“My Instagram Ads for Music Aren’t Working” – Here’s What’s Actually Going Wrong

1. What “Not Working” Usually Looks Like

When artists tell me “my Instagram ads for music aren’t working,” in practice it’s usually one of these:

• You’re getting cheap clicks, but:
  • Streams don’t move in Spotify for Artists
  • Or they spike for a day and then die
• People like / comment “fire” on the ad, but:
  • They don’t save the track
  • They don’t follow you
• You spent $50–$300, and:
  • You can’t honestly say what you got back
  • You have no idea which audience or country even worked

On the backend, it often looks like this:

• Objective set to “Traffic” or “Engagement”
• Ads go straight to Spotify or Apple Music
• No landing page, no email capture, no pixel events you actually understand
• You look at Ads Manager → see a bunch of green numbers → still feel like nothing happened

You feel crazy because the platform tells you “Great performance!”
But your bank account and your Spotify dashboard are saying the opposite.

That disconnect is the real problem.

2. Instagram’s Goal vs Your Goal (They’re Not the Same)

Meta (Instagram/Facebook) is extremely good at what it optimizes for.

If you ask it for:

• Cheapest clicks → it’ll find people who click everything
• Video views → it’ll find people who scroll and watch everything
• Engagement → it’ll find people who like and comment on everything

Those are not necessarily people who:

• Open Spotify
• Listen past 10 seconds
• Save songs
• Follow artists
• Come back next release

Most artists don’t realize this: when your Instagram ads for music “don’t work,” it’s often because you optimized for the wrong human behavior.

You told the machine, “Give me people who click.”
It did.
Those people just don’t care about you.

So the fix starts here: get clear about the one behavior you actually want.

For most independent artists, that’s:

“Find people who are likely to actually become fans, not just click once.”

Which means your ads, your pages, and your tracking all need to be set up to measure and reinforce fan actions, not vanity actions.

3. The Hidden Leaks That Kill Most Music Ad Campaigns

Here’s what I see again and again when we look inside “broken” campaigns.

Leak 1: Sending Traffic Straight to Spotify

This is the obvious one, but it’s still 90% of campaigns I see.

Problem with direct-to-Spotify:

• You lose all data after the click
  
• You can’t retarget non-listeners vs listeners
  
• You can’t capture email or any contact info
  
• You don’t know if Country A or Country B actually streamed

In practice, it feels like this: you pay for attention, Spotify gets the data, and you get… hope.

This is where most advice misses the point.
Everyone talks ad creatives and audiences. Very few talk about what happens after the click.

Leak 2: No Clear Path From Scroll → Curiosity → Fan

Your ad might be okay. The problem is usually the path:

Scroll → See ad → Tap → Random streaming page → Song plays (maybe) → That’s it.

No:

• Context (“who is this?”)
• Nudge to save / follow
• Easy way to opt into more (email, pre-save, whatever)
• Follow-up when they actually liked it

With small artists, this is lethal. You don’t get enough shots for waste.

Leak 3: Bad Geos, Bad Devices, Bots and Farm Traffic

I’ve seen this too many times:

• CPMs look amazing
• CTR is high
• Streams are weirdly low + 0 saves, 0 followers

Then we check the breakdown:

• Cheap traffic from countries that never show up in Spotify for Artists
• A ton of Android in-app browser listeners who bounce immediately
• Sometimes even obvious click farm patterns (1-second “views,” insane click rates)

This is why cheap can be the most expensive kind of traffic.
It teaches you the wrong lesson: “ads don’t work,” when actually “this audience is fake.”