Linkfire — Understand Your Fans by Music Marketing Tool| Music Tech Alliance
Due to the rise of internet and social medium, the interaction between artists and fans is totally different before. 15 years ago, audience watched singers singing on the TV shows and went to buy albums at record stores. The sales of CD is the key metric for singer. At the present time, we listen music on streaming service like Spotify and Apple Music. For artists, the click number becomes the key metric now. It’s a matter of how to realize your fans and plan the marketing strategy. Linkfire is a great solution tracking the source, traffic and behavior of your fans.
Linkfire is found in 2014, which is a 80 people internet company They are headquartered in Copenhagen, with offices in NYC, LA, and Lisbon.
Linkfire is not only designed for musicians, but also a good marketing tool for blogger and individuals. It assists us make improvement of user engagement. This post prior to introduce Linkfire features for musicians, let’s get starting
Release Link — Promote New Songs and Albums
When a musician wants to promote a new song and album, you can generate a “release link” on Linkfire platform promoting your music. Adding a release link to your social medium like IG stories, IG profile page, Facebook group and Youtube description. Fans can play songs with the music streaming service they prefer. Here are the steps creating a release link:
Step 1: Copy Song Link of Songs and Albums
Searching for the streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music and copy the song or album link you want to promote. Taking the below screenshot for example, when I want to promote Jazz singer, Theo Lee’s song “Butterfly”, I open my Spotify and copied the song link.
Step 2: Login to Linkfire Platform and Choose Link Type
Linkfire offers a 7-day free trial. I select the starter plan with $10 monthly fee. There are many plans for creators and teams in pricing page, select the one suited for you. After you sign up and login to the Linkfire management system, you’ll see the interface as below. Click the “Create link” in the upper-right button, create the release link you want to promote.
Linkfire is a marketing tool for music industry, they design different links and interfaces for different scenarios. After you click the “Create link” button in the upper-right, there are many different link types you choose. The “Release” link is for new songs and albums. The “Playlist” is for music playlist. The “Tickets” is for live event. The “Content” is for medium or blogs. The “Bio” is for an individual. Choose the left one of “Release” and click the “Continue” button.
Step 3: Generating Your Release Link
Paste the song link you copied in the step one and click the green button generating your release link. There are some information like the title, artists, tags and link address you can set up. Don’t worry, those items can be modified after you generate your release link. Feel free to click “Create link” immediately.
Step 4: Confirm the Layout of Release link
After clicking the “Create link” button, you will get the release link (https://lnk.to/vn0pWtBK). Please confirm the layout and functionalities of release link on the web browser. The strength of Linkfire is automatically imports all of streaming service enable users play the song conveniently. The largest number of streaming service in the interface is six.
If you want to edit the wording, images and streaming service of release link, Linkfire enables users customize the interface in the Linkfire management system.
If you don’t see your top priority streaming services you want to promote, please click the “Service destinations” option to add the streaming service as below. This is the process of how to increase a new KKBOX streaming service and delete the Deezer service.
Every song doesn’t publish in every country, you can check Linkfire which lists all of available countries for each streaming service. If you see the reminder of “1 needs destination”, it means that Linkfire is not sure the song link in this streaming service, please manually enter the song link.
Besides setting up the streaming service, the wording, images and order of streaming service can be modified by the option of “Landing Pages” in the left bar. The editing process is like the animation below.
There is no limit to the number of links a user can create, create different release links based on your requirements and goals.
Linkfire Dashbaord with Great Metrics
After modifying your release link, you can start to promote your events with release links. The performances of release links can be tracked and analyzed on the Linkfire dashboard. Linkfire provides the numbers with 4 time slots including 24 hours, 7 days and 28 days and all time. Understand your fans by the data. I divide the data into three perspectives:
Active Metrics
- Visits, the number of times the link has been visited by actual people.
- Click-through, the number of times a visitor has clicked through to a music streaming service on your link.
- CTR (Click-through rate), the percentage of click-throughs against the number of visits.
- Bounce rate, the percentage of visits to your landing page where the visit closed the page without doing anything.
- Sources. For example, users click the release link on instagram, Medium or other sources.
Music Streaming Services Metrics
- Streams, the number of tracked streams contributed by Linkfire links.
- Streams per click-through, the ratio of streams on supported services against the number of click-throughs.
- Music streaming services, like Spotify and Apple Music.
- Devices, like mobile and desktop
Sales Metrics
There are some metrics related to sales.
- Items sold per click-through, the ratio of items on supported platforms against the number of click-throughs.
- Items Sold, the number of items the link has been sold.
I think Linkfire is helpful for artists and creators understanding your fans and refine your marketing strategy for your music business.
