There are many common goals musicians and producers have with one another. One of these goals is to get their music in the ears of an audience that genuinely wants to listen to them.
Playlisting does just that. Playlisting helps artists get their music in the ears of a real audience that want to listen and engage with their music.
Below, we’ll be discussing what playlisting is, key-factors in running a successful promotion, in-direct effects of playlisting and hacks that will help you get onto Spotify’s editorial playlists.
What is Spotify Playlisting?
Playlisting helps artists make their music stand out like nothing else. Landing on playlists will help you grow your Spotify artist profile and will help get your music in the ears of loyal audiences and first-time listeners.
Although, there’s no service that can pitch your music directly to Spotify’s editorial playlists (besides Spotify’s own pitching tool) you can find a reputable business that will help you pitch your music to popular independently owned playlists.
(Reminder: These playlists are independently owned and have no affiliation with Spotify or their editorial playlists)
This in turn will help you build up your Spotify presence and can potentially help you get on one of Spotify’s editorial playlists – while incredibly competitive, we’ve been able to help several artists make it into this lucrative discovery channel.
Boxes That Need To Be Checked Before Considering Playlist Promotion
Now that you know what playlisting is, we can go ahead and cover all of the boxes that need to be checked prior to launching a promotional campaign.
Set Your Spotify For Artists Account Up For Success
– High-quality artist photo
– Link social media accounts to your Spotify profile
– Write a brief bio about yourself to help boost your SEO presence
Make Sure Your Music is Mastered & is of High Quality
If you don’t know how to master your music, you may want to look online for services/companies who specialize in this. People often overlook how important mastering can be, but this alone could make or break your next release.
Have Great Track Artwork
Websites such as Canva.com are great for helping you create your album artwork if you don’t know anybody who can help. Otherwise, you may want to try freelancing this work via Fiverr or social media.
Understand Your Audience/Genre
In order to run a successful playlisting campaign, you need to understand your genre and potential audience.
To do this, I suggest artists use everynoise.com to confirm their genre relevancy.
Navigating everynoise.com can be overwhelming, so an easy alternative is to open up Spotify, search for “The Sound Of [Insert Genre],” and then a playlist for that genre will pop up under the “The Sounds of Spotify” user profile.
From there, you can take a listen and see if your musical style is associated with that genre.
The goal here is to have an idea on what your main genre is. Once you’ve identified that information, you can dive into the never-ending world of sub-genres.
In-Direct Effects From Playlisting:
One of the least talked about benefits of Spotify playlist promotion is the in-direct effects you receive from a campaign.
For example, let’s say you ran a Spotify Playlist Campaign and got onto 30 playlists. Since you were placed on 30 playlists with real audiences, each listener has the opportunity to save your song, give you a follow, add your song to their playlist(s), share your song and even check out some of your other music.
As you’re collecting streams from these playlists, you could catch the attention of labels, other curators, Spotify’s editorial team and most importantly a genuine audience that wants to listen to your music.
You can find a good example of this in the below interview Spotify had with Americana Singer/Song-Writer Garrett T. Capps.
How Americana Troubadour Garrett T. Capps Went Worldwide:
“I was playing an official showcase at SXSW one year,” Capps explains. “They put two or three of my songs on a Spotify official Austin music playlist. One of them was ‘Born in San Antone,’ and I guess it greased the wheels of my Spotify algorithms and started linking up with people that might like that kind of music.”
Fortunately for Capps, one of those people turned out to be Billions co-creator/executive producer Brian Koppelman. “He’s a big Americana guy, who curates the music for the entire show himself,” says Capps, sounding like he can still hardly believe it. “He was just sitting on an airplane, and he turned on Discover Weekly, and my song came up and he freaked out, he loved it. And then he contacted me. It’s wild, because that song is just a hometown anthem, I wrote to play at local gigs, really.”
Generally speaking, playlist promotion will lead to authentic Spotify growth over time.
Essentially, the 30 playlists you were originally added to could potentially end up getting you placed on 1000+ playlists. (These numbers have been based off of real experiences)
Keep reading this article until the end for an in-depth testimonial from none other than cold brew. He explains how he landed a single song deal with Atlantic Records because of the in-direct effects of a Spotify playlisting campaign.
Triggering Spotify’s Editorial Playlists:
One of the secret methods for getting onto Spotify’s editorial playlists is first getting onto smaller user curated playlists. This is exactly what Playlist Push can help you do.
Without users listening, sharing, and adding your music to playlists, it’s virtually impossible to get the attention of Spotify’s editorial team.
Keep in mind that Spotify’s editorial team is incredibly small, and they receive tens of thousands of editorial pitches per day. It’s definitely not easy to stand out but there are steps you can take to increase your chances.
After looking more into Spotify’s editorial playlists, I came across a few interesting Q&A’s Spotify put together in their “Behind the Playlists: Your Questions Answered by Our Playlist Editors” blog post.
Q1: Do Spotify editors look at third party playlists for inspiration?
Answer: “Each of our editors are unique and work differently, but they all constantly seek inspiration from different music publications and cultural moments as well as what artists are highlighting on their own artist pages and playlists.”
Q2: How do you get into more editorial playlists after release?
Answer: “While you can’t pitch your music to us through Spotify for Artists post-release, our editors are definitely looking at signals from our data for songs that are resonating on our platform. Try and continue to build momentum for your tracks and engage with your audience—you can track how it’s doing in multiple spaces with our analytics tools within Spotify for Artists. Pay attention to your audience stats: who they are, where they live, and engage with those people on your socials.”
What can we learn from the answers above?
We now know that Spotify’s editorial team is unique, and each member of their team works differently. This means that they can either discover you on social media, different music publications or even on independently owned Spotify playlists.
In addition, they’re looking for artists whose songs have already built momentum and are resonating on their platform.
Having an established presence isn’t a necessity for landing on their editorial playlists pre-release but it’s definitely a must after your song has launched thus emphasizing the importance or getting your name on the radar.
