A UTM link is an ordinary link with a few labels added to the end, so your website's analytics can tell you where each visit came from. If you announce the same song on Instagram, TikTok and in an email, UTM tags show which one actually sent people to it. Without them you are left guessing from likes, and likes are a poor guide to who clicked.
What UTM parameters are
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, an old name from the early days of web analytics that stuck. A tagged link looks like your normal address followed by a question mark and a few pairs, for example:
?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=yay-gecesi
There are five parameters:
- utm_source: where the link was placed, such as instagram, tiktok, youtube or newsletter
- utm_medium: the kind of placement, such as bio, story, email or paid
- utm_campaign: the name of the push, such as the song or release you are promoting
- utm_content: which version of a post or ad, such as teaser-1 and teaser-2
- utm_term: meant for paid search keywords, and most musicians never need it
Source, medium and campaign are the three that matter. Add content when you want to compare two versions of the same thing.
Where UTM links work, and where they don't
They work when the link points to a page that has analytics installed: your own website, a page that lists your song on every platform, a ticket page or a merch shop. When someone arrives, the analytics tool reads the labels from the address and files the visit under them.
They don't give you data from inside streaming platforms. Spotify, Apple Music and the others report streams in their own tools and generally don't pass your labels back to you, so a tagged link straight to a song tells you nothing in your website analytics. If you want to know which post sent listeners, send them through a page you own and put the streaming buttons there.
You don't need a big website for this. A simple one-page site with your links is enough, and several analytics tools are available at no cost.
Building a separate link for each post or ad
The idea is one link per placement. Start from the same destination address and change only the labels:
- Instagram bio: source instagram, medium bio, campaign yay-gecesi
- Instagram story with a countdown: source instagram, medium story, campaign yay-gecesi
- Email to your list: source newsletter, medium email, campaign yay-gecesi
- Two versions of a paid video: medium paid, content video-a and video-b
If everything shared one link, you would see only a total. Separate links tell you whether the story, the bio or the email did the work. Some platforms allow just one link in the profile, so tag it with the current campaign name and update it when the campaign changes.
Keeping names consistent
Most analytics tools treat Instagram and instagram as two different sources, and your report splits into pieces that are hard to add up. A few simple rules prevent this:
- Use lowercase only.
- Use hyphens instead of spaces.
- Avoid special letters such as ə, ş or ö, because they get encoded into unreadable strings.
- Use the same word for the same thing every time, so "instagram" never becomes "ig" in the next campaign.
- Keep a small spreadsheet of every tag you create, with the date and what it was for.
Don't put names, emails or any personal data in tags, because the address is visible to everyone who clicks. And don't add UTM labels to links between pages of your own site. That can overwrite the real source of the visit and make your numbers worse.
Reading the results
In your analytics tool, open the report about where visits come from (often called acquisition or traffic sources) and look at it by source, medium and campaign. Then ask practical questions:
- Which source brought the most visits?
- Which visits actually clicked a streaming button or bought a ticket?
- Which version of the ad or teaser worked better?
Be careful with small numbers. A few dozen visits can't tell you which format is better, so compare across several campaigns before changing your strategy. Remember too that some apps hide where the visit came from. Those visits show up as direct or unknown, so UTM data usually undercounts rather than overcounts.
A quick checklist before you post
- The destination page has analytics installed.
- Each placement has its own link.
- Source, medium and campaign are filled in, all in lowercase.
- The tag is written down in your spreadsheet.
- You know which report you will open a week later to see what happened.
After two or three releases with this habit you will have real answers about where your listeners come from, instead of a feeling.