How to go №1 on Triple J Unearthed and Dominate the Charts | Pt 2. The Process
If you’ve read Pt.1 of this series you’ll already know that Triple J Unearthed Charts is THE best music discovery platforms for unsigned Australian artists, and one everyone should be looking to utilise early on in their career.
Unearthed is your chance to put your music in front of key music industry tastemakers and gatekeepers. Every song uploaded to Unearthed is listened to by someone at Triple J at some point, radio presenters regularly source tracks for airplay from Unearthed and Major/Indie Label A&R’s are constantly monitoring the charts looking for promising talent to sign.
However, as I’ve already pointed out, the platform has numerous loopholes and shortcomings that can be exploited by marketers or resourceful DIY artists. These shortcomings are so easy to manipulate that, in terms of chart position, anyone can go №1 on Triple J Unearthed and it’s not as hard as you might think.
In Pt.2 of this guide I’m going to share The Process I’ve used to help a handful of artists achieve an Overall №1 + numerous Genre chart №1’s over the past few months.
If you have yet to read Pt.1 of this guide I’d suggest you go give it a read through now as you may find it difficult to follow along with this process without an understanding of how the Charts work and how we got here.
The Process — Your Rate of Growth Matters
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been playing the Unearthed Charts for some time now and during that time I’ve found that it generally takes 3 weeks for a song to go from no plays to №1 using my method.
I’m going to lay out the process as best I can here.
Week 1 — Plays
I’d generally aim to drop a song on the Unearthed Charts at the beginning of the week. Ideally, you’d want it to be Monday, but it can sometimes take a couple of days for an uploaded to be cleared and actually appear on Unearthed.
Most artists seem to release new music on Fridays, however, the Unearthed Charts renew each Monday so you’ll only be leaving yourself two days to get your numbers before your initial chart position is dictated.
The reason I like to release music earlier in the week is I’m always aiming to go №1 in the Genre Charts first week which requires a couple of days to get your plays and reviews up also most big artists release on Friday’s.
Being able to say that your song debut at №1 on your Genre Charts after its first week makes for a great remarketing opportunity
Your chart position always makes for great social proof which is incredibly powerful in your remarketing. I’ve seen artists get great engagement on their socials by celebrating much smaller achievements (like #6 on The Hip Hop Charon the charts.
Artists will often use their previous Chart positions as social proof moving forward by including their №1 position on the Overall Charts when pitching for PR opportunities. I’ve even seen some try to justify feature prices based on their past Unearthed chart positions…
Having a strong debut in your first week also gives you an opportunity to talk about your song being on Unearthed and bring your fans into your journey to get to that №1 position on the overall charts.
If you can post about having a strong chart debut it will show you fans who have not listened to your song just yet that they’re missing out on something special. FOMO is real, you just need some social proof to convince people first!
You could make a social post (similar to the one above) saying something along the lines of:
“We just debuted at №1 on the Unearthed Hip Hop Charts!
We want to say thank you to everyone who Played, Reviewed and Downloaded SONG X and let everyone know that next week we’re coming for that overall №1 spot in the country 💪
If you haven’t checked out SONG X just yet, go give it a Play, Review & Download and help us run it up 📈
Link In Bio”
Week 2 — Real Reviews + Plays
Your second week will be all about pushing yourself up the Overall Charts into a Top 10 position.
Again, you’ll want to bring your fans along for the ride (particularly if this is your first run at the Unearthed charts). I know I’ve shown you how to astroturf your own Reviews and Plays but ideally, you’d want your fans to do these organically for you. Those loopholes are only there if you need a boost or your music just isn’t good enough to have people do it organically.
In your second week, you’ll also want to start reaching out to Super Users for reviews. If you’ve followed them and engaged with them on their socials you should be known to them by now.
If you’ve managed to go №1 in your Genre Chart then you have a reason to ask them for their opinion in the form of a review.
You can just DM them and ask politely if they’ll consider leaving a review for your song on Unearthed.
The message could go something like this:
“Hi (First Name),
Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your review of The Kid Laroi’s Blessings on Unearthed! Thought your “more hooks than an episode of Fishing Australia” was a hilarious way to review the song.
I’ve just released my first track on Unearthed as an Artist, it just debuted at №1 on the Hip Hop charts this week and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!
If you’ve got the time you can find the song here: Link to Song
Either way, thanks for taking the time to read this and love your work!”
I’ve highlighted a couple of sections of that message asking for a review for a reason…
First off I’d always suggest tailoring your pitch when you’re reaching out to someone and asking them to do you a favor. No matter what it’s for. Whether you’re pitching for a PR opp or something as little as an Unearthed Review, it just shows that you’ve taken the time to do your research and that will stroke their ego.
With Reviews, I find it’s good to take the time to mention a Review the Super User has done in the past and why you liked it, it shows you value their opinion. Get into as much detail as you can, make them feel special and they’ll be more likely to reciprocate.
In your second line, you let them know why you’re reaching out and use your chart position to let them know why they should care.
Then you tell them what you ’d like them to do, thank them for their time and always leave on a positive note!
During your second week, you’ll want to start sharing images of reviews from your Fans & Super Users to your socials.
Ideally, you’d want to share reviews that actually have some feedback rather than just a star rating.
The more creative and entertaining the review the better.
In fact, if you’re astroturfing your own reviews on Unearthed try to take your time to write a creative/funny/insightful review as Unearthed will often share their Favourite reviews from the week on their Instagram story each week. The Unearthed page currently has around 115k followers so having your songs review shared to that page can give you huge reach and exposure!
If Super Users are reviewing make sure that you share it and tag them on Instagram to thank them for their review on your track.
Week 3 — Your Rate of Growth Matters so make sure you SMASH IT OUT!
In the week that it took me to write this guide the Unearthed charts reset, placing a debut Artist into the №1 Position.
To my knowledge, this was ‘Tones And I’s’ first official release. Although it didn’t get anywhere near the Plays last weeks №1 did (which I included earlier) it did get far more Reviews (from Super Users) to help propel it to №1.
This release shows us two things.
- Your Rate of Growth Matters!
As I’ve mentioned before, we can only guess at the Unearthed Chart’s Algorithm but if the exceptional performance of ‘Tones And I’ over just a 10-day period indicates anything it’s that you can go №1 with less Overall Plays if it looks like they’re growing quickly. - Super User Reviews are the most powerful stats available
Similar to Instagrams “Power Likes” Super User reviews are worth more than your average user’s review and have the added bonus of putting your music in front of key gatekeepers and industry tastemakers.
Ok, so now that we’ve established that the Charts take your Growth Rate into account, in your 3rd week you should be aiming to SMASH IT OUT.
Ideally, you’ll be well positioned inside either the top 10 or at least Top 20 on the Overall Charts. You’ll have around 10–15 genuine reviews from your friends, Fans and some Super Users and around 1,500–2,000 plays at the beginning of the week.
When the Chart restarts on Monday at the beginning of Week 3 you’ll want to take a look at who is at №1 and what their numbers are. Then it makes sense that you should just aim to beat those numbers to ensure you’re at №1 when the Chart resets, right?
In reality, the nature of the Unearthed Chart means that you can often go above someone else in the charts with lower numbers than theirs. In fact, for one of my №1 songs on Unearthed the Artist that took the top spot only had half the number of Reviews and 70% of Plays that the incumbent had the week before.
This is due to the charts Algorithm wanting to continually refresh, with new artists appearing each week. So songs that have already been at №1 or high in the charts will often find themselves ‘weighted’ and will begin to drop below a lower song after time.
That’s why I’ve tried to lay out this strategy within a 3-week timeline. You only have a window of a few weeks to capitalise before the charts start to ‘weight’ you and bring in new songs.
Week 1 + 2 is you working on a solid foundation, gathering enough real reviews to make you appear legitimate to help balance out what you’re going to do in Week 3.
In Week 3 you’re going all out, farming as many Plays as you can via multiple devices, creating realistic, engaging 5-star reviews with accounts created via a 10 minute Mail service.
IF you can make Week 3 your biggest week in terms of growth and you’re already in a strong position on the charts going into that week, your growth rate should propel you into that №1 spot when the charts reset the following week.
But the one thing we can’t account for is what other songs are doing on the charts. You may do all of the above perfectly and end up contending for the №1 position with an absolute outlier like ‘Tones And I’ which is just a damn good song. Nothing you can do about that.
№1 is Just the Beginning…
Ok so after all that you wake up on Monday morning after the charts have reset and to your delight, you find yourself in that coveted №1 Position.
What now?
As I’ve mentioned before, going №1 doesn’t have any inherent value in itself, all it does is give you visibility and it’s how you use it in your remarketing that will determine whether all this effort was worth it.
Make sure you celebrate, pop a bottle of Champagne on your socials, go make it rain at a strip club, whatever fits your image… Even though you may have used my approach to help swing the odds in your favor going №1 is still an achievement.
Technically you’re the №1 song from an unsigned artist in the country so make sure you own it!
Just remember that Unearthed is your chance to put your music in front of key music industry tastemakers and gatekeepers so if you’re going to follow some of the tactics I’ve laid out here make sure you attempt to make them look ‘natural’. If you’re farming Plays, make sure you’re also getting quality Reviews from profiles that look legitimate and are engaging Super Users to review your music as well.
Hopefully, this guide has given you the upper hand and you’re ready to dominate the Unearthed Charts. You have your music, you are prepared, now get out there and make it happen!
BONUS: Facebook/Instagram Ad Ideas
Now once you’ve gone №1 on Unearthed you’ll naturally want to share it with your family, friends, and fans but make sure you use that social proof capitalise beyond that using the Social Proof of being №1 in the country.
Now generally I would only suggest using Facebook and Instagram Ads for retargeting your established audience as an artist as it can be quiet expensive and inefficient to actually try and grow your audience via Facebook/Instagram ads. However, going №1 on the overall Unearthed charts gives you a unique opportunity to grow your audience using Facebook/Instagram ads by leveraging Triple J & Unearthed’s brand.
For example, if you have a music video for the song that went №1 you can create a simple Facebook/Instagram video Ad using a snippet from that, just ensure it’s:
A) Less than 2mins long — So it can be run as an Ad on Facebook & Instagram.
B) Strong visual content — The key to Facebook & Instagram Ads is the actual content, it needs to be thumb stopping!
C) Doesn’t have a long, drawn out/boring intro. You have less than 3 seconds to catch someones attention while they’re scrolling so make sure you drop the viewer right into the action (during the Chorus etc.)
Make this Video in preparation and during the week that your Songs at №1 make sure you PUMP it over socials, targetting people who like Triple J Unearthed or Triple J‘s Facebook page.
Add a Call To Action (CTA) INSIDE the video that says something along the lines of “#1 on Unearthed, This Week” (Or whatever position you are on the Charts, could be anything from №5 — №1).
Note: Making this CTA within your video will require a little bit of video editing, you can learn how here!
I’d also suggest fitting the video into a 9:16 (Vertical Video) or 1:1 (Square Video) aspect ratio so it fills the screen on either a Facebook/Instagram news feed or Instagram Story.
Trust me when I say that these ads work. I run digital conversion campaigns for a living and I’ve seen this exact tactic almost half a Facebook Campaigns Cost Per Lead (CPL) for products that require a much higher purchase intent then just checking out an artist/listening to a song!
The Reason these ads work is that the audience you’re targeting will instantly recognise the CTA text WITHIN the ad (no one immediately reads the ad copy in a post description as they scroll — they look at the content) and because it’s relevant to their interests and a brand they recognise they’re much more likely to engage with your ad.
GIMME DEM CLAPS!
And there it is!
Hopefully, you found this series valuable, if so, feel free to GIMME DEM CLAPS! (like 20–50 of those suckers)
If you put these methods into action, let me know how they went in the comments!
