Speaker 0 00:00:00 Over the last few years, Spotify has become one of the most widely used apps in the world. And that presents a huge opportunity for churches. Well, in today's episode, we're gonna talk about six ways. Your church should be using Spotify to reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. Speaker 0 00:00:28 You're listening to the retried podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow Speaker 0 00:00:54 Hey guys, welcome to the retries podcast episode number 84. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host Speaker 3 00:01:02 Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas. Speaker 0 00:01:04 Hey, not too much, man. Excited for a fun conversation today. Uh, what should you use, uh, for music and stuff? You use Spotify. Speaker 3 00:01:12 That is my go-to. That Speaker 0 00:01:13 Is my go-to. Well, that's the me too. And that is the theme of today's I'm a Speaker 3 00:01:18 Premium, I'm a premium member. Speaker 0 00:01:20 Oh my gosh. I had no idea. I was talking to someone so important. That's great. I love them. We are a family premium account here. So my, uh, my wife and kids and we all have our own Spotify accounts here. Uh, but the conversation today, uh, in episode 84 is six ways that your church should be using Spotify. And I think this is one of those platforms that a lot of us use personally. Uh, a lot of churches haven't really leveraged some of the things that we can be doing with Spotify. Um, I know that the church that I pastored in, in Madison, Wisconsin, we did, uh, just about all of these, not quite, but just about all of these. They weren't quite available when I left there, but, uh, most of these we did and they were huge things for us, really. It was part of our culture and a really good thing for our church, I would say. So. Um, yeah, but I think that, uh, uh, you know, statistics wise, Spotify is the most used of all the music platforms out there. Uh, and it's something that, uh, I dunno, do you, that's what you've been using for a while? Did you use like apple music or one of the other ones or Speaker 3 00:02:26 I did use to use, uh, no, I never used apple music. I used iTunes back in the day Speaker 0 00:02:33 Music Speaker 3 00:02:33 That way. That's right. That's right. And then, uh, and then what was a Google play for a little while? Um, so the Google play music and then, uh, but then Spotify, when I started using that, I was like, wow, this is, this is my favorite. So yeah, no, I think the app is on my computer right now. I'm looking at the Spotify app logo. And so there it is, Speaker 0 00:02:52 There it is. Yeah. I have it at the bottom of mine too. It's pinned down there. I actually have Spotify open. It's one of like four windows right now, but maybe Spotify stays in the bottom corner of my screen all, all day. I just kind of have it there for when I'm turning out some work. I'll put something on Speaker 3 00:03:08 My front screen on my phone too. So yeah. Yeah. So, Speaker 0 00:03:13 Uh, Spotify commercial basis. No, here we go. Right? Yeah. The, uh, the point today though, is to help churches figure out some ways that they could use Spotify. And we came up with six of them and I think that they are going to be pretty helpful for our audience. So, uh, why don't you kick us off with the first one here today? Speaker 3 00:03:30 Yeah, that's the preview worship songs for visitors. I get this question all the time is, uh, you know, in people. So here's the thing. When someone's looking into a church, they do care about not just the preaching style and, you know, w what they're going to kind of experience with their, if they have children and they're bringing them to children's church, they want to know what the worship style is going to be like. And what are we going to experience with that? That's very important to people. So Spotify is an excellent place for you to be able to preview the worship songs that your worship team's planning to play this next week or, or for the whole month or whatever, if you have it planned out like that. And so, um, I know you did this at your church, but, uh, um, you know, that, that I think is item number one is, you know, you know, what's probably going to be in your set list coming up. If it's going to be Hillsong or Chris Tomlin or whatever, you can preview those, those songs easily. Speaker 0 00:04:24 You can, you can do it. So we weren't quite that specific with the way that we did it each week or each month, but basically most churches have a, you know, a library of, um, I think sometimes these libraries are too big, but somewhere between like 20 and 50, or hopefully if it's over 50, you probably ought to wheel that down. But that many songs that they pull from weekend and week out, um, yeah, I, I know one of the challenges that we've always had is I've been a, a Christian and a, a leader in a church for 20 some years now. Uh, and the songs that we sang back in the late nineties are still very near and dear to my heart, but they are totally irrelevant. Like, I think about this, like we used to joke, like, I think, you know, I don't know, early two thousands that say like, we'd be like, oh yeah, that church is still singing songs. Like awesome, God, and that kind of stuff. And you know, that is kind of what some of those early two thousands songs are now to all the kids and the young people that are in your chair. I felt, I Speaker 3 00:05:23 Felt old saying Chris Tomlin just now. Speaker 0 00:05:25 Yeah, exactly. Chris Tolman is, he's great. It's yeah. It's all about Maverick city now. And all these other, uh, kind of, it's got kind of a little bit of gospel feel to music right now. I really like some of that that's happening now. So all that being said, what we think is great is people want to know what they're getting into before they walk in the doors. And so what we did at our church is on our, um, kind of let us know you're coming or like our, for visitors page, when people want to plan their visit, we had a whole section in there dedicated to what the music is like. We had photos and then we had a Spotify playlist that played right in our website and someone could click on it. And it had, we tried to widdle our list onto like 30 songs that we would choose from each week, weekend and week out. Speaker 0 00:06:10 And we have those 30 songs listed in there and people really could feel it. Now, this is something that's important because people will choose a church based on the kind of music that you're doing there. So if you are a church that is only doing him still, you know, you want that to be front and center. If you are a, uh, you know, ultra contemporary, um, kind of church that you want to have that in there. And so giving people a feel of the music you're doing, um, you know, most, a lot of us, I think our, our audience, we're doing things right by Hillsong and by elevation church and by Bethel and Maverick city. And some of those new ones are coming out too. So those are the places that we're doing a lot of music from, but getting those on there so people could hear and they kind of, it helps them say, oh yeah, I really like some of this music. Yeah. I think that really goes a long way. Speaker 3 00:06:53 That's good. That's good stuff. Why don't you cover Speaker 0 00:06:55 The next one? Another, the next one is something else we did at our church that I, I loved this, uh, as a pastor of a church, it was really nice to use this tool here, but this, the next one is have a shared worship ideas play announced. And so what this was was it was a playlist for our church that the whole worship team, uh, and some of our staff members, our leaders at the church, we are all on the shared list where we could all add songs and it turned into as a place where, Hey, maybe we're listening to something on Spotify, or we kind of caught this worship song and it really spoke to us. We can add it to our playlist. And that would kind of ping everybody that was on the worship team, on the staff. Hey, here's a new worship idea. Speaker 0 00:07:36 Something maybe we should listen to. And if it resonates with all of us, maybe we can add this one to our list of music that we're going to start doing on Sunday mornings in our worship sets there. So that was really fun. I know, I know that, that I'm sure a lot of pastors can relate this. There's kind of this weird tension. Sometimes that happens with a lead pastors and worship leaders when they're different people that you want to give input, and this is any creative industry or any creative role when you're getting maybe less creative people giving input to the more creative people. It can sometimes be a little challenging to receive that, to give it to not feel weird. And it kind of makes a nice, neutral way to give that kind of feedback, give some ideas. I think that's a really fun way to do it. Speaker 3 00:08:19 I think that's cool too. And, and, you know, being a part of a larger church that has a very large worship team, you know, uh, I'm sure that they do it. I haven't asked them recently, but, uh, but, um, you know, I I've been assumed they would do something like that. And also this could be good too, that you don't have to wait, uh, or worship leaders don't have to wait until they meet together to discuss new songs just throughout the week when they're not at church, they can say, you know, just look on that shared playlist and see something new and interact that way. So Speaker 0 00:08:48 Yeah. And they can add it to the songs that we currently do playlist, and that's a great place for new worship team members to go. And, you know, of play along with any of the songs, they may need to be learning those kinds of things there. So yeah. Kind of works hand in hand that way. Speaker 3 00:09:02 Yeah. I'll get the next one. So it's create a, what we're listening to playlist. So that's kind of, that's creative. This is a little different, uh, w when you thought of that, when I was like, huh, that's weird. I don't know if I've seen that before, but, uh, you know, I think that this is where you can really kind of say, Hey, as a church, you know, this, these are some of the artists we're listening to, and this may not even just be a worship song, right. This could just be, you know, I think a lot of churches, not all of them, they still listen to some secular music. And I know, I know I do. So if they could, we get some comments, people being mad at me, I really love Metallica. And I know they don't, I know they need Jesus, but, uh, and I'd like other hard rock bands too. Uh, I feel old for saying Metallica too, but they're relevant still anyway to, to the next year, but here it could just be something that's inspiring to the church. It could be, you know, it could be anything, it could be electronic, it could be hip hop or something like that, something that, and I think that just kinda helps the church be more relevant. Speaker 0 00:10:03 Yeah. I don't know. There's something about, um, like pastoral recommendations. I think that, uh, is, uh, is powerful. Like I think if, uh, when I was leading a church, if I said that I, you have to be really careful. I remember this like to say, oh, I watched this TV show, or I saw this movie because people will often take it as like a, um, you know, they'll maybe use it to decide whether I'm allowed to watch this kind of stuff. If good Christian should be doing this or not some of those kinds of things. But I think that there is a certain power when it comes to a recommendation. And so people would be interested in knowing what the staff and the leaders of your church are listening to. Uh, kind of like, if you think about it, the way you have your staff page set up, a lot of times staff is on the staff page, they'll say, oh, this is pastor J. And, and he's into, he loves baseball. He loves hiking, he loves skateboarding and maybe they put it in, he loves, uh, I don't know, Metallica or mercy me or whatever he listens to having this headache. What's that does actually opposing those two. Yeah, Speaker 3 00:11:02 Yeah, yeah, Speaker 0 00:11:04 Yeah. That's exactly right. But the, the funny thing is that I think people really are interested in this. It's another way to kind of engage and help people form a connection with leaders within your church. And again, hear us, right. We're not saying it's all about promoting the leaders and building that kind of a culture there, but it is a fact that people choose a church often based on a connection they have with the leaders within that church. And so anything we can do to kind of personalize you and make people make you feel more relatable to people, um, it would be like, for instance, if I found out that a pastor of a church loved, uh, his favorite band was the same favorite band as mine. Like I love Pearl jam if he loves Pearl jam too. And I'm like, oh man, we have an instant connection. We have this kind of this thing together. So anyway, I think it's something valuable, a neat kind of creative way to build engagement within your church there. Speaker 3 00:11:53 That's good. Cool. Speaker 0 00:11:55 Next one up is submit your podcast to Spotify. This one is one that I think is, is huge. I think that every church, you should probably be at least turning your messages. If you don't have an additional podcast, turning your messages into a podcast, just for distribution sake. If you are weekly putting out sermons, you're doing all the hard work. You're preparing sermons, you're filming them, you're recording them and audio, at least do the simple thing of pushing them out to all of the major channels. But here's what shocked me is that everybody that does this, what is the first place they think of when they think of podcasts? Well, they think of the creator of podcasts. I think of apple, right? So I got to put it on the apple podcasts. They probably think of Google. They go ahead and do that. Maybe they, I personally listened to podcasts on Google podcasts. Speaker 0 00:12:44 That's just my preferred app for those kinds of things. But Spotify has now become the largest, listen, I guess the most used podcasting app now. So yeah, apple has 21% of the market share. Uh, so in general, that's about in line with how many devices they have out there. So if you have an apple device, you probably use apple podcasts. I know my wife does, and she uses she has an apple device, but she uses Spotify. Apple has to be 1%. Spotify is up to now 24% of the market share when it comes to podcasting software platforms. So you are putting it on the things that come to your mind. First, apple and Google, you're missing the largest chunk of people that are wanting to listen on Spotify there. So any podcasting platform can help you do that, can help you get it on to those, all of those channels and dozens of other ones, but you just need to be aware. Speaker 0 00:13:39 So for instance, for us and retry, I, if you go onto our podcast page as of today, maybe by the time this goes live, this won't be the case. I hope to change this soon, but it says it definitely gets pushed on to Spotify, all of our podcasts, but the two options on the top are, um, subscribe or listen on iTunes, uh, or listen on apple podcasts and then listen on Google podcasts. Those two, the biggest one isn't even on there as a link. So we're going to get that fixed. I'll talk to our design team and we'll get that added on there in the next, uh, in the next couple of days here, hopefully before this, this episode goes live. Uh, so anyway, submitting, it is huge though. It's not hard work, getting it dialed in so that every time you put out a new episode of put out a new sermon, it automatically goes on to Spotify. That is a huge audience you need to be taking advantage of. Speaker 3 00:14:26 And that's a good point unless you don't have any. And unless you have more to add to that, I think that's a good segue into the next point here, which is a broadcast your video sermons. You may not be thinking also it just, like you said, with the podcast, someone may not be thinking of Spotify cause they just think music cause they just think music first, same thing with your video sermons. And this is a big thing right now, church, since the pandemic churches have up their game and have most churches have done live streaming to a certain extent or get, are getting video messages, uh, archived on their websites now. So this is another place to, to get video push video out there where people are at and where there's going to be a large audience of people that can stumble upon your, your video sermons too. So, uh, actually recently I was surprised, you know, when I first started using spot cast as podcast podcasts, Spotify, uh, and there's a new one now. Uh, but, uh, Spotify, I was surprised when I started seeing more video come up there. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, there's a ton of video content here too. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:15:32 I usually have it off in my pocket. Like I know that most of the music I listened to, they have like music videos that go along with it. A lot of worship stuff I listen to has lyric videos and things, and that's great, but I just think that most churches aren't making that kind of content, they're making sermon content and those things. And I think, you know, like, like this kind of episode, we're not uploading our video. As of right now to a Spotify. We probably ought to be doing that as well. We're putting it on Facebook and YouTube and I think churches should do the same thing. If you're going to put it on one place, put it on YouTube, you can put it on two places, put it on YouTube and Facebook. I think you're going to put it three places. It would be YouTube, Facebook and Spotify would be the third one that I would put my, my video, uh, of my sermons there because it has a huge audience. A lot of your church already uses it. Uh, so I just think it's a really easy place to kind of further build your audience. And I will say that it is not as saturated as YouTube. There's so much content that gets added to Facebook and YouTube every single second of every single day. Whereas Spotify is still a little bit kind of, uh, with that kind of market share. It's still kind of a best kept secret there. Uh, so a lot of room to grow and all that. Speaker 3 00:16:42 That's good. Yeah. Why don't you bring us home? We got one last one is Speaker 0 00:16:44 Create a pre and post service playlist on Spotify. Uh, so we did this at our church. Um, do check the legal restrictions. Um, especially if you are, if you're still live streaming during this time, there's probably some rules about live streaming out, uh, things directly from Spotify. But again, this is not a legal advice podcast. Uh, do your own research on those things, but I know a lot of churches have successfully created an atmosphere for worship for, you know, engaging with the Lord because of the music that they're able to have before and after service. I remember we got this feedback all the time that we had, we had non Christian music would play before and after service at our church. Uh, so we would have just, and it wasn't, Speaker 3 00:17:32 I remember you were talking about that. He had like audio slave, Speaker 0 00:17:34 There was one audio slave song and there, it wasn't like it was. Speaker 3 00:17:37 And someone, I think I remember that because I think you said someone, someone complained me, you know what I think Speaker 0 00:17:42 I used, I played audio slave once in a sermon that I did talking about devotion of Tom Morello and the way that he played guitar. And now he plays for like six hours a day practicing, but we did have all kinds of stuff and they're nothing like inappropriate or obscenity filled or anything like that. But it was, um, we were playing, you know, just kind of culture building music. So it was things that really resonated with our church. We were in like an urban area in a very, um, you know, very kind of, uh, hip area of Madison. Yeah. We had naked bike rides that went by our church. If that gives you an idea of that place that we were in there. So it was kind of crazy. So we had, we wanted to have that kind of feel, we didn't want it to feel like it was high church or we were like too spiritual to be relatable to people. Speaker 0 00:18:29 So we had other kinds of music playing there. And I remember how many times I heard we had, I remember one girl that got connected to our church and got engaged. And I actually, um, I had a, she really grew in her relationship relationship with the Lord because she said, I felt like this is my church home. When I came in and I heard chance the rapper, uh, in the, on the playlist, when I went in before service, I felt like this is the right kind of place. I mean, now there's some people that probably scared away and said, I'm not going to a church that yes, chance the rapper before we have any kind of a service there. But all that being said, we think you can really use these playlists to curate the kind of experience and the kind of feel that people would have on there when they come on a Sunday evening. So what do you think Speaker 3 00:19:11 It's kind of made me think of a, like at a small group, uh, you know, when I ever as I've led small groups, it's nice to have like a little music on in the background. It kind of sets the ambience and the mood and, and uh, so I think it, no, I think, and it's, it's really cool. What you just shared about that girl, you know, that's not probably the main reason she grew in her relationship to Jesus with the Speaker 0 00:19:32 Lord, but it wasn't Speaker 3 00:19:33 All the music. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, but no, but it was, it was something that, you know, God, I would say God probably used and she felt comfortable. Right. It made her feel comfortable. And I think it, I think it just makes you relevant and more relatable. Um, so, um, I love it. Yeah, Speaker 0 00:19:48 No, it's just kind of setting the culture and the, the temperature of someone before. And I think it helps music can help people let their guard down. I think that there's something that when it's relatable to them, it can help them to get into a posture of being able to be more receptive than, you know, if God can use chance the rapper to lead people to Jesus, then he could do whatever he's going to do. So I I'm all for it there. So yeah, I hope that's been helpful to everybody. That's just six ways that we think your church should probably be using Spotify. I hope there's something in there that you can apply. You're not doing all of these already. My guess is most churches aren't because I think this is something that's kind of a new way of thinking with stuff. But, um, if this has been helpful to you or if you have any other ideas of ways that your church may be uses Spotify, that we can share with the reach, right family here, we would love to hear in the comments, let us know. We'd love to get some other feedback on that. Thank you guys so much for being a part of our retried family. Uh, we really love being able to do this. If you could let us know, um, and give us a feedback rate, review, subscribe, do all those things. It does mean a lot to us helps us to get this message out to more people there. Thank you guys so much for being part of the retread family, and we hope to catch you next week. Speaker 0 00:20:58 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out [email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.