How to get to the best Spotify playlists?
12 December 2023
Spotify, being the most used music streaming platform offers an opportunity for artists to gain recognition. Learn how artists can do Spotify playlist promotion.
Spotify is the biggest online music streaming platform in the world with more than 574 million users. This is the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service that people stream to listen to their favorite musicians and songs and discover new music. Spotify is not just the most popular audio streaming service on the internet, it is also a great way for artists, especially independent and up-and-coming artists who want to get discovered or bring more attention to their craft. So one of the best ways to make sure you have the industry's attention is by getting viral on the platform. For this to happen, getting the music on Spotify playlists is a vital step. But how do artists get on there?
Artists have a way to get into the playlists by using Spotify playlist promotion. Putting your music in front of the curators and making a solid impact is a result of these promotional tactics. Once the music is uploaded on Spotify, many people underestimate how great the promotional impact is of being featured on these playlists and how powerful the impact would be of these placements on your music. Let’s see how you can get your music on these playlists.
Use Spotify for Artists
If you think Spotify is just a music streaming platform that cannot have any impact on the careers of the artists then you are wrong. Spotify is the biggest online application that helps artists share their music and connect with their fans. So if you still do not have an account on Spotify, start now. If you already have an active account and share your music on the platform, make sure you are using Spotify for Artists. Sign up and link your Spotify account to this Spotify for Artists because there are multiple benefits you can get from it. Spotify for Artists has loads of great tools that help you understand and then adapt your approach to how to promote music on the platform. It also offers direct pitching which might be the key to all of these!
You can access this service both from your desktop or the Spotify for Artists application. Using this service, there are two ways you can pitch your music for the playlisting. Once you are done signing up and logging in, you can head over to the home tab and choose the 'Pitch a song to our editors' option. The second option for pitching your music directly is to navigate to the 'Music' tab that you can find at the top of your dashboard. Then choose 'Upcoming' from there and then the 'Pitch a song' option. Here you will be able to choose the specific track that you would like to pitch. Spotify will then consider this and ask you to fill out some information about what you are pitching. Make sure you fill this out accurately and immediately to increase your chances of getting the placement. Don't target that you can only pitch music that has not been released yet and you can only pitch for one track per release.
Independent curators
Several popular independent Spotify playlists are created by curators of all sorts - such as media outlets, industry people, bloggers, etc. along with just another Spotify user. To get into these popular independent playlists on Spotify, the best way is to note down independent playlist curators. You can spend some time searching through the streaming platform to find playlists that suit best your sound or genre and then make a note of who the creator is. Then head to Google and a little bit of searching there can help you out with their contact details. Now you need to select your targets and then email them to ask for a submission. You can even keep this process more organized by creating spreadsheets of all of your potential Spotify curators.
Make sure the email is kept short, and informative along with links to your musical tracks. This will make it easier for them to find your music on the platform.
Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Release Radar
Spotify has playlists that promote new rising songs such as Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists. These are not curated by the platform's employees but the algorithm creates these playlists. You can easily get into the radar on a listener's Release Radar playlist and bring your music there, just make them follow you on Spotify. Everyone who follows you will have you appear on their Release Radar playlist every time you release new music. Spotify UK's director of artists and management has previously said that this Release Radar alone generates way more streams than any of the platform's self-curated playlists.
It is a little more complicated for Discover Weekly's algorithm. Every user gets their individual Discover Weekly playlist every morning on Mondays and these playlists are crafted based on their music taste. The algorithm analyzes the users' unique listening habits on Spotify and creates this playlist by putting together similar music that the artist might not have heard before. You can use these ways to boost your chances of being featured in as many Discover Weekly playlists as possible. This includes being added to other playlists that increase your engagement, both on the platform and with the listeners.
Pitching your music for Spotify playlist submission is not enough, you need to drive traffic to the platform from other places. The platform loves when artists bring in new listeners to the platform so share your Spotify link everywhere you can. Another thing is that the more followers you have, the better chances you have of being featured on Spotify’s playlists. So make sure to use your social media very creatively and cleverly and urge your followers to follow you on the platform. It will help if your friends, and family along with fans follow you on the biggest music streaming platform.
