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Which posts and ads led to clicks to Spotify? Tracking Instagram and TikTok

You post the same link in a story, a reel caption, two bios and an ad. A week later you want to know which of them actually sent people to the music. Here is how to set that up, and what you can and cannot measure.

Updated October 23, 2026 · 4 min read

First, what can be measured

Be clear about this before you start: no link tool can see streams. Spotify and Apple Music do not tell a link page whether someone played the song after they arrived. What a release page can measure is:

  • Visits — people who opened the page.
  • Clicks through to a service — people who tapped Spotify, Apple Music or another service.
  • Where each visit came from — the post, bio, ad or QR code.

A click through to Spotify is the closest signal to a listen that a link can give, and it is the right one to compare posts by. For streams, use Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists and your distributor’s reports alongside.

How sources are recognised

listenthru credits each visit to a source in this order:

  1. A utm_source on the link, if it is one of the sources listenthru knows (for example ig_story, ig_bio, tiktok_bio, meta_ads, tiktok_ads, youtube, newsletter, qr). Unknown names are grouped as “other”, so made-up values do not clutter your stats.
  2. Ad click identifiers that Meta and TikTok add to links (fbclid, ttclid).
  3. The referring site: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube, Threads, LINE or a search engine.
  4. Otherwise the visit counts as direct.

A utm_campaign name is kept as written, so you can compare individual posts within a source.

Step by step

  1. Open the link builder on the release

    In listenthru, open the release and choose where you will share the link: Instagram story, Instagram bio, TikTok bio, a Meta or TikTok ad, YouTube, X, LINE, a newsletter or somewhere else.

  2. Name the campaign

    Add a short campaign name, like teaser-1 or tour-2026, to tell posts apart.

  3. Use the tagged link

    Copy the tagged link and use it in that one place. For an ad, use it as the ad’s website URL.

  4. Connect your ad accounts

    Add your Meta Pixel and TikTok Pixel. On Pro, add the access tokens to send the same events from the server too.

  5. Read Insights → Sources

    See visits, clicks through to services and the top service for each source and campaign. Sort by clicks to see what worked.

Tagging links by hand

You can also add tags yourself. Add ?utm_source=ig_story&utm_campaign=teaser-1 to the end of your release page address. Use the known source names above, keep campaign names short, lowercase and hyphenated, and use one tagged link per place.

For posters, flyers and merch, use the QR code on each release: scans are counted as “QR code”.

Sending clicks to Meta and TikTok ads

If you run ads, the platforms optimise for whatever event you tell them matters. A page view is a weak signal; a click through to a streaming service is a strong one.

  • Meta (Instagram and Facebook). Add your Meta Pixel and a click through to a service is sent as a Lead event.
  • TikTok. Add your TikTok Pixel and a click through to a service is sent as ClickButton.
  • From the server, on Pro. The same events are also sent through the Meta Conversions API and the TikTok Events API, with a shared event ID so each click is counted once. Server events are not hidden by ad blockers or browser restrictions the way pixels in the browser can be.
  • Consent. Visitors from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland are asked before any ad tag runs.

Google tag (GA4 and Google Ads), Snapchat and X tags can be added too; those run in the browser.

Reading the results

In Insights → Sources, each place a visit came from has its visits, clicks through to services and the service people picked most, sorted by clicks. The click-through rate — clicks divided by visits — is the best way to compare a story with a bio or one ad with another, because it does not depend on how many people saw each post.

  • A source with many visits and few clicks: people were curious, but the page did not convince them. Check the artwork and first service shown.
  • A source with few visits and a high rate: a small but keen audience. Worth posting there more.
  • “Opened in” shows which app visitors were in, which helps when referrers are missing.

The free plan keeps seven days of insights; Pro keeps ninety, adds CSV downloads and lets you compare releases side by side.

Questions

Can I see how many streams a post led to?

No link tool can. Streaming services do not report plays back to link pages. You can see clicks through to each service by source, and streams in each service’s artist dashboard.

Do I need UTM tags if listenthru reads referrers?

For anything you want to compare within one app, yes. A story, a bio and an ad on Instagram can all look like “Instagram” without a tag.

What event is sent to Meta and TikTok?

A click through to a service is sent as Lead to Meta and as ClickButton to TikTok. Pro also sends them from the server, deduplicated with the browser event.

Can I use my own utm_source names?

Names listenthru does not know are grouped as “other”. Use the link builder, or the known names, and put your own detail in utm_campaign.

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