Your artist picture and monthly listeners
Run mirrors your artist picture and monthly listener count from your connected Spotify profile, so both are changed on Spotify, not here.
To change your artist picture in Run, update it on your connected Spotify profile. Run refreshes that picture automatically, along with Spotify’s monthly listener count. You do not upload either value in Run.
If the picture is wrong or missing, first check the Spotify connection in Artists → Edit profile, then follow the troubleshooting steps below.
Why it works this way
Spotify is the source for both values, so you only maintain one picture. A change to your Apple Music image does not change the picture in Run.
To change it, use Spotify for Artists, which is also how you get access to your profile in the first place.
What you see, and when
| Situation | What the card shows |
|---|---|
| Spotify profile connected | The picture on that profile, and its monthly listener count. |
| Apple Music connected, Spotify not | Initials. Run reads the picture from Spotify only. |
| No profile connected yet | Initials. |
| New to streaming, first release not delivered yet | Initials, until the store creates the page and Run links it. The picture arrives with the page. |
Initials are the honest placeholder, not a failure. An artist who is genuinely new to streaming has no picture to mirror until their first release creates the page. See Your store pages for how that page gets linked.
How the refresh works
Nothing here needs a button.
- Connecting a Spotify profile reads it immediately, so the picture is on screen before you save. The listener count follows shortly after rather than in the same step, so a profile connected a minute ago can show a picture and no figure yet.
- Repointing the link to a different profile clears the old picture and the old count in the same save. An artist is never shown with someone else’s picture.
- After that, Run refreshes what it holds in the background, when it is more than about six hours old, and sweeps every connected profile once a day.
About the listener figure
The number shown is monthly listeners on Spotify, which is the figure that moves with what a release is doing now.
- It is Spotify’s own number rather than a Run estimate, and normally the exact figure rather than a rounded one.
- Unknown is shown as unknown. When Run has no figure for an artist, the card shows a middot in that slot rather than a zero, because an artist reading as having lost their audience would be worse than one reading as having no figure yet.
- It can be a few hours behind what Spotify shows you. It is a mirror, not a live readout.
- Apple Music has no equivalent figure here.
The count is there to be looked at, and that is all. Nothing in review, in your plan limits, or in your earnings reads it. For what you actually earned, see How earnings work.
If the picture is wrong or missing
Work through it in this order:
- Check the artist has a Spotify profile connected, on the card’s Edit profile form. No connection means no picture, by design.
- Check the connected profile is really yours. The form shows the store’s own name for the page it verified. If that name is not you, repoint the link. See Your store pages.
- Check the picture on Spotify itself. Run shows what the profile carries; if it changed there minutes ago, give it a few hours.
- If the profile is right, the picture on Spotify is right, and Run still shows initials a day later, open a support request with the artist name and the profile link.