist add, a share by someone with local reach, or a scene finding you.
You have roughly two weeks before the trail is cold. Search the track title on each platform, check playlist adds, and look at who shared — the cause is usually findable in ten minutes.
Post at their hour, not yours
If most of your listening is eight hours away, posting when you wake up puts your clips into an empty feed. Move your main post of the day to the evening in your largest listening market and nothing else about your content has to change.
This is the highest return per unit of effort on the whole list, because it costs nothing except a scheduler and it applies to every post you will ever make.
Target ads by city, not by country
A country-wide music ad in a large market is mostly wasted. Targeting the four or five cities where you already have listeners puts the spend where there is existing evidence of interest, and it usually halves the cost per landing page view.
It also compounds: concentrating listeners geographically is what eventually makes a show possible, and a diffuse national audience never does.
Find the local playlists and the local press
Every city with real listening has playlists curated by people who live there, and outlets that cover music from there. Both are far easier to reach than national ones and both take unknown artists routinely.
Search the city name plus your genre on the streaming platform and note the top ten user playlists. Approach the curators with the numbers — you can honestly say their city is one of your largest, and that is a genuinely persuasive opening.
Use it to decide where to play
A first show in a city with 400 monthly listeners is a different proposition from a first show in your hometown with 40. Once one or two cities pull away from the rest, that is your routing, and it is better evidence than anything a promoter can offer you.
The threshold worth waiting for is roughly 1,000 monthly listeners in one metro area. Below that, keep concentrating; above it, a small room is usually fillable with direct messages to the people already listening there.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do with my Spotify listener cities?
Act on whichever city grew most, not the biggest. Move your main daily post to that timezone, target ads at those four or five cities rather than a whole country, and approach local playlists and press with the numbers.
How long is a city spike worth acting on?
About two weeks. Find the cause quickly — a playlist add, a share, a local scene — by searching the track title and checking playlist adds in Spotify for Artists.
How many listeners do I need in a city to play a show there?
Roughly 1,000 monthly listeners in one metro area is when a small room becomes fillable, mostly through direct messages to people already listening there.