Case Study: From 60K to 110K Instagram Followers To 70% More Listeners on Spotify. Over Night

A success story coming from a young Romanian trap artist who became viral over night. With stats, insights and other details you can learn from.

Oh, the eternal questions: how to organically reach new audiences for your music, through social media? How to organically grow your fanbase and, moreover, how to convert some of them into avid supportes, willing to share your music within their communities?

The answer comes today from a totally underrated artist, hailing from Romania’s trap underground. His name is RAVA and he recently claimed the first position on the Daily Top Artists and Daily Viral Songs charts in Romania with IN LIPSA TA.

Rewind 1 month before: RAVA released on March 11 the Deluxe version of the highly acclaimed BULIBA$HA album, boosting the album’s stream count to over 10 million, as we speak. The strong visual component, both controversial and intriguiging, was a key component, especially for promoting the pre-save link. Eye catching as hell (pun intended :D), the short video cuts spread like fire on Instagram Stories. Artists affiliated with Seek Music, the record label that signed RAVA for BULIBA$HA, contributed to this snowball effect with shares within their communities of fans.

Gathering a confortable amount of presaves prior to the release date, the album quickly topped the charts on both Spotify and Apple Music right after the release. Of course, the most important thing in this equation were the bold lyrics and genuine flow that go by the name of RAVA, backed by the same sick beats we’re used with.

Yet, IN LIPSA TA contained an element that transformed the track from a special track into a viral thing: RAVA’s simple lyrics about his broken heart, backed by Iustin’s voice, who was featured on the song. As Iustin brought a romantic alt-pop flavour to the song, RAVA came out revealing a softer side. These emotions came into total antagony with his otherwise powerful image of a bad boy used to deal with all the hard moments in life, but resonated with people in a totally unforeseen way. The main trigger was RAVA’s live perfomance at the beginning of April, in front of a 500 people audience. The cut when RAVA sang IN LIPSA TA, while holding his girlfriend in his arms, became viral over night.

Almost 1.4 million plays on instagram in 4 days translated into more than 50K additional instagram followers over night (literally), while TikTokers spread the sound like fire: parodies, bromance videos or simple heart breaking video messages shared with the loved ones. Moreover, RAVA seized the moment on his Stories and encouraged fans to use the sound as much as they want and how they want.

The conversion into Spotify listeners? HUGE! Check out the graph below: that huge bump in the streams count is real and so is the fact that social media followers converted into Spotify & Apple Music listeners. Also, 35% of the Spotify streams were coming from RAVA’s Spotify profile and catalog, a clear indicator that RAVA’s Spotify profile was the landing page for most of his listeners. People added the song like crazy into their personal playlists and this counted for another 35% of the Spotify streams.

So, what have we learned from RAVA’s success story? First and foremost: the authentic image counted, doubled by bold visuals and, on top of that, an emotional bond with the audience! Second: a collaborative effort into promoting the multi-retail link to the digital streaming services (Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music a.s.o.), proving the important role of an independent record label that guides its artists to supporting each other’s music. Third: an emotional moment, captured on video, that stongly resonates with the audience! Social media algorithms love these moments and push them into becoming viral! Last but not least: the courage of the artist to step out of his confort zone and experiment with sound, to reach new audience and potential fans.

Touching all the points above, RAVA saw a 70% increase in his listeners, compared to the same period before going viral, while the daily stream count grew from 120K to 188K over night.