You have finished a song. It is on the stores. Now what?
This is the map — nine platforms, what each is actually for, and roughly what a spend gets you. It is deliberately honest about which ones are not worth your money yet.
First, the one rule
Promote where your listeners already are, not where you wish they were. A Nigerian artist making music for Nigerian listeners who spends the whole budget on Spotify because it sounds more serious has bought the wrong thing. Spotify is the audience you want in two years. Audiomack is the one you have today.
The platforms, ranked by what they do for a Nigerian release
Audiomack — start here
The cheapest and most directly useful. Plays from ₦1,448 per 1,000, which is a fifth of anywhere else. The audience is Nigerian, the charts are reachable, and uploading needs no distributor. If you spend on one platform, spend here. The full guide.
Spotify — the credibility platform
Not because the plays are worth more, but because monthly listeners is the number the industry reads. Saves from ₦1,114 per 1,000 are the best value on the platform because saves feed the algorithm. Listeners vs plays, explained.
Boomplay — the continental one
Plays from ₦13,947 per 1,000. Ten times Audiomack, and worth it only once a song has proven itself somewhere cheaper, or if you are chasing listeners in Nairobi and Accra rather than Lagos. The full guide.
TikTok — where songs actually break
No amount of streaming promotion matters as much as one video using your sound. This is not something you can buy directly — you can buy views on videos that use it, which is a different and much weaker lever. Spend your creative energy here and your money elsewhere.
Instagram — the artist, not the song
Followers and Reel views build the person. Useful for bookings and brand deals, close to useless for stream counts. Budget for it separately from the release.
YouTube — for the video, if you have one
Subscribers arrive slowly by design, which is correct and which we explain before you order. If there is no video, skip it this cycle.
Tidal, Apple Music, Deezer — later
Tidal plays ₦21,263 per 1,000, Apple Music from ₦22,961, Deezer followers ₦4,571. These are completion platforms. They matter when you are making a case that your audience is everywhere, not when you are trying to be heard at all. Covered together here.
SoundCloud and Mixcloud — genre-dependent
SoundCloud plays are ₦1,563 per 1,000, which is nearly Audiomack cheap. If you make alté, amapiano edits, DJ mixes or anything that lives outside the mainstream release cycle, SoundCloud is where that audience is. If you make radio Afrobeats, skip it.
Shazam — the strange useful one
₦8,594 per 1,000. Shazam plays matter because Shazams are a discovery signal the industry watches closely — a song being Shazamed means people heard it somewhere and wanted to know what it was. Small budgets only, and only for songs actually getting played out.
Two budgets
₦20,000 — one platform, done properly
- Audiomack plays, ₦12,000, spread over two weeks
- Audiomack followers, ₦4,000
- Hold ₦4,000 back for the second single
Do not split ₦20,000 across five platforms. A thousand plays each in five places is invisible five times.
₦200,000 — a real campaign
- Audiomack: ₦45,000 plays and followers, weeks 1–3
- Spotify: ₦60,000 across plays, saves and monthly listeners, weeks 2–6, keeping the ratio sane
- Boomplay: ₦40,000 plays, weeks 3–6, once Audiomack has moved
- Instagram: ₦30,000 on the artist profile, ongoing
- Hold ₦25,000 for whichever one is working by week four
The holdback matters more than the split. One platform will outperform the others and you will not know which until you are three weeks in.
The sequencing rule
Cheapest platform first, always. Not to save money — to buy information. Audiomack tells you within a week whether people who hear the song stay for it. That is worth knowing before you spend ₦60,000 on Spotify.
What promotion cannot do
It cannot make a skippable song unskippable. If you put real numbers behind a release and nothing organic follows — no saves, no shares, nobody adding it to playlists themselves — the campaign worked and the song did not. That is painful and it is also the most valuable thing a first campaign can tell you.
The artists who grow are the ones who hear that and make a better second single, not the ones who buy more plays for the first.