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How To Target Audiences With Facebook Ads (For Music Artists)

By Matthew Vultaggio

May 10, 2023

If you are looking for the best way to use Facebook ads to find fans as an artist or musician, I’ve found out exactly how, used this very method to get over 4 million streams on Spotify, and will show you how in this article.

Musicians and artists can use the Facebook Ads platform to find their potential fanbase for free by using the Facebook ‘Audiences’ feature to research and create different audiences based on the data Facebook collect on its 3+ billion users and then easily pay to reach them with Facebook ads.

After properly using Facebook’s ‘Audiences’ feature to build multiple target audiences for your music to test, you can then run Facebook ads to actually reach these fans when they are on Facebook and Instagram as well as on apps and websites on Facebook’s network.

..the best part?

Facebook’s advanced algorithm can optimize all by itself to reach the most fans possible for the lowest cost possible and you can create create “Lookalike Audiences” (1+ million people that are similar to your fans) to find even more fans for less.

To learn more about how you can use Facebook ads to find fans and highly targeted listeners for your music, simply keep on reading, my friend. 🙂

How To Use Facebook Ads To Find Fans

There are 6 steps you need to take to use Facebook ads to find fans of your music:

  1. Sign up for a free Facebook Business Manager account
  2. Use Facebook’s free “Audiences” tool to build different groups of people based on their ‘Interests’ in things like similar artists and genres as you
  3. Run Facebook ads to actually reach those fans and build up your data inside of the Facebook Ads platform
  4. Build Facebook ‘Custom Audiences’ based on the fans that engage with your ad so that you can reach them again for a lower cost to you
  5. Create Facebook ‘Lookalike Audiences’ based on the ‘Custom Audiences’ you built in Step 4 which leverage Facebook’s algorithm to find 1+ million fans that are similar to the ones in your ‘Custom Audiences’
  6. Continue running ads to build up the data in your Custom and Lookalike audiences to continue reaching new fans for less and less

The best way to find a target audience for your music is by first using the Facebook Ads platform’s interest-based targeting to find your ideal fans, and then using Facebook’s Lookalike audiences to leverage the Facebook algorithm to automatically find even more of those ideal fans.

…so why use Facebook and why focus on “interests” to find your target audience?

1st – For better or for worse, Facebook collects a crazy amount of data on its 3+ billion users which you can access for free inside of the Facebook Ads Manager to conduct research on different target audiences for your music.

2nd – Things like age, gender, location, and median income may have been useful to advertising agencies trying to sell cigarettes in the 1960s, but today’s artists trying to make it in the digital world will have a better time trying to find fans that are interested in similar artists and genres as them.

Besides, the Facebook ads algorithm has become so advanced that it can find those basic demographic targeting options for you automatically as it has become significantly better and more accurate at finding an artist’s ideal target audience.

…not looking to even use Facebook ads, you say?

Even if you do not intend on using Facebook ads to grow your Spotify streams and music career, you can still leverage Facebook’s advertising tools and interest-based targeting features to conduct research into your target audience!

Before we actually look at the steps you need to take inside of the Facebook Ads platform to build your first target audiences, let’s really dig into why it is important to start with Interest-based targeting to make sure you get the best results when trying to find fans for music.

Why Interest-Based Targeting First?

As a new artist trying to make it in the digital age of music, or even just a new artist on the Facebook ads platform, you first need to build up interactions between your potential fans and your artist/brand in the form of data.

By first using interest-based targeting in your ads account, you will be able to build up the data associated with your artist/brand so that the Facebook algorithm has something to go off of when trying to find more of your ideal fans for the least amount of money to you.

You will also be able to learn what interests work and don’t work when trying to market your music, which can be useful knowledge to have in the future when it comes to marketing, branding, and even songwriting.

Also, when first starting out with Facebook ads, the early days are really all about testing to find out what works best – so it’s a good thing to have a head full of different interests you want to test!

The more target audiences you have to test and experiment with ads, the more likely you will be to find an audience that converts at a good cost so that you can get to the point where things get really interesting: ‘Lookalike Audiences’ and retargeting through ‘Custom Audiences’.

How Do Facebook’s Interests Actually Work For Artists and Musicians?

Facebook generally categorizes its user’s interests into a bunch of groups from News and Entertainment to Business and Industry to Hobbies and Activities and more.

It finds these interests based on interactions its users may have taken.

Here are some specific examples that your fans may be taking to have Facebook Interests tagged to them:

  • Following a particular artist on Facebook
  • Liking a band’s Instagram post even if they aren’t following them
  • Viewing lots of guitar-based Reels
  • Posting or sharing about anything related to those interests

Facebook can tag a single user with well over 500 of these different types of interests to get a good idea of what a user is interested in.

And because Facebook has a pixel installed on several websites and has partnerships with several websites, interests for an individual user can be collected both on and off Facebook’s apps like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.

Facebook collects all this data on its users so that it can serve up the best organic content at the right times as well as so that advertisers on their platform can target the exact audience that is most likely to purchase that thing or in our case… stream that song.

How To Use The Facebook Audiences Tool To Research Your Fanbase

To get started, you will need a Facebook profile to create a Facebook Business Manager account.

However, you simply need these accounts to access the free Facebook advertising tools, even though you will not need to actually spend any money on ads to complete your research into your target fanbase/audience.

Facebook ‘Audiences’ and ‘Audience Insights’ are features inside of the Facebook Ads Manager that musicians and artists can use to research and create groups of listeners and fans based on the different interests, demographics, and preferences connected to their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Here is a list of all the steps you need to complete to use the Facebook Audiences tool (with more detailed looks at each step with pictures just below it):

  1. Log in to the Facebook Business Manager
  2. Click on the Hamburger Menu Icon from the left-hand navigation and scroll down to find and click ‘Audiences’ under the ‘Advertise’ heading
  3. Click the blue ‘Create Audience’ button and select ‘Saved Audience’ from the dropdown menu
  4. Remove the default location and set the location targeting to be Worldwide by typing ‘Worldwide’ into the search box below the default location, pressing the Enter key, and selecting the ‘Worldwide’ option.
  5. Start typing into the ‘Detailed Targeting’ search box to begin looking for potential targeting options from your Initial Targeting List
  6. Analyze the quality and estimated audience size of the ‘Saved Audiences’ that you build inside of Facebook

Step 1: Log in to the Facebook Business Manager

You can access the Facebook Business Manager by visiting this link: https://business.facebook.com/

Step 2: Click on the Hamburger Menu Icon from the left-hand navigation and scroll down to find and click ‘Audiences’ under the ‘Advertise’ heading.

Step 3: Click the blue ‘Create Audience’ button and select ‘Saved Audience’ from the dropdown menu.

Step 4: Remove the default location and set the location targeting to be Worldwide by typing ‘Worldwide’ into the search box below the default location, pressing the Enter key, and selecting the ‘Worldwide’ option.

Step 5: Start typing into the ‘Detailed Targeting’ search box to begin looking for potential targeting options from your Initial Targeting List.

If you start typing your targeting option and nothing appears, unfortunately, that means that the targeting options are not available inside of Facebook Ads. So, simply move on to the next option on your list.

If the option does appear, you can hover over it to get some details and click it to add it to your Detailed Targeting section:

Step 6: Analyze the quality and estimated audience size of the ‘Saved Audiences’ that you build inside of Facebook.

As you add options into the Detailed Targeting section, the ‘Estimated Audience Size’ on the right-hand column will update:

Your goal is to add and subtract closely-related interests into the Detailed Targeting search box until you have this Estimated Audience Size totaling between 10 – 20 million people.

Now that you know how to use the Facebook Audience Targeting feature inside of Facebook, let’s look at all the ways you can find even more targetable interests and audiences if you are having a hard time reaching that Estimated Audience Size target.

To learn how to do this, check out my full guide on How To Find A Target Audience For Your Music. 🙂

Facebook & Instagram Ads For Musicians To Grow Spotify Streams

Facebook and Instagram ads are an effective tool for musicians looking to grow Spotify streams and followers because Facebook provides in-depth targeting options, flexible budgeting, and has an algorithm that can optimize itself to get the most results possible for the lowest cost possible.

More specifically, here are 5 key reasons that Facebook ads are so effective for Spotify growth:

  1. There are in-depth targeting options for a very wide variety of interests in addition to basic demographics – interests range from brands to genres to artists to products and beyond
  2. You can “scale” the ads and control your budget – the more you spend the more results you get, in comparison you can only post on social media so many times in 1 day before people get upset
  3. Facebook’s learning algorithm can optimize all by itself to get you the most results possible for the lowest cost possible
  4. You can place people that engage with you into “Custom Audiences” and Retarget them with ads at a lower cost than it took to reach them in the first place
  5. You can leverage the Facebook algorithm to create “Lookalike Audiences” which are 1+ million people that are similar to your fans inside of those Custom Audiences

All this means that:

  • You have the power to send highly targeted listeners over to your Spotify profile
  • Leverage the Facebook algorithm to find more of those fans for less
  • Increase your chances of tripping the Spotify algorithm to find you even more of your fans for free

Let’s take a closer look at how you can use Facebook and Instagram ads to go from 0 to 1,000,000 Spotify streams and finally make something happen with your music. 🙂

How To Run Facebook Ads For Spotify

Facebook ads for Spotify growth are made possible by using the Facebook Pixel, Conversion Events, and Facebook’s powerful interest-based, custom, and lookalike audiences.

Facebook and Instagram ads have a very powerful feature called Custom and Lookalike audiences that you can use to get even more results for lower costs.

This is a basic explanation of how it works:

  1. Facebook allows you to place people that engage with you into “Custom Audiences”
  2. You can then “Retarget” them with ads at a lower cost than it took to reach them in the first place
  3. You can then leverage the Facebook algorithm to create “Lookalike Audiences” which are 1+ million people that are similar to the people that are in your Custom Audiences

I’ve said it earlier in this article, but it is so important that I want to repeat it again for you:

All this means that you have the power to send highly targeted listeners over to your Spotify profile and then leverage the Facebook algorithm to find more of those people for less over time so that you increase your chances of tripping the Spotify algorithm to find you even more of those people for free.

…now you know why Facebook ads are such a hot topic for artists looking to grow their Spotify and music career.

This is exactly why Facebook ads are so popular for artists, musicians, and producers looking to grow on Spotify: you can use the Facebook algorithm to trigger the Spotify algorithm to get free streams and listeners.

To learn more about how you can get free streams from the Spotify algorithm, check out my article called Free Spotify Streams: The Best Way To Increase Spotify Streams. 🙂

How I Personally Got To 1 Million Streams On Spotify

It’s taken a long time. A very, very long time. But.. it’s been extremely worth it.

17 years ago I got my very first guitar, a sick Squier Stratocaster in sunburst (that I’d later bust-up quite a bit in my Nirvana phase) that started my life as a musician.

This lead to countless bands, live shows to usually 5 people (aka our parents and girlfriends), recording sessions, G.A.S. attacks, MySpace pages, and failed projects.

It took 17 whole years but I finally got what I always wanted since I was a 13-year-old kid…

A simple sliver of proof that I wasn’t crazy to be so obsessed with music and that I could actually make my passion for music my life.

Fast forward to today:

  • Over 3.5 million streams
  • 15+ official Spotify editorial placements
  • Support from big-time artists like Martin Garrix and Foals
  • Real, living, and breathing human beings reaching out saying that they dig my music

I’ve learned so much along the way, made too many mistakes, and probably spent too much money and too much time.

…And if you’re reading this right now, I’m happy to have the chance to be able to share all of those years of knowledge with you so you don’t need to go through the same struggles that I did.

..want to learn more, my friend?

Check out my full article called How To Get More Spotify Streams: How I Got 1 Million Streams. 🙂

Some of my favorite music marketing tools

Thank you for reading this article, my friend, and I hope you found it helpful as you build your own successful career in music. 🙂

Click here to see a list of my favorite and most recommended tools and resources that I’ve personally used to get my music streamed over 5,000,000 times on Spotify as an artist (called Best Friends Club).

Any of the paid services or tools listed here are most likely affiliate links, so if you do decide to use any of them, I’ll earn a small commission. 🤗

But in all honesty, these are the exact tools that I personally use, love, and recommend to anyone – including my own friends and family.

"Copy/Paste" Your Music Promotion with The FREE Checklist I Used To Get 3,000,000+ Spotify Streams

Get your 7-step checklist for FREE: