How Much Does Spotify Promotion Cost in 2026? Every Model Priced

Last checked: 8 October 2026Sources: 12, dated at the end

Disclosure: MusicPromoLab sells music promotion. Every claim below links to its source at the end.

What does Spotify promotion cost if you spend nothing?

Nothing, if you use Spotify’s own editorial pitch. Spotify for Artists lets you pitch one unreleased song to its editorial team, and there’s no fee. Spotify asks you to deliver your music at least 7 days before release so editors have time to listen, and it’s clear that “pitching doesn’t guarantee playlist placement.” The part that is guaranteed: if you pitch at least 7 days ahead, the song goes into your followers’ Release Radar playlists. You can only pitch one song at a time, and you can pitch the next once the first goes live.

The cost here is time. A rushed release with no pitch gives away the one free placement Spotify hands every artist. Two free tools cover the groundwork: the Is my song ready for Spotify? check and the Spotify pitch template and writer. The Release Radar guide explains exactly who gets the song and when.

How much do SubmitHub and Groover cost per submission?

Between about $1 and €6 per curator, depending on the platform and the curator. Submission marketplaces sell one thing: a named curator, blogger or industry contact hearing your song and giving an answer. You pay per contact, so your total depends on how many people you send to.

• SubmitHub: premium credits start at $1 each and get cheaper in bulk; SubmitHub says most users pay around $0.80 per credit. Each curator costs between 1 and 5 credits. Under its premium credit rules, curators must respond within 72 hours, listen for at least 60 seconds, and write 20+ words of feedback.
• Groover: credits are called Grooviz, and 1 Grooviz costs €1 including tax. A standard contact costs 2 Grooviz, and Groover’s top curators cost 4 or 6. Groover guarantees a reply within 7 days and says most curators reply within 72 hours.

So 20 curators on SubmitHub at 2 credits each costs roughly $32–$40, and 20 standard Groover contacts cost €40. What you’re guaranteed is a listen and a response. Nobody guarantees a yes, and what a placement brings depends on who actually listens to that playlist. The SubmitHub vs Groover vs Playlist Push comparison adds four more alternatives and shows which suits which budget.

How much does Playlist Push cost?

Playlist Push campaigns start at $280. Campaign services bundle the pitching for you: instead of choosing curators one by one, you set a budget and the service sends your track to a batch of curators in your genre. Its pricing calculator shows $630 reaching 79 playlists, and the final cost depends on genre and the curators targeted.

Two lines on that pricing page are worth reading slowly. Playlist Push states that it doesn’t offer any guarantees for results after your song is sent out, because curators decide. It also says lower-priced campaigns tend not to yield measurable results, which is its stated reason for the $280 floor. That’s an honest description of how this model works: you’re paying for reach into a curator network, and the curators are the ones who choose.

What do Spotify Marquee and Showcase cost?

Between $100 and $10,000 per campaign, charged per click. These are Spotify’s own display campaigns, bought in the Campaigns tab of Spotify for Artists. Marquee is a full-screen pop-up in the mobile app for a new release, usable within 21 days of release day; Showcase is a banner on Home and Browse for new or older music. According to Spotify’s budgeting page:

• Your budget can be between $100 and $10,000 (or the local equivalent), with a $250 minimum if you book Marquee through Spotify’s local representatives.
• Campaigns are priced per click, and clicks including saves are billable. Marquee runs for about 10 days, Showcase about 14.
• Since 23 February 2026, campaigns spread their budget over that full period by default, which Spotify calls standard pacing. Accelerated pacing is still available if you want faster delivery.
• You can’t raise the budget once a campaign starts. Spotify says it can’t guarantee your full budget delivers, and you’re only charged for the clicks you get.

When Showcase launched in 2023, Music Business Worldwide reported pricing starting at a $0.40 cost per click. Spotify sets the click price itself and says prices vary with your audience and target market, so treat that as a launch figure, not today’s rate in your market.

Eligibility is the real barrier for most independent artists. Both formats need at least 1,000 streams over the last 28 days in one of the target markets, a team based in an eligible country, and a payment card issued there. Marquee also needs at least 5,000 monthly active listeners in the market you select.

Does Discovery Mode cost money?

Not upfront: Spotify takes a commission instead of a fee. Discovery Mode lets you flag songs so Spotify gives them extra weight in Radio, Autoplay and Mixes. A 30% commission is applied to the recording earnings from streams of those songs in those contexts, and Spotify says all other streams remain commission-free. The program is still in beta.

It isn’t open to everyone. Spotify lists at least 25,000 monthly listeners, at least 3 eligible songs, and a team registered in a supported country. Each song must have been on Spotify for at least 30 days and streamed at least 20 times in Discovery Mode contexts in the last 28 days. The real price is a share of earnings from listeners who might have found you anyway, which is why it’s worth comparing with paid pitching. See Discovery Mode vs playlist promotion for that trade-off.

How much does music PR cost?

Usually from about £1,000 to £10,000 a campaign. PR is a different job from playlist pitching: a publicist pitches you to blogs, magazines, radio and podcasts, and the payoff is coverage and credibility more than streams. Musosoup, which runs its own submission platform, puts typical music PR campaigns at £2,000–£10,000, with introductory options for independent artists from around £1,000. It breaks that down as £1,000+ for a press release and limited outreach, £2,000–£5,000 for targeted coverage, and £5,000–£10,000+ for broad campaigns.

PR pricing isn’t published like a menu, so read any quote for its scope: how many weeks, which outlets, what reporting you get, and what happens if nothing lands.

What does promotion with targeted ads cost?

Usually a monthly fee, so the useful question is what that fee includes. Some services run targeted ads for your song and charge by the month. Before you compare prices, check three things: whether the ad budget is inside the fee or billed on top, how many songs the fee covers, and what you’ll be able to see afterwards in Spotify for Artists, where the source of streams graph shows where on Spotify people played your music.

As with every model on this page, a legitimate service sells the work and the ad delivery, not a stream count, because listeners decide what to play. To see what a given number of streams or monthly listeners is worth, the monthly listeners to money calculator keeps the maths honest.

What price is too cheap for Spotify promotion?

Look at what’s being sold, not just the number. Every legitimate model above sells something you can’t count in advance: a curator’s attention, a publicist’s effort, a click on an ad. When an offer guarantees a number of streams or followers for a fixed price, it’s selling the outcome itself, and real listener attention can’t be packaged that way.

Spotify is direct about this. Its support page says third-party services that advertise streams in return for payment violate its terms, and that using them could get your music removed from Spotify. The same page lists withheld payouts and corrected stream counts among the consequences. Signals worth stopping on:

• A guaranteed stream, follower or playlist-placement count.
• Prices far below what the per-curator marketplaces charge for just a listen.
• No named curators or playlists you can look up yourself.
• No way to see where the streams came from in your Spotify for Artists data.

For a full checklist of how to vet a service before paying, read Is Spotify promotion legit? To check one playlist before you pay its curator, use the botted playlist red flags.

Which model fits your budget?

Start with what’s free and what you’re eligible for, then add paid layers in order of control.

1. €0: pitch every release through Spotify for Artists at least 7 days early, so you get the Release Radar add. The music release plan template works the dates out from your release day.
2. Under about $100: a small, targeted round of SubmitHub or Groover submissions to curators who actually play your genre.
3. $100–$300: a Showcase campaign if you meet Spotify’s eligibility, a larger round of submissions, or a Playlist Push campaign from $280.
4. A monthly budget: a targeted-ads service whose fee includes the ads, if you want promotion running month after month rather than bought pitch by pitch.
5. £1,000 and up: PR, usually best saved for a release with a story behind it.

Whatever you spend, decide in advance what result would make it worth repeating, and check the source of streams graph in Spotify for Artists afterwards, which shows where on Spotify people played your tracks.

Keep reading: Spotify promotion options compared · SubmitHub vs Groover vs Playlist Push · All guides · Free artist tools