If you have been pouring all your promo energy into TikTok, a new report might make you rethink your plan. On October 8, Artist Influence published its Music Promotion Benchmarks 2026 report, written by Jared Rapoza and based on more than 1,900 campaigns. It is packed with numbers on clipping, playlisting and YouTube ads, and some of them are pretty surprising. Here is what stood out, and what it could mean for your next release.
Instagram is carrying the clips
Clipping is when lots of short videos are made using a snippet of your song and posted across social platforms. In this dataset, Instagram completely dominated. It accounted for 90% of tracked clip views, 852 million out of 943 million. TikTok made up less than 10%.
The gap per clip is just as striking. The median Instagram clip got 1,942 views, compared with 313 for TikTok. That comes from 71,290 clips across 94 campaigns between November 2025 and September 2026, so it is not a tiny sample.
The obvious takeaway is not that TikTok is dead. It is that putting all your eggs in one basket is risky. In this data, Instagram carried far more volume, so it deserves a real place in your promo plan.
What a typical clipping campaign delivers
The report also breaks down what a median clipping campaign looks like. It came to about 708 clips and 6.08 million views on a $2,000 budget. 82% of campaigns met or beat their view goal, and the median campaign hit 5.6 times its goal. The effective median cost worked out to $0.36 per thousand views, against a budgeted CPM of $2.00.
Those are big numbers, and of course views are not the same as fans. But it gives independent artists a useful reference point if you are deciding whether paid clipping is worth testing.
Playlists can feed the algorithm
For Spotify, the report looked at what happens after a song lands on curator playlists. The median was 13 algorithmic streams, from places like Radio, Mixes, Smart Shuffle and Autoplay, for every 100 curator playlist streams. The top quarter of campaigns saw 51 or more.
It also tracked where songs showed up: 60% appeared in Discover Weekly, 87% in Release Radar and 95% in Radio. There is an important caveat here. These figures show where songs appeared, not that the playlists caused it. Still, it suggests that curator playlists can help seed the algorithmic surfaces where a lot of new music discovery happens.
Timing matters too. The first curator playlist add came after a median of 5 days, and 69% of campaigns got one within a week. So if nothing happens on day two, do not panic. Give it at least a week before you judge a campaign.
YouTube ads hold up well
YouTube ads were the most consistent performer in the report. 96% of completed campaigns reached or beat their view goal, with a median of 2.1 times the goal. The report notes that these numbers are based on lifetime views, so some of those views may not come from the ads alone.
What to do with this as an independent artist
Spread your short-form promo across platforms instead of betting everything on TikTok, and take Instagram seriously. Use playlist pitching as a way to get your song in front of the algorithm, not just as a goal in itself. Set realistic timelines and expect around a week before the first playlist adds come in. And always look at what happens after the views: saves, follows and repeat listens are what turn a campaign into a career.
Start with solid distribution
All of this promotion only works if your track is properly released and ready to stream everywhere when the campaign starts. That is where a reliable distributor comes in, delivering your music to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and beyond on the date you choose. Lots of independent artists use DistroKid for this, and you can get 7% off your membership through this DistroKid link.
Where do you get the most out of your music promotion right now: Instagram, TikTok, playlists or YouTube?
