When I started looking into ways to create pages to market my Spotify releases through ads and social media, I knew there had to be a better and cheaper alternative to ToneDen and their FanLink pages. Luckily, I was able to find just that.
The best alternative to ToneDen is to run your own Facebook ads and use any music link of your choosing. By doing it yourself, you can save money and customize your ads and fan experience more.
Although ToneDen is a fantastic platform that countless artists and even music marketing agencies use…
They are really just combining Facebook ads with basic web pages – both of which, you can learn to use yourself with an end result that is cheaper and infinitely more customizable.
In this article, I will show you the best alternative to ToneDen and how you can get started quickly and easily. 🙂
The Best ToneDen Alternative For Spotify Success
The best ToneDen alternative for any artist or producer looking to find success on Spotify is to select a music link tool and to run ads directly with the Facebook Advertising platform all by themselves.
With that said, I would recommend ToneDen to anyone that does not want to spend too much time learning and using Facebook ads for musicians – it can be challenging and can take away a lot of precious music-making time!
I would also warn artists that any dollar that you spend on marketing tools and services is a dollar that you could’ve been spending on ads that actually bring new fans to your music and get you streams.
This doesn’t just apply to ToneDen and really applies to any music marketing tool or service.
The Do It Yourself approach is always cheaper and provides more flexibility and options – but does require more time, energy, and attention on your part.
When looking for the best ToneDen alternative, it is best to start by looking at the 2 main things that ToneDen does for artists:
- Create basic webpages (aka music links, smart links, etc)
- Automate the Facebook Ads platform
So, let’s take a look at how you can easily take on these 2 tasks…
1 – Choose A Music Link Tool
The first step can be done by learning about what the best free music links are and start saving some money by using a free option.
Not to be too clickbaity, but the best free option will surprise you (spoiler: it is actually ToneDen’s FanLinks).
Alternatively, if you want to spend a bit of money on your music links, I’ve also created a guide that will show you the best premium and budget options called Music Links: The Best Smart Link Tools To Promote Your Music. 🙂
Once you have chosen a music link tool, you will want to make sure it is optimized to get the most streams by learning about music landing pages and how you can apply tried and tested marketing tactics to improve your music links.
Or – you can just check out this free course that I made to help you learn the strategy behind music links and how to use and optimize your music links (regardless of what option you choose).
2 – Learn How To Run Facebook Ads Yourself
I won’t lie to you – Facebook Ads can be really tough to figure out and this is exactly why paying for ToneDen can be so great.
With that said, I think that learning Facebook Ads is such an important thing for modern music artists to learn that I’ve put out a free course on this topic that you can check out here: Free Facebook Ads For Musicians Course.
Plus – there is much more flexibility and many more crazy detailed targeting options inside of the Facebook Ads platform when you do it yourself.
Ultimately though, it is just much, much cheaper to build out your own website landing pages and run your own ads (I can’t stress that enough hehe).
If any of this sounds like too much for you, then my recommendation would be to give ToneDen a try for a few months – after giving it a go for a bit you can simply decide if you’d like to keep going or try setting up similar ad campaigns yourself. 🙂
Is ToneDen Worth It?
ToneDen is worth it to artists and musicians that have the money to spare and do not want to go through the effort of creating their own landing pages and learning the Facebook Ads platform.
However, ToneDen is not worth it for any musician or artist that wants to save money and have more website design and fan targeting options.
ToneDen’s managed and automated ads platform is super intuitive and can get truly fantastic results, however, it can be a bit pricey for a newer artist that does not have a lot of wiggle room in their budget.
Although it is a great platform that is filled with many useful services and features, it does have its downsides, such as:
- Technical limitations
- Limited customization options
- Monthly fees
Moving beyond ToneDen’s main paid offering, ToneDen’s FanLink music links are 100% worth it since they have solid customization options and give you everything you need to properly run Spotify conversion ads.
In fact, ToneDen FanLinks is my #1 recommended free music link at this time.
Is ToneDen good?
ToneDen is a fantastic option for any artist or musician that does not mind paying extra for automated Facebook advertising campaigns that they could be doing by themselves.
It is important to note that proper marketing costs either money or time. The best marketing costs both money and time.
Simply put if you don’t have the time to learn some basic music marketing concepts, then you have to pay a high monthly fee to companies like ToneDen.
There is nothing wrong with that, but around these parts, we believe it is more important that you learn these things yourself so that you save more time and money in the long run.
Is ToneDen safe?
ToneDen is safe to use because they have been around since 2015, hundreds of artists use them and have had success with them, and because they genuinely seem interested in providing quality services and products to artists and musicians.
Although I personally think that learning how to build out your own website and Facebook ads is the best way to go, ToneDen is definitely safe and is definitely a great company that you can trust and work with. 🙂
ToneDen vs Facebook Ads
ToneDen uses the Facebook Ads platform to run Instagram story ads to fans of artists that may be similar to you.
In comparison, using the Facebook Ads manager directly, allows you to run similar Instagram story ads as with ToneDen but also gives you access to all of Facebook and Instagram’s advertising tools.
With the Facebook Ads Manager, you can target all the same artists and genres that you can with ToneDen (plus way more).
In fact, all ToneDen is doing is automating the use of the Facebook Ads Manager for you – which can be really, really great if you do not want to learn Facebook Ads.
Essentially, ToneDen has a monthly subscription cost to use (in addition to the ad costs for your campaign) but is easier to get started using, while Facebook Ads is cheaper and more flexible but has a learning curve.
Pros of using ToneDen:
- ToneDen is quick to get setup and running
- ToneDen will create a basic landing page and ad for you
Pros of using Facebook Ads:
- There is no cost to use the Facebook Ads Manager (you only pay for the ads you serve)
- Facebook Ads Manager gives you many more targeting options (ie: artists, companies, demographics, etc)
- Facebook Ads Manager allows you to run ads to both Facebook and Instagram, and to more than just Story ad placements
- Facebook Ads Manager allows you to “retarget” ads to anyone who engages with your Facebook or Instagram profile or website, anyone who saw your previous ad campaign, and even people who say 25% – 95% of a specific video or ad (and more)
- Facebook Ads Manager allows you to leverage their machine learning and algorithms to create “Lookalike” audiences which are people similar to custom audience groups such as anyone who engaged with you before, took a particular action, or watched a specific video (and more)
How To Create Your Own ToneDen FanLink Pages
If you already have your own website, then you can actually do this for free.
If not, then don’t worry it’s cheap, easy, and will end up saving you some serious cash. Plus, there are a lot more things you can do with a fully functioning website.
Instead of just a few landing pages (aka music links) for your releases, you can build out a full-blown website with contact info, biography, blog posts, and absolutely any creative web pages you can think up.
These include:
- Build your own website with a homepage, contact page, about me page, etc
- Add in a Store page where you can start selling merch
- Start your own blog
- Create fully customizable ToneDen-style FanLink pages
The two ways to create your own ToneDen-style FanLink pages are by creating a Squarespace-based website or a WordPress-based website.
They are both great options, but I personally use and would recommend WordPress.
Here is why:
- There are no (or very low) monthly fees
- More customization and flexibility because of the endless amount of plugins available
- The option to use pre-made templates already in the style of Linktree, Toneden, Hypeddit, etc.
For a free step-by-step course on how to get started with this, check out my free course on smart links for music.
To get started with your own custom website, you just need to follow these steps:
- Install WordPress: All you need to do is use a web hosting service like Bluehost that gives you web hosting, a website domain, and then instantly sets up WordPress on it for you.
- Install a premium theme (I recommend Thrive Architect to create beautiful web pages by dragging and dropping instead of coding) or just get started with completely free WordPress themes.
- Use a ToneDen template to get started ASAP or create your very own fully customized landing page and web pages to suit your needs.
P.S. The free course on smart links for music that I’ve mentioned actually includes templates that I’ve made that look like ToneDens and ones that I’ve used to get over 4 million Spotify streams.
