A Pre-Save Swap lets fans save your upcoming song or album to their streaming service before it comes out, and rewards them with exclusive content in return. It's built for the window between announcing a release and the day it actually drops.
What Is a Pre-Save?
A pre-save is a way for fans to add an unreleased song or album to their streaming library ahead of time. When the release date arrives, the song automatically shows up in their Spotify, Apple Music, or other connected service, no action required on their part that day.
For artists, pre-saves matter because streaming platforms use early saves and plays as a signal. The more pre-saves a release has going into launch day, the better its chances of landing on algorithmic playlists and charts right out of the gate.
What a Pre-Save Swap Is
A Pre-Save Swap is one of the Swap types on Grouped, built specifically for unreleased music. Instead of just asking fans to pre-save your song, you give them a reason to: an exclusive video, an audio snippet, or embedded content they unlock the moment they pre-save.
Grouped handles the Swap setup, the reward page, fan interaction, and your analytics. The actual pre-save connection to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other services is powered by Feature.fm, our pre-save technology partner.
How It Works
You create a Pre-Save Swap in Grouped with your song or album title, release date, cover art, and the music services you want fans to choose from.
You set the reward fans unlock after pre-saving: a video, an audio file, or an embed.
Grouped generates a pre-save link through Feature.fm and gives you a shareable URL.
You share that link with fans.
A fan opens the link and picks their preferred streaming service to pre-save.
Once they pre-save, they're redirected to your Grouped reward page to unlock the content.
Fans can comment and interact right away, even before giving their name or email. If they choose to share their name and email, that counts as a signup and lets you follow up with them later.
When the song is released, the pre-save link automatically converts into a regular listening link.
You get a recap email with stats on how the campaign performed.
What Fans Experience
Fans can pre-save without creating an account. They start out anonymous, shown under a fun auto-generated name instead of just "Anonymous," and can watch or listen to the reward and leave comments right away. If they want to stay connected with you, they can add their name and email, which counts them as a fan signup and lets you follow up directly.
What You Get as an Artist
Beyond the pre-save itself, you get a dedicated reward page for the release, a place for fans to engage before the song is even out, and stats covering both sides of the campaign: pre-save views and service breakdown from Feature.fm, plus reward page views, signups, and engagement from Grouped.
We'll walk through the step-by-step setup soon. In the meantime, check out What Are Swaps? for an overview of all the Swap types on Grouped.