Smart links for music compared: price, pre-saves, and the pixel your ads need

What a smart link does, and why your ads need one

A smart link, or song link, is one web address that opens your song in whatever app the listener uses: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and the rest. Before release, the same page can be a pre-save link.

For ads, it does one more job. Meta learns only from what it can see. When someone taps your ad and lands in Spotify, Meta loses them, because you can't put your pixel inside Spotify. A smart link page is yours, so it can carry your pixel. It tells Meta who visited and who tapped through to Spotify. Then you can ask Meta to find more people who tap through, not just more people who tap the ad.

What the pixel can't see is the stream, the save or the follow. Those show up in Spotify for Artists, not in Meta. Our guide to promoting a song with ads shows the whole campaign.

The smart links, side by side

More detail:

• Feature.fm's free plan has unlimited links, one pre-save service and 7 days of stats. It collects fans' emails, but you upgrade to see them. Basic Artist ($8) adds one pixel and 3 pre-save services. Artist ($19 a month, $17 on a yearly plan) has 2 pixels, all 8 pre-save services and your own domain. Pro Artist ($39, or $35 on a yearly plan) has unlimited pixels. You see 50 fan emails per link on Basic Artist, 200 on Artist, and all of them on Pro Artist. You can try Pro Artist free for 7 days.
• Hypeddit's free Rookie plan has smart links and download gates. Pre-saves, fan emails, your own domain and pixels start on Basic: $9 a month billed yearly ($108), or $14 monthly. Pro ($29 a month, or $13 on a yearly plan) adds Hypeddit's ready-made ad campaigns and fan analytics.
• Linkfire has no lasting free plan: a free trial with every feature, then a limited free account. Pro covers one artist; Teams ($55 a month, or $45 on a yearly plan) covers five. Every plan has every feature. If you stop paying, your links keep working, but they get ads and a new design. Co_Made bought Linkfire in May 2026.
• HyperFollow is made for every release you upload to DistroKid, at no extra cost. On release day, the pre-save page turns into listen links by itself. You see fans' email addresses only on Musician Plus ($44.99 a year) or Ultimate ($89.99).
• Linktree is a link-in-bio page with Music links and Music Pre-save links. The free plan's pre-save adds your song on one service; Pro and Premium can show more. There are no custom domains on any plan.
• song.link needs no account: search a song and you get a page with all the major services. Log in to build a custom page on song.link, artist.link or its other addresses. No pre-saves, no pixel.

For ads: pixels and Spotify clicks

What the table leaves out:

• Meta's Conversions API sends events from the service's server too, so fewer are lost to ad blockers. Hypeddit, Feature.fm, Linkfire and Linktree support it. DistroKid's help names only the Meta and Google pixels.
• Feature.fm sends a FeatureFM_click event with the service's name. A custom conversion with servicename = spotify counts Spotify clicks only.
• Linkfire sends LF_clickthrough with a musicservice parameter. Its help says that for Meta custom conversions you need your own domain on Linkfire.
• HyperFollow fires clickSpotify, clickAppleMusic and the like, plus spotifyPresaveSuccess when a pre-save goes through.
• Linktree fires one linkClick event for every link, with the link's title and address. It has no event per streaming service.
• Hypeddit lists Conversion Events, the Meta pixel, the Conversions API, Google Ads and TikTok tracking on every paid plan. Its help center doesn't publish the event names.

Prices change: check each site before you buy.

Which one for what

• You release with DistroKid and want to start free: HyperFollow. It carries your Meta pixel and fires a Spotify click event, at no extra cost.
• You want the cheapest full setup for ads: Feature.fm Basic Artist ($8 a month, one pixel) or Hypeddit Basic ($9 a month billed yearly). Hypeddit's Basic also includes your own domain and the TikTok and Google pixels.
• You run ads on Meta and TikTok at once: Hypeddit, Feature.fm Artist (2 pixels) or Linkfire.
• You want every feature and the widest choice of pixels: Linkfire, $21–27 a month for one artist.
• You want one link in bio for everything: Linktree, with the pixel on Pro. It counts link clicks, not Spotify clicks.
• You only need a link to share, no ads: song.link, free.

Pre-save links: the free options

A pre-save link lets fans add your song before it's out. On release day it lands in their library. You can make one for free:

• HyperFollow, if you release with DistroKid. It's made for every upload and collects Spotify pre-saves.
• Linktree's Music Pre-save, free for one service: Spotify, Apple Music or TIDAL.
• Feature.fm's free plan, for one pre-save service.
• Spotify's own Countdown Pages. Fans pre-save inside Spotify, but only for albums and EPs, and only once you have at least 3,000 monthly active listeners. The page lives inside Spotify, so your pixel can't see it.

Hypeddit's pre-saves come with its paid plans, and Linkfire's with a paid plan after the trial.

Feature.fm vs Linkfire, and other Linkfire alternatives

Both do what an ad test needs. Both send Meta an event that names the streaming service, both support the Conversions API, and both make pre-save links for many services.

The differences are price and plan limits. Feature.fm has a free plan and paid plans from $8 a month, but pixels, email access and your own domain grow with the plan. Linkfire starts at $21 a month billed yearly and puts every feature on every plan, your own domain included. You need that domain anyway for Meta custom conversions on Linkfire.

If Linkfire costs more than you want to spend, Feature.fm and Hypeddit cost less, and HyperFollow costs nothing extra if you already pay DistroKid.

Gone or changed

• ToneDen, owned by Eventbrite: in March 2024 its links on .to addresses stopped working, and users had to rebuild each one by hand on a new address, Hypebot reported. It's left out here.
• Songwhip: songwhip.com now opens a sign-in page for The Orchard, Sony's distributor. There's no public sign-up.
• smartURL joined Linkfire in 2021, and smarturl.it now points to Linkfire.
• Show.co still lists plans. Its campaigns are mostly unlock and download pages, Spotify pre-saves and pixels start at $39 a month, and its blog hasn't posted since 2022.

Set up your smart link for an ad test

1. Add your Meta pixel to the link, and the Conversions API token where the service supports it.
2. Make a custom conversion for Spotify clicks in Meta Events Manager, from the event your service sends (FeatureFM_click, LF_clickthrough, clickSpotify).
3. Choose that conversion as the goal of your campaign in Ads Manager.
4. Make sure there's enough data. Meta recommends at least 50 conversions a week, Feature.fm notes. With fewer, start with a traffic campaign optimized for landing page views.
5. Send every ad to the same link, one ad per part of your song, so the only difference between them is the music.

The link counts the clicks. The videos earn them. The part of the song that brings the cheapest clicks is often not the one you'd pick, so test several parts side by side. Our ads guide shows how.

Questions