Sharing Spotify links is a great way to bring attention to your favorite playlists or compositions. However, these links aren’t exactly structured in a way that promotes easy sharing—they’re long and contain a string of numbers and letters, which can impact how your target audience perceives them. More often than not, they don’t get the best engagement, because they don’t provide readers with much context about what they’re clicking on.
One way to address this is to use a link management and shortening platform to transform long links into cleaner, more appealing URLs. Below, we’ll explore some of the top use cases for Spotify links, why long links can pose problems, and how you can use Bitly to shorten Spotify links for easier sharing and better engagement.
What can you use Spotify links for?
With over 615 million users, Spotify is the largest audio streaming service globally. This makes it an excellent social interaction tool for music and podcast lovers. However, as you can’t send direct messages or post your thoughts on the platform, you can only interact with fellow music enthusiasts or your fans using different tools, like social media.
How do you make sure you’re listening to or discussing the same songs, podcasts, or albums on these other platforms? Spotify links. Here are some of their uses:
Sharing playlists
It’s quite common to find songs, podcasts, and playlists with similar names, so it can be confusing if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.
Spotify links take the guesswork out of which audio to listen to by taking your audience directly where you want. Through these URLs, you can easily share curated or collaborative playlists with friends or on social media by simply selecting your playlists and tapping the Share button. Providing such seamless access to music can result in increased engagement. This is because you’re directing people to exactly where you want them versus relying on them to find you through Spotify’s sometimes-unwieldy search function.
Promoting new music
As one of the largest audio streaming platforms, it comes as no surprise that Spotify is also among the most competitive. It’s so competitive that only 19.16% of musicians on the platform registered over 1,000 monthly listeners in 2023. Yes, you read that right—out of the estimated 10 million artists using the service, less than a quarter have a thousand monthly streams.
To survive in this space, artists have to use all the tools at their disposal. Digital marketing solutions like Spotify links are exactly what you need. You can amplify your word-of-mouth marketing efforts by sharing albums and single links with your fans and encouraging them to do the same with their audiences. This is a key first step to getting more people to listen to your music.
Embedding music in blogs or websites
Spotify links do more than just help artists market their music—they also empower website owners and bloggers to enhance reader engagement by providing direct access to music referenced in blog content. For example, by embedding study playlists in educational content, they can help readers study and listen to focus-enhancing music without leaving learning sites.
To embed music in blogs or websites:
- Open the Spotify Web Player.
- Select your preferred track or playlist.
- Right-click the title of your chosen audio and tap Share.
- Select the suboption that starts with the word Embed—for a single song, it’ll be Embed track.
- Customize your Embed to match your website’s aesthetics.
- Select Copy.
- Go to your HTML editor and paste the code where you’d like it to be displayed on your webpage.
- Save your changes and test the player. At this point, you’ll be able to see the Spotify player on your website.
Use shortened links for embedding just in case website visitors want to save your music or play it on Spotify. If you use shortened links, they’ll see clean, aesthetically pleasing URLs.
Why are long Spotify links a problem?
Working with long Spotify links may present some user experience issues, including:
Cluttered, confusing appearance
An unshortened Spotify URL is a random mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. It’s not only lengthy but also appears confusing—factors that can make your social media posts and messages look cluttered and unprofessional.
To portray your music or podcast in the best light, you’ll need to use a Spotify link shortener to shorten URLs and incorporate more meaningful words or phrases into your links.
Less engagement
Imagine coming across the following links as you browse through social media:
Link 1: https://open.spotify.com/track/20IgjP9X4we6nNMBh4aUkhs?si=604febe6390642ef
Link 2: https://your-band-domain.com/spotify-track
Which option would you click on? If you’re like many people, you’ll likely be more willing to click the second link. Why? Because it appears more trustworthy and professional and hints at what you’re about to listen to.
People are less likely to engage with long URLs (like the first one) because they’re long, complicated, and look spammy.
Difficult to share
If you want to share your link and offer a short description, a long URL won’t cut it on character-limited platforms like X (Twitter). X has a 240-character limit per post—if you add a long URL, you’ll eat up a huge chunk of this limit, forcing you to condense your description.
Even if you can get everything to fit in one post, it can be challenging for fans to copy and share these long URLs, potentially limiting your reach.
How to shorten Spotify links with Bitly
Ready for cleaner and more appealing Spotify links? Here’s how to leverage Bitly to shorten single and playlist URLs:
1. Create a Bitly account
Bitly goes beyond typical link shortening—it also lets you brand your URLs and provides access to short link tracking analytics to help you assess the effectiveness of your audio-sharing efforts.
By branding your URLs with a custom domain, you can build trust and create familiarity with your target audience. With Bitly Analytics, you can see which sharing channels resonate the most with your target audience and visualize where most of your listeners are geographically.
To create a Bitly account:
- Visit Bitly.com and select Sign up Free in the top-right corner.
- Select your plan and then Get Started.
- Enter your preferred username, email address, and password, or sign up with your Google account.
- Verify your account by following the link sent to your email inbox.
2. Copy the Spotify link
When you create your Bitly account, open Spotify and copy your audio’s URL. To do so, right-click (desktop) or tap the three dots next to your chosen audio (mobile), select Share, and then Copy Song Link—you’ll get the long Spotify URL.
3. Use Bitly to easily shorten the link
Shortening links with the Bitly URL Shortener is relatively straightforward:
- Log in to your Bitly account.
- Select Create new and then Link.
- Enter the long Spotify URL in the Destination field.
- Add your preferred title to make it easy for you to find the link at a future date (optional).
- Select Create or hit Enter on your keyboard to create the short link. If you just need a simple one, you can complete your shortening process here.
If you have UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters or want to brand your links for marketing purposes, follow these additional steps:
- Toggle the switch and input your UTM codes in the designated fields.
- To customize your link, enter your custom domain to replace “bit.ly” (available for some paid plans).
- Enter a custom back-half related to the audio you’re linking to. For example, if you’re shortening a playlist URL, you can add your playlist title to make the link unique.
- Select Create.
4. Share the shortened link
When you create your short link in Bitly, the short URL is automatically copied to your clipboard. You can then share it on various platforms (social media, emails, blogs, video podcasts, etc.). Some best practices to keep in mind here include:
- Test the short Spotify link before posting it to make sure it directs customers to your intended audio.
- Incorporate the link in multiple channels to reach a wider audience.
- Provide a brief description or call to action (CTA) to let your audience know what to expect when they click the URL.
Sharing short links is hassle-free, as they’re more manageable in length. This, combined with their aesthetics and engagement potential, makes them the best options for sharing music or podcasts.
5. Track your Spotify URL performance
Bitly is more than just a link-shortening tool—it’s also a link tracker, meaning it can help you monitor your URL performance. Through Bitly Analytics, you’ll have access to a wide range of insights, including engagement totals and geographic data.
Engagement totals can reveal whether your link-sharing efforts are successful and, if you’re sharing Spotify links through multiple channels, help you identify the most effective one to help inform future marketing efforts.
Geographic data is also valuable as it shows you where most of your listeners are located. If you’re an artist, you can schedule performances in these areas to connect with fans.
Make Spotify URL sharing easier than ever with Bitly
With their strings of letters and numbers, long Spotify links can look cluttered and don’t provide much context about what they’re directing readers to—which can impact engagement rates.
To maximize your audience interaction, you need to shorten these URLs and leverage custom domains and back-halves for easy identification. With Bitly, you have access to a reliable URL shortener that lets you transform your Spotify links from cluttered URLs into more manageable, visually appealing custom links that enhance engagement. You can easily share your music or podcast links on multiple platforms and even monitor your interactions with analytics.
Sign up for Bitly today to create short branded Spotify links for easy sharing and enhanced audience engagement!