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“Creating playlists is a way for artists to communicate directly to their fans. If you think of an artist like Bruno Mars, he’s using Spotify, creating playlists and listening to music through it.” - Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify

to read an article, click on the title

the basics i

WHAT IS SPOTIFY AND HOW DOES IT WORK? by Adrian Willings, Pocket-lint

GETTING YOUR MUSIC ON SPOTIFY by Spotify.com

SPOTIFY FOR ARTISTS by Spotify.com

spotify playlists i

THE EMERGING ARTIST'S GUIDE TO SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS by Angela Mastrogiacomo, Muddy Paw PR

SO, YOU WANT TO GET ON SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS? HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FIRST… by Ariel Hyatt, Cyber PR

6 DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS AND HOW TO GET ON THEM by Kevin Carthy, Music With Flavor

2 TYPES OF SPOTIFY'S ALGORITHMIC PLAYLISTS, HOW TO LAND YOUR MUSIC ON THEM by Randi Zimmerman, the Symphonic Blog

SPOTIFY IS PERSONALIZING MORE PLAYLISTS TO INDIVIDUAL USERS by Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge

music curators i

WHAT IS A MUSIC CURATOR? by The Vibe Project

I WANT THAT JOB: WHAT A SPOTIFY MUSIC EDITOR ACTUALLY DOES by Nicole Webb, Collective Hub

FOUR POINTS THAT PLAYLIST CURATORS LOOK FOR by Stephen Cirino, medium.com

THREE NIGHTS FOLLOWING SPOTIFY PLAYLIST EDITORS AROUND NEW YORK’S LIVE MUSIC SCENE by Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Verge

playlist pitching i

PITCHING YOUR MUSIC TO CURATED PLAYLISTS ON SPOTIFY by Chris Robley, CD Baby DIY Musician Blog

THE ART OF THE PITCH: HOW TO MAKE CONTACT WITH INDEPENDENT PLAYLIST CURATORS by PlaylistRadar.com

HOW TO GET YOUR MUSIC ON A HUMAN CURATED SPOTIFY PLAYLIST by Andrew McCluskey, medium.com

THE REAL REASONS ARTISTS SUCCEED ON SPOTIFY — FROM A PLAYLISTING PRO by George Goodrich, Playlist Push and Paul Resnikoff, Digital Music News 

HOW SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS CREATE HITS by Steve Knopper, Rolling Stone

HOW TO GET ON RAPCAVIAR: HIP HOP’S HOLY GRAIL OF SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS by PlaylistPush

SPOTIFY'S TUMA BASA ON CURATING RAPCAVIAR, WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN PITCHING AND WHY HE'S NO 'GATEKEEPER' by Andy Gensler, Billboard

HOW I GOT ON OFFICIAL SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS AS AN UNKNOWN INDEPENDENT MUSICIAN USING ONLY SMART MARKETING, SHOW.CO AND ZERO MONEY by Braden Lam, Braden Lam & The Driftwood People

THE MURKY BUSINESS OF SPOTIFY 'PLAYLIST PITCHING' by Aric Jenkins, Fortune Magazine

THE RISE OF FAKE SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS by Jason Grishkoff, SubmitHub + Indie Shuffle

miscellaneous i

HOW TO BOOST STREAMS WITH A PRE-SAVE CAMPAIGN ON SPOTIFY by Chris Robley, CD Baby DIY Musician Blog

WHAT STREAMING MUSIC SERVICES PAY By Daniel Sanchez, Digital Music News

SPOTIFY PAYS ARTISTS SHIT. SO HOW COME THEY’RE STILL USING IT? by Heather Kitching, Roots Music Canada

5 STEPS TO BECOME THE GREATEST PLAYLIST CURATOR ON SPOTIFY by TJ Jones, PlaylistPush

HOW TO BUILD A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST THAT SHOWS IN A SEARCH by Chris Robley, CD Baby DIY Musician Blog

MY STORY: FROM INDEPENDENT ARTIST TO PLAYLIST CURATOR by Cocoy Claravall, Recording Artist (and curator) 

the basics i

WHAT IS SPOTIFY AND HOW DOES IT WORK? by Adrian Willings, Pocket-lint © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Spotify is a digital music streaming service that gives you access to millions of songs, podcasts and videos from artists all over the world. Spotify is immediately appealing because you can access content for free by simply signing up using an e-mail address or by connecting with Facebook. If you're not keen on monthly subscription fees for Spotify Premium, or just want to dip your toe in and test it out, it's easy to get started and there's no commitment. You can find out the main differences between Spotify Free and Premium in our separate feature but as a quick summary, the free version is ad-supported much like radio stations. The free version of Spotify can be accessed on PC, laptop and mobile phone, but the full service needs a Spotify Premium subscription. How does Spotify work? Getting started with listening to music on Spotify is easy:    

Visit the Spotify website and sign-up. We'd recommend signing up with Facebook if you have an account as it'll make it easier to find and follow friends, see what they're listening to and share songs with them. Choose a subscription level. We'd recommend going for Spotify Premium as it gives you access to more features, is more flexible and will connect with more devices. Download and install the free Spotify application. There are versions for desktop and iPhone/iPad and Android phones. Sign into your account on those devices and get listening.

The basic setup is pretty straightforward but there's much more to Spotify once you delve in and it gets smarter the more you listen. Can you download music from Spotify? Yes and no. With Spotify Premium you can set music to be available "offline" but it's not the same as downloading music in the traditional sense. For example, you can't try to game the system by downloading an album then cancelling your subscription at a later date. And you can't download the tracks to burn them to a CD or copy them to other devices. The idea of Spotify's offline mode is to allow you to have access to your favourite music when you're trying to save mobile data or travelling somewhere where access to the internet might not be easy.

With Spotify Premium you can have up to 3,333 songs available to listen to offline on up to three different devices. Downloading songs, albums or playlists on Spotify is simple too, which is great. Just click "save" on the album you'd like to download to listen to it offline. Alternatively, click the three dots next to a song and click "Save to Your Music". How much data does Spotify use? The amount of data that Spotify burns through will depend on the streaming quality you choose more on this in a minute. This is a rough guide for how much data Spotify will get through:     

One hour of music playback will use around 50MB of data when the quality is set to "normal". At normal quality you can play around 24 hours of music for around 1GB of data usage. At high-quality 1GB will be used in less than 15 hours. At extreme quality you'll use 1GB of data in 7 hours. You'll use a lot more data with video playback.

You can check and change the quality of streaming and download of songs using mobile data in the settings on your device. High-quality streaming and audio quality There are three different levels of streaming quality for Spotify. Streaming is all done in the Ogg Vorbis format and uses the following bitrates for each of the quality levels:   

Normal streams at 96kbps High-quality at 160kbps Extreme quality streams at 320kbps

The quality level you use will depend on your preference and choices around data usage but it's worth noting that extreme is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers. How to find people and friends on Spotify Signing up to Spotify with Facebook or connecting your Facebook account at a later date will allow you to easily find and follow friends and see what they're listening to. The activity feed is displayed on the right-hand side of the desktop software and is a great way to pick up on friends who listen to the same music as you or poke fun at them for their latest Abba session. You can also use the search function within the app to find friends. At the very bottom of the activity feed there's also a "find friends" button which will allow you to find and follow more friends or artists. If you're not on Facebook or don't want to connect your Facebook account to Spotify you can still find and follow friends, it just might be a bit more difficult in some cases.

According to Spotify, the best way to find and follow a friend is to use the search box on the desktop client and use this format: spotify:user:USERNAME Copy this and replace USERNAME with the name of your friend. If this doesn't work, ask your friend to either copy their profile link directly from their profile page and send it to you. Alternatively, ask if they can share one of their public playlists with you. If they created the playlist, then their username is contained within the URL as a number: https://open.spotify.com/user/1149074494/playlist/0sBC03hIa7vrUSUeX8S8KY You can either use that number to find them or click on their name in the playlist to follow them. For more detailed guidance on finding friends on Spotify, see Spotify's official tutorial. Spotify playlists, radio and discovering new music Creating a playlist is as easy as right-clicking a song and clicking "Add to Playlist" or clicking the three dots next to a song on the app. Grab your favourite songs and stick them in a playlist for your personal listening pleasure. Once you get started, you'll soon find you're following playlists made by friends or curated by artists. Spotify is smart too, the more you listen, the more it learns the sort of music you like and that has an impact on the music it will present to you in future. When you delve into the "Discover" section of the app you'll find a number of recommendations based on your recent listening choices. This includes artists similar to those you've already been listening to. as well as your "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" playlists. "Discover Weekly" is a playlist that's automatically updated by Spotify each Monday and includes a number of different songs based upon what you've been listening to recently. "Release Radar" is a selection of new tracks from artists you follow. It's worth noting here that if you follow your favourite musicians, you'll get notifications and updates when they release new content too. To discover new music, click on the three dots menu and select "Go to Playlist Radio" and you'll be taken to an automatically generated "radio" station that'll play a selection of music based on the contents of the original playlist. You can also use this logic with specific songs or artists by choosing to listen to 'artist radio' or 'song radio'. These are great ways to discover new music that's similar to your current taste but ones that you might not have otherwise listened to. Spotify Bluetooth connectivity One of the obvious benefits of Spotify is if you're using it on your phone then you can connect to a wealth of different Bluetooth devices and stream your content that way. Whether that means a home audio receiver, head unit in your car, Bluetooth headphones or Bluetooth-connected speaker - there's plenty of possibility. With Spotify Premium you can also take advantage of Spotify Connect.

What is Spotify Connect Spotify Connect allows you to play your music through a variety of different Wi-Fi connected devices including everything from Wi-Fi speakers to your television, Amazon Echo, Chromecast, PC and much more. This is great because it means you can listen to your music in more places and with more devices. It also offers you a choice in how you control the music playing on your Spotify account. For example, if you're streaming to speakers in your lounge using your phone then you can use it as a remote control to adjust the volume, change tracks or create a party playlist while listening. Spotify connectivity with Amazon Echo and Google Home If you're the proud owner of a smart home speaker like Google Home or Amazon Echo then listening to your favourite tunes on Spotify is also a breeze. All you need to do is setup Spotify as your primary music service inside the relevant app, then use your voice to command the speakers to play whatever you want. If you have multiple devices you can also take advantage of multi-room audio functionality to broadcast Spotify tunes throughout your home. Connecting and creating groups for these devices, then broadcasting music or a playlist to those groups with your voice is a straightforward affair and one of the highlights of owning an AI-powered smart speaker. How much is Spotify? Spotify comes in two main forms - free and Premium. Spotify Premium is currently £9.99/$9.99 a month, which includes access to features such as ad-free streaming, unlimited skips, extreme quality streaming and Spotify Connect. If multiple people in your house use Spotify, you might consider Premium for Family which gives up to six people access to their own unique Spotify account under one bill. All users have to live at the same address so it's not a package to include your friends on, but it's a good way to split the cost. At £14.99/$14.99, Premium for Family isn't too much extra over a standard Premium plan price, so it's a worthy investment. For students, there's a discounted plan that costs just £4.99/$4.99 a month. What do you get with Spotify Free? You can use Spotify for free, but its features are limited. On the free plan, music can be played in shuffle mode and you can skip up to six times per hour, every hour. Spotify Radio isn't available, but you can access Daily Mix playlists. With the Spotify free plan, you can access all playlists, discover new music, share tunes with friends, listen to tunes picked by Spotify’s Radio feature. You can also play any playlist, album, or artist but only while in Shuffle Play mode.

Spotify is free to use on mobile, desktop or tablet - so it's accessible with ease, wherever you are. You can access the free version using the smartphone app, desktop software or website. Spotify's Premium tier gives you access to everything but doesn't force adverts - whether you're listening on desktop, mobile, or tablet. Premium users can play any song they want (on demand), as well as find and hear playlists, discover new music, create and edit playlists, share music and playlists, and listen to tunes picked by Spotify’s Radio feature. Premium users can also skip any track, listen offline, hear high-quality music and use the Spotify app on their mobile device as a computer remote control. What are Spotify Codes? Spotify Codes is a feature from Spotify that allows users to easily share music with friends and family. You can use it to generate a unique code for a song, album or playlist and then get someone else to scan the code to share it with their device and allow them to enjoy it too. Spotify Codes works on both iPhone and Android devices, in order to use it you just need to click the '...' button next to what you want to share and you'll see a pop-up with the album, song or playlist artwork and the code sits underneath. Click that code to zoom so the other person can scan it. On the other device, click search and find the camera button in the top right, then simply scan the code and you're away. Spotify Codes is open to everyone, so watch out for code from your favourite bands, artists and brands and get sharing! Outside of Spotify Codes you can also easily directly share songs from Spotify across a number of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Tumblr or just a straight link to copy a usable link to wherever you want on the web. Simply right-click on desktop or press the three dots on mobile on the song, album, artist or playlist you want to share and select the appropriate service. What is Spotify Time Capsule? Spotify regularly releases updates to its service to help improve your listening experience. This includes tailored playlists and discovery voyages to help you expand your musical horizons and find new artists you're likely to enjoy. Sometimes though, they just add quirky lists which show how well they know you based on your current listening trends. Time Capsule is one example of this wizardry. This is a personalised playlist which picks out around 60 tracks that you would have listened to as you were growing up. It's a collection of throw-back songs that'll fill you with nostalgic joy. We found Time Capsule to be pretty accurate, scarily so in fact, but it obviously requires Spotify to have a good working knowledge of your musical taste, so get listening!

What are Daily Mix Playlists? Spotify learns what you like as you use it. The more you listen, the more intelligent it becomes. This music streaming service is brilliant for this sort of intelligence. Automatic playlists are then created based on your preferences. This includes automated playlists like Summer Rewind which features all the songs you've been listening to the most over the last few months. Daily Mix playlists are slightly different, they're like a radio station which mixes your favourite tunes with similar music Spotify thinks you'll enjoy. Multiple Daily Mix playlists are available for the different styles or genres of music you listen too. These individual mixes keep playing for as long as you want to listen and can be improved by liking the songs you enjoy or removing the ones you don't. Like Discover Weekly, Daily Mix playlists are a great way to discover new music that you'll love. Private listening mode Listening on Spotify can be a social experience. If you've connected Spotify to your Facebook account, for example, then friends and family will be able to see what you're listening to and you can share your favourite songs with them. There might be occasion though where you don't want people to know that you're listening to a certain album or song on constant repeat. We all have the guilty pleasure that we don't need the world knowing about. Spotify accounts for this with a "private listening mode" that you can activate from the settings in the app and a quick click of a button on the desktop browser. Podcasts Spotify is more than just a music streaming service. If you have a Spotify account you can also use it to listen to thousands of different podcasts that include everything from comedy to sports, lifestyle, news and more. These podcasts are available in both the app and desktop browser and it's easy to hunt down and follow your favourite podcasts and access the latest episodes wherever you are.

How to delete your Spotify account If you decide you no longer want your Spotify account, you can delete it. It is worth noting though, that you can downgrade from Premium to a free account, so if cost is the issue then we'd recommend considering that first. If you're still keen on deleting your Spotify account, then follow these steps: 1. Visit Spotify's Support page on how to close your account. 2. Login to your Spotify account. 3. Click this link to delete your account. If this doesn't work, then you can also try this method: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Login and go directly to Spotify's Contact Support page. Choose 'account' as the category. Select 'I want to close my Spotify account permanently'. Then click to close your account or cancel your subscription

Adrian Willings has been a tech enthusiast since the 90s with a particular passion for gaming that developed thanks to his first gaming outings on Pong, Zork and Space Invaders. In the years that followed he dabbled in various games consoles and personal computers starting with the humble Commodore 64 before moving to Sega Mega Drive, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2 and then into the world of PC gaming. His gaming outings online in the days of dial-up modems included Command and Conquer and Battlefield 2 before he found the joys of gaming communities and started Enemy Boat Spotted over 10 years ago. Over the years, Adrian's passion for technology has grown. He has built multiple gaming PCs by hand, and equipped his home with a variety of smart devices. He has been writing about tech and gadgets for the last few years and enjoys sharing that passion with anyone that will listen. Adrian is currently obsessed with Virtual Reality and is excited to see the future that holds for all of us. https://www.pocket-lint.com/info/authors/adrian-willings

“Be active. Whether an artist or curator, you need to stay active. As soon as you fall stale you will be forgotten. Make sure to release/update often (weekly to bi-weekly for playlist updates and a monthly for track releases).” - Ryan & Ariel, Playlist Curators The Drunken Coconut https://www.thedrunkencoconut.com

GETTING YOUR MUSIC ON SPOTIFY by Spotify.com © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Content on Spotify is delivered either by a record label or a distributor. If you’re signed to a label, they’ll take care of getting your music to Spotify. If you’re independent, you’ll have to arrange distribution yourself. If you don’t currently work with a distributor, Spotify works with companies who can handle the licensing and distribution of your music and pay you the royalties you earn when listeners stream your music on Spotify. There’s usually a fee or a commission involved, but each service is unique, so be sure to do a little homework before picking one that’s right for your needs. Note: If you want to submit music for playlist consideration, it must be unreleased. We therefore recommend picking a distributor that allows you to select a release date at least a week in the future. That way, you can ensure your music is delivered to us ahead of time in order to submit it to our editors. We’ve defined a set of standards for distributors, and we’re able to recommend the following list of companies who have demonstrated their ability to work well with both artists and Spotify. SPOTIFY PREFERRED ARTIST DISTRIBUTORS These distributors meet our highest standards for providing quality metadata and protecting against infringement. These providers offer instant access to Spotify for Artists for all of their users. DistroKid, CD Baby, EmuBands RECOMMENDED ARTIST DISTRIBUTORS These distributors meet our basic standards for providing quality metadata and protecting against infringement. They also offer instant access to Spotify for Artists for all of their users. SPOTIFY PREFERRED LABEL DISTRIBUTORS These distributors meet our highest standards for providing quality metadata and protecting against infringement. The Orchard, FUGA RECOMMENDED LABEL DISTRIBUTORS Believe, Absolute Label Services, Danmark, AWAL RECOMMENDED DELIVERY PLATFORMS FUGA, EMS, IDOL, AudioSalad

SPOTIFY FOR ARTISTS by Spotify.com © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

With Spotify for Artists, you can see who’s listening to your music and take control of your artist profile. As part of the Spotify for Artists community, you'll also be the first to know when we create new tools and features for artists. Just click Claim Your Profile in the top-right of this page https://artists.spotify.com/guide/spotify-for-artists Once we confirm who you are and give you access, you’re in charge. Becoming a verified artist Getting verified on Spotify lets your fans know that your artist profile belongs to you. When you get access to Spotify for Artists, you’re automatically verified on Spotify and your profile gets a blue verification check mark. Access Spotify for Artists on the go Access Spotify for Artists wherever you are by downloading the app. iOS users can find it by visiting the App Store, while Android users can find it in the Play Store. The app is designed to help you get ready, manage and track your new release. With the Spotify for Artists app, you can: 

Get your profile new-release ready. Update your bio, share your playlists, promote your music, and control how listeners see you on Spotify.



Follow your release as it grows, all in real time. See who's tuning in and get live updates on your new release, whether you’re on the road or in the studio.

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Learn about your listeners. Understand who's listening and where to book gigs—whether you're playing a few shows or planning a full tour.

See who’s listening With access to Spotify for Artists, you’ll be able to track which of your songs are performing best and learn how fans are discovering and listening to your music around the world. Your stats can help you run promotional campaigns, pick new singles, or even route your next tour. Take control of your profile Your artist profile on Spotify is where all of your music and content lives. It’s also where fans can discover more about what’s happening with you—hear your newest releases, dig deeper with one of your playlists, find out where you’re touring, even buy your latest merch. Spotify for Artists puts you in charge of your profile—so you can update your image to reflect your latest look and tell fans about the music you’re into right now.

Look great on Spotify Fans on Spotify see your profile image whenever they search for you or visit your profile on any device. While default images are pulled from Rovi’s database, Spotify for Artists makes it easy to upload a new image anytime you want—so your profile always reflects your unique identity. How to edit your artist bio on Spotify Your artist bio is your story—in your own words. With Spotify for Artists, you can write a bio, save it to your profile, and update it anytime you want. With 1500 characters to share with your fans, you can update this to whatever makes sense for you—whether that’s sharing your story as an artist or the inspiration behind your latest release. Your bio can include links to any artists, songs, albums, or playlists on Spotify. And you can throw in a link to your Wikipedia page for fans who want to dig deeper. Featuring music you love Artist’s pick gives you control over the music at the top of your artist profile. It’s a great way to tell fans about a track you’re featured on, announce your upcoming tour, showcase a new playlist, or shout out an album you’ve got on repeat. Pick something you love — any track, album, podcast, or playlist — then add a cool behind-thescenes image and short message about why you love it. Your artist’s pick lives at the top of your profile for two weeks (or if you pick a tour, until the day after the last show) and you can change it anytime you want. Connecting with your fans By featuring playlists on your artist profile, you can give your fans an inside look at the music you love and the songs that inspire you. Artists like Diplo have built huge playlist followings, which they use to promote their own music, share the songs they’re playing on tour, and champion the new artists they discover. Promoting your shows You want Spotify listeners to know whenever you’re in town. That’s why we work with Ticketmaster, Songkick, Eventbrite, and AXS to feature tour dates on your profile. We also recommend your nearby shows to your followers and frequent listeners over email and inside the Spotify app. We do whatever we can to help spread the word. If you don't have your dates listed on Spotify, go to Songkick Tourbox to add your concerts. https://tourbox.songkick.com

Selling gear Whether it’s t-shirts, vinyl, or custom leggings, fans love artist-branded merch. You can sell your gear directly to fans around the world through our partnership with Merchbar. Once your merch is listed, top products automatically populate on your Spotify artist profile for fans to browse and buy. Merchbar works with most major labels and merchandise companies, so there's a good chance your gear is already on your profile. If you manage your merchandise independently, learn more about joining Merchbar here. https://www.merchbar.com/artists

“Clever artists are now re-releasing older tracks, with the same ISRC code and previous play counts. Artists that are smart are repacking singles into albums or compilations. The repackaging pushes the ‘brand-new’ tracks with lots of plays into ‘new’ algorithm playlists like Discover Weekly, New Music Friday and your followers’ Release Radar. The refresh can result in a surge of new interest for an older cut.” - George Goodrich Playlist Push https://playlistpush.com

spotify playlists i

THE EMERGING ARTIST'S GUIDE TO SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS by Angela Mastrogiacomo, Muddy Paw PR © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

For many artists, landing a placement on a Spotify official playlist or a reputable blog's coveted playlist is a major victory. In fact, in many instances, those Spotify placements are proving to be just as, if not more sought-after, than high-tier blog placements. But for the emerging musician, landing that placement is never as simple as having great music. I interviewed artists who have had successful placements, along with those that do the placing, to tap into three major areas of interest: How emerging artists gain Spotify playlist placement, if Spotify placement a reality for most emerging artists, and if there's a certain milestone artists need to speed up the process. Before we dive in, there's one thing to know about Spotify playlists: There are those that are official playlists, curated by Spotify's editorial team, and independent playlists curated by users, media, labels, and other artists. For this article we're looking mainly at Spotify's official playlists and other independently curated but largely sought-after playlists. How do emerging indie artists gain Spotify-playlist placement? Like so many facets of the industry, there's a mix of strategic planning, hard work, and luck that goes into landing a placement. One piece of advice we heard over and over again was to first gain placement on smaller, independent playlists, as well as small blogs to help generate buzz and begin to prove that the demand for your song is there. Likewise, you have to be working your music at every angle, which means having a strategy, not just a vague idea of where you're going. "Being successful as an emerging artist is all about juggling a lot of plates: touring, press, radio, playlists, distribution, etc. and all of those small wins feed into each other," shares Ian Cunningham of the band Acid Tongue (placements on: official Spotify rock playlists "Garage Jams" and "Fresh Finds: Six Strings"). It's those small wins - another press placement, a little more social media engagement, another Tshirt sold at a show - that feed into the larger goal of more recognition, more plays, and more placements.

Are Spotify placements a reality for most emerging indie artists? Yes - but you have to be strategic, dedicated, and patient. As we touched on above, most emerging artists will find their placements through things like playing a lot of shows, having a strong social media presence, gaining press placements, and beginning to generate buzz within the industry. When it comes to landing on a Spotify playlist it's a lot like securing a spot on a major tour or grabbing a label’s attention. The more you do on your own to prove that people actually want to hear your music, the more organically you'll find yourself on a playlist (or on a tour, or being approached by labels). Brian McLaughlin, whose band The Rare Occasions has seen placement on "Fresh Finds: Six Strings" and "Indie Songs for Slackers" explains their strategy: "One thing we had done in the year leading up to that release was try and bring our fans to the Spotify platform and grow our listenership on Spotify. We did this by posting links to our tracks and also reaching out to third-party playlist curators and getting our songs placed there. Those playlists don't get nearly the same audience as the official Spotify ones, but at the time we didn't have many listeners at all, and I think the effort we made to nudge up our listeners and followers may have also helped our new music get on Spotify's radar." Is there a certain follower number or engagement level that can help speed up the process? This is the fascinating part. While everyone we interviewed cited an advantage to starting small and organically working your way up, along with benefit in strong social media presence, networking etc. there's still a few artists who end up on major placements with less than 250 Spotify followers, a small social media presence, or little to no press - there's always a few underdog stories out there. But that doesn't mean you should take that as inspiration to do nothing and wait for Spotify to come knocking. Luck favors the hard working as they say, and when it comes to how your online presence impacts your placement chances, there's a lot you can do. Ashley Grohoski of Megaforce Records (Spotify placement for Bjork, Chris Robinson, Blue October) said: "I've noticed especially with indie artists that an online presence is crucial for both artist and fan engagement. How will they be directing an audience to Spotify? It can also depend on something as simple as how active the artist is on Spotify. Some newer artists may have their music on Spotify but have not worked to develop their artist page. This includes building their own playlists, updating their artist information, setting up tour dates, all while still promoting these updates to their fanbase. Even though many of our artists are less emerging and more established, they still make sure to prioritize their artist page because sometimes this is where a majority of their listeners stream from and we want to respect that (also since merchandise sales and concert tickets are the largest income sources for artists we have to use Spotify and Merchbar to hone in those sales)."

Getting a Spotify placement can be really exciting and it's definitely a milestone to aim for, and celebrate - but remember, it's just one piece of the puzzle. Take the time to create truly quality music, build your social media, connect with your fans, build your listenership on Spotify, get on the road, and really create a buzz for yourself. There's value in landing a Spotify placement, but it's kind of like playing one festival and expecting it to lead to massive success. Alone, it may be a quick boost in streams, fans, or even sales, but in the long run, it doesn't necessarily lead anywhere. Combine your Spotify efforts with targeted engagement, playing out, focused press campaigns, and strong online presence, and you'll be amazed the success you begin to see. Angela Mastrogiacomo is the founder and CEO of Muddy Paw PR, where her artists have seen placement on Alternative Press, Substream, New Noise, and more. She's also the owner of music blog Infectious Magazine, as well as a PR coach. She loves baked goods, a good book, and hanging with her dog Sawyer. This article was originally featured in the Sonicbids Blog blog.sonicbids.com

SO, YOU WANT TO GET ON SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS? HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FIRST… by Ariel Hyatt, Cyber PR © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Every publicist can tell you there are certain questions (actually they show up more as orders) we have dreaded over the years posed by potential clients. When I started 20 years ago it was “get me in Rolling Stone” then for years it was “You are going to service my CD to Letterman and Conan yes?” Then today 100% of the time we are getting asked about Spotify Playlists. And of course, this question happens for good reason. A 2016 study from Loop on musicbiz.org shows data that playlists have surpassed albums in listenership and another on buzzfeed says that 1 out of every 5 plays across all streaming services today happens inside of a playlist. But, hold your horses. There are a lot of steps to take before you hire a PR firm like mine or a playlist servicing company to get you on playlists. First you need to understand quite a few things. The First Important Thing to Understand is: A Majority of Spotify is Owned by the Major Labels … and their artists dominate most of the most followed playlists. The reason for this is 3 companies are in control of placing songs on those playlists – so this playing field is NOT even for indies. A comprehensive article came out on CASH music by Liz Pelly called The Secret Lives Of Playlists that is a must read so that you can fully understand just how little power you have as an indie artist on this platform when it comes to simply “getting on playlists”

Here are the two parts that sum it up well. “Not all Spotify playlists are created equally… On other playlists, you’ll occasionally notice different logos: the thick cursive word Filtr, the all-caps logo for Topsify, or simple rounded text reading Digster. These are the playlisting brands owned by the major labels: Filtr by Sony, Topsify by Warner, and Digster by Universal. Very rarely you might see an independent label or brand logo. That majors own their own playlisting companies servicing Spotify, and that these major-owned playlists have prominent placement within the platform, should come as no major surprise: Spotify is largely a collaboration with all three major labels. But for me personally, as I itched to learn more about industry insider backdoors to Spotify playlists, learning about Filtr, Digster, and Topsify was illuminating; the beginning of my journey attempting to unpack this mystified world. As it turns out, these privately-owned brands barely scratch the surface of what’s at play.” “Outside of the Spotify staff-curated playlists, those curated by Filtr, Digster and Topsify have more visibility on the browse pages than any other playlisting brands, individuals or labels. With these playlists, employees of Filtr, Digster and Topsify can simply log in and add tracks… the majors effectively use these playlists to pump their artists into Spotify-owned algorithmic playlists.” Now that I got the bad news out of the way, there is hope and with some planning and work you can and will get traction inside this valuable platform. To learn how, I decided to go to a group of music industry veterans who do this every day and in the panel How Streaming Playlists Work and How to Get On Them, that took place at MONDO 2017 in New York, I sat in as Streaming Promotions, Co-Founder, Charles Alexander Sung Cho, Founder and CEO, Chartmetric, Brian Vinikoor, Sr. Director Strategic and Digital Partnerships at mtheory, Brian Popowitz ,General Manager Blackbox, and Jason Jones Director of Sales Mute Records took us through an incredible amount of information mostly focused on Spotify Playlists. I have broken it down into little “nuggets” and added some links help you along the way. The major takeaway was: Spotify, just like Facebook has algorithms and rewards artists who spend time on their platform. If you want to get included on any type of playlist, start getting to know how to use it at a pro level before you try to get on Spotify Playlists. Charles gave some very important context by sharing: All Artists Need a 360 Plan You can’t only focus on Spotify and Spotify Playlists. If you don’t have a plan in place for building your audience and meaningfully engaging with them you won’t succeed on Spotify. You also need to understand how to leverage and drive your audience from other platforms to Spotify. This means you need an overall marketing plan with multiple elements taken into account – Social Media, Brand, Tone, PR, Fanbase building, live shows, releases, etc.

Figure Out Your Narrative And your NARRATIVE is very important. This means you have to have a signature story and a recognizable brand, tone and content strategy that feeds into the narrative on social media. Keep your narrative and branding consistent across all media. Charles warned that after he informs artists of these key factors, he often sees that they skip the steps and pay to get on playlists, “You may get 20K or 30K streams but then it falls off the edge of a cliff because you are unable to take advantage of the momentum that you created.” And why? Because you skipped all the steps needed. You therefore need a comprehensive approach. Your Social Media Build Must Be Organic Your social interaction is key and social #s are very important. Focus on engaging and connecting with real fans and building your audience authentically. Fake numbers from click farms will work against you when your engagement ratio on socials is extremely low compared to your follower numbers. You must build and engaging an audience prior to releasing music. Music Blog PR is Key Many Spotify playlists are curated by key music bloggers. In order to get considered for these playlists, you need to be featured by these music blogs. Start at Hype Machine and understand that PR is an integral part of your Spotify strategy. Understand What Spotify Actually VALUES It’s a weird tipping point on what Spotify actually values. Influence is important, that means how many people follow you and your playlists on Spotify and consistent streams are also important. But the number of saves a song or album gets is just as or more important than stream counts and follows. The platform values engagement and interaction with the music or artist over casual consumption. It’s Not All About Getting on Major Playlists Everyone has their sights set on the biggest playlists curated by Spotify but not so fast! Brian Popowitz shared “The data has informed Spotify. We have an artist that is performing well and not on any major playlist – the song is peaking and we are not actively promoting it at all. It gets into people’s weekly suggestions and they stream it and it grows on its own organically in the Spotify ecosystem. This is the “new” music economy. Spotify built an algorithm that is derived from the footprint of an artist. So many things come into play. Spotify is a Long Game Jason Jones added that this is a long game: “Do not be afraid of slow but consistent growth” don’t be impatient. Sometimes you can start off on a branded playlist ‘The Sound of’ and you have to show growth of performance w/in those and this may take 4-5 months. ”Look at your historical data and see what causes spikes.

Build Your Own Playlisting Initiatives Start sharing Spotify playlists in which your music is included. You need to build up plays and then, this impacts the current song that you are working and any forthcoming singles coming down your pipeline. Create playlists of your own music AND things you love and include yourself and share. You need to create: reach, influence, and non-skip streaming. Find Your Unique Playlist POV Brian added “Owning your audience is everything.” Ask yourself: What is your unique POV? The “my favorite” songs right now” gets played and people get tired. Try curating a journey of how you put together playlists – one of our artists made a mix show taking listeners on the journey of how he created an album, Just putting 20 songs on a playlist makes an uphill battle. Getting Discovered on Spotify is Quite Hard Sung added that being on the smaller playlists is not the answer to garnering thousands of plays overnight “discovery is quite hard” in Spotify as they create and promote their own playlists within the platform. The List You Should Be Worried About FIRST is Your Mailing List! We work with an artist Rob Drabkin, who had a large mailing list and he asked everyone to follow him within Spotify with one email – it worked overnight. Rob connects with an audience in a special way – its not just about his music which is great, but he is also amazing at leveraging his tribe. You need an ARMY – every time you ask them to do anything they will! But you need to have great and consistent communication. – Charles Alexander Success On Spotify Starts With You “If you don’t have fans, listens and consumption on Spotify (that you have to create) you are dead in the water.” – Brian Vinikoor. This means you need to understand the Spotify Basics first! Know Which Streaming Platform is Best for Your Genre of Music “Each platform has a unique vibe. If you are a Country or Christian artist I would look to Amazon, if you are playing rock look towards iTunes, if you are indie or hip-hop, focus on Spotify.” – Jason Jones Never Forget The Newsletter (Yep, The Least Sexy Marketing Tool Out There!) “It goes back to owning your own audience – it all goes back to how many times people listen to your music.” – Brian Popowitz If you don’t have an effective newsletter strategy it’s high time you change that.

Everyone Wants To Be on New Music Friday EVERYONE wants to be on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist. “the chance of me getting you on that is next to none” the independent slots are few and far between and getting smaller.” Charles went on to say: “Let’s start with Fresh Finds or something that is appropriate for where you are in your career. This will give you a chance to grow and build your narrative on Spotify. This will let you take full advantage of the momentum and opportunities you create on the platform.” Always Connect to World 1.0 Steaming is a means to people hearing your songs but it’s what happens AFTER that in the real world? What should be happening before, during and AFTER you get on the playlist? What if you get on New Music Friday and you don’t know what to do next! Cyber PR is an artist development and marketing strategy firm serving musicians and musicrelated brands. We create long-term marketing plans called Total TuneUps, coach artists through the new music business and handle social media posting and growth strategy. https://cyberprmusic.com

                                 

“I tell artists to go build a story, go build a playlist on Spotify. Use our platform to build a following and for us to see the traction. I would encourage all artists to get on Spotify, build these playlists, build a following on these playlists, the same way you would build a following on Instagram or Twitter. We’ll see that activity and say, ‘Hey, this is organic. This is happening. This is energetic. This is momentum. This is traction. This is popping!’” - Tuma Basa, (former) curator of RapCaviar

6 DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS AND HOW TO GET ON THEM by Kevin Carthy, Music With Flavor © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Networking and music certainly go hand in hand. In the past it was those face to face interactions that were so vital to your success and still are. However, the online networking aspect is becoming ever more powerful and it’s important to learn how to leverage these online platforms to your advantage. Remember the days of aspiring to have your music heard on the radio… Well those aspirations are still understandable but when thinking about your music distribution strategy, you have to consider how your audience consumes music today. Having a strong plan in place can help you to identify the right opportunities to go after to get your music heard and shared. Let’s just say spamming your rap demo to that country station isn’t exactly a strategic move or a good use of your time. I, for example, was so caught up on the idea of SoundCloud and thinking this was the key place to promote my music. However, I was bombarded by friends asking when my music would be available on Spotify which I was underutilizing at the time. I had to rethink my distribution strategy and consider where my fans actually consume music and if it isn’t on Soundcloud then I better adjust. Not to mention, the monetization benefits provided by Spotify as opposed to Soundcloud, it would be silly not to reconsider my approach. With the advent of streaming platforms like Spotify, it is now much easier for artists to get in front of the right audiences and get placements that can grow their music career. Although these tools make it easier for artists there is certainly still work involved to see the desired results you are after. One key aspect of Spotify that artists must utilize is Spotify Playlists. Your goal should be to get placements on playlists that suit your style of music to get your music heard by more and more people. Below we outline the different types of playlists out there and how you as an artist can work to leverage them within your distribution strategy. Curated Spotify playlists These are the most sought-after playlists from an artist’s perspective and usually the “Go To” playlists we turn to as music fans in search of the hottest music. These playlists are run by curators working at Spotify and tend to be a lot harder for an artist to get on depending on a number of factors. If you were to ask one of these curators what the secret is to getting your song on their playlist, the resounding answer seems to be “We will find you”.

Essentially what they are saying is “Of course we will have you on our playlist” IF you are already creating a buzz. The factors these curators are looking at when selecting songs for these playlists are: 1. Do you have a good following? 2. Is there buzz being generated around your single/album/artist page? 3. Are tastemakers and other playlists aware of you and including you on their playlists? These are a few of the things they are looking at but let’s be honest; these playlists are largely filled with well established artists. By no means is it impossible for you to land a spot on these playlists but it will take some work and more often than not it comes down to who you know mixed with the hype being generated around you. If you want to get on to one of these playlists, simple outreach may not do the trick. You will certainly have to grow your organic following, induce engagement among your fan base and get on to a number of other different types of Spotify playlists which we describe below. These are a lot easier to obtain and will provide you with the small wins required to obtain the desired placement on a curated playlist. With that said, be honest with yourself and where you are at in your music career. If you are just starting out and do not have a large following do not spend all your energy reaching out to these large curated playlists. Keep in mind everyone is so focused on these playlists so the amount of submissions they receive could be quite annoying from their perspective. Hence why the whole mantra of “we will find you” seems to resonate throughout the curator world. If you are a more established artist or feel you can crack one of these playlists, be sure to check out how you can find their contact info with these easy and actionable steps. Algorithmic Playlists Next on the list are two more playlists that are controlled by Spotify, Discover Weekly and Release Radar. These are heavily based on the tastes and habits of listeners and if you can get your songs on them you certainly won’t be disappointed. Unfortunately knocking on doors and trying to force your way on to these playlists is nothing more than a pipe dream. The ironic thing is that these playlists are the ones you need to be shooting for more so than those flashy curated playlist we just discussed. Why is that you ask? Well placement on these playlists means that you have been doing the proper legwork of getting people to follow you and your music, generating buzz and getting other playlist placements. In doing so you are giving Spotify a reason to promote you to an audience who would be a great fit for your music.

If you are not sending hints to Spotify that your music is noteworthy (follows, buzz, placements, etc.) then you are not giving them a reason to promote you further. What do these 2 playlists represent? Release Radar is a Spotify playlist that users are sent every Friday. The list comes updated with two hours of fresh new songs and relevant tracks from artists that you have shown interest in as a Spotify user. If someone has been continually coming back to your music recently you can bet Spotify will be including one of your tracks on their playlist. Discover Weekly on the other hand is slightly different as this is sent to users every Monday and is chosen based on the users listening history as well as other Spotify users with similar taste profiles in music. It’s like a music subscription box metaphorically speaking. You don’t know what you are getting but chances are you will like it based on your taste in music. Both of these lists are very important to your success on Spotify for the mere fact that users are falling in love with these playlists and look forward to receiving them with sheer anticipation. Meaning that you’re being heard by new audiences and an audience who is receptive to what Spotify is suggesting they will like. Essentially free promotion from Spotify! The more followers you have, the more fans who’ll never miss out on your new tunes. The more people who enjoy a new release early on, the more Spotify will serve that music up on more algorithmic playlists. Put in the work required and this could very well be a possibility for you. Editor’s Note: Another very popular algorithm-generated playlist that you’re sure to run across is “The Sounds of Spotify” created by Glenn MacDonald @glenn_mcdonald Branded playlists Branded Playlists are third party playlist that are not directly a part of Spotify. These are your top blogs, record labels, managers, agents etc. who have gone out and started their own playlists. These playlists have striking similarities with Spotify Curated playlists for a couple of reasons. For one they have brand recognition and with that comes an immense popularity and again that grand thought of “if only I can land a placement on this playlist, how great things will be”. Yet the harsh reality again is that everyone is thinking that and this creates a bottleneck of submissions to these playlist and lowers the chances of you getting through. Let’s face it these entities are about leverage and how they can further their agendas, so unless you have something to offer and bring to the table, usually in the form of a strong following or marketing dollars, then you may be in tough. Now by no means am I telling you to not submit your music to these platforms, but I just want you to know what you are stacked up against. Again, this heavily depends on where you are in your career and if you are less established this will certainly be a lot more difficult but by no means is it impossible.

One caveat to this however is that some of these playlists want to be seen as tastemakers meaning that they have an ear to what is growing in popularity and on the rise. In order for a tastemaker to maintain this image they can’t just focus on established artists so these types of playlists will be more open to hearing out artist they may not have heard of yet or who are not as established in their careers. What I would suggest is to focus on playlists that are lesser known or on the rise. For example, the record label that is on the rise with only a few acts under their belt and has a decent playlist or the promotion company in a similar position. Again, your strategy here should focus on being realistic and what is going to get you the most gain for your effort. Someone who is more at your level will be more understanding and willing to help out in most cases. Your own playlists Now this feature on Spotify is something you definitely need to be taking advantage of. It is essentially cutting out the middleman and creating your own platform to showcase your music in front of an attentive audience. It’s actually quite interesting how we will do whatever it takes to piggyback off of other people’s success instead of creating our own path. In my opinion I sort of agree with the curators that say “we will find you”. It’s funny how we talk about taking back the power from the labels but yet here we are forming our own barriers to entry when we don’t have to. We in a way are treating these playlists as a label and we so desperately feel that getting on to one will change our lives. It might but in the same glance it might not. So why not use the resources available to you and eliminate that mindset of someone needing to do something for you in order for you to succeed. With Spotify’s feature to create your own playlists you have the ability to create a platform that will provide you with the very audience you are trying to obtain. Will it be easy? No but if you put the time in you essentially will have created an asset that nobody can take away from you. Hear me out for a second… You reach out to 100 playlists and maybe land a couple placements, or you spend $100s of dollars, possibly more, to get placement. That’s great and all and you may get a bit of a boost from your efforts. However, what happens next month when that playlist decides to take you off their list? Or they stop keeping up with and promoting the playlist? Or the playlist service you are using shuts down due to legal issues that Spotify deems out of scope with their terms and policies? All of these things are a reality and there is nothing you can do about it. I suggest stop looking for a quick fix and ensure that you are in control as much as possible. By creating your own playlists you are in control and the success of that playlist depends on you and the amount of effort you decide to put in to take it where you want it to go. These playlists become like your songs and albums and should be treated as such, as assets to help further your career.

You should build a playlist of your own based on music that relates to the music you are making as a musician and work hard to grow the following of these playlists. From there you have the power to strategically include your songs and still maintain the integrity of your list. Funny thing is, if done right you will have people knocking at your door trying to get on your list which is a great spot to be in and provides a number of other opportunities for you as an artist. Read this post on how to develop your own Spotify playlists and this post on how to properly promote and leverage them. Other peoples’ playlists Now I personally feel like these playlists get overlooked the most along with the playlists you can create on your own. I say this because I do not think people see the value in these types of playlists for a number of valid reasons. For one there is no brand recognition, they usually have a really small following and the person behind them is usually just doing it for fun. The fact of the matter is though, you need these small wins to get you to the big wins. As they say slow money is better than no money and, in this case, slow growth is better than no growth at all. The fact is getting on to these playlists is going to be a lot easier in most cases because most artists are not focusing their attention here. Furthermore, it can be a flattering thing to be approached by an artist wanting to get on your playlist when you don’t see yourself as some huge curator. If your goal is to get on those curated and algorithmic playlists, then you need this traction for a number of reasons that we mentioned above. This will help prove to Spotify that there is engagement around your music and help you to start getting considered for more prominent playlists. In any case always be polite and use some tact when approaching any playlist for that matter. You want to develop a relationship and not just go in for the kill right away even though that can seem tempting, I caution you to avoid this approach at all costs Collaborative playlists These are playlists that are started by others or that you can create but allow anyone to add to the playlist. It is a cool way to create a bit of community and have your songs on a playlist that others are seeing. No there is no definitive data on how much these types of playlist help you with Spotify’s algorithm, but one can be certain it doesn’t hurt to be on them. I am sure that the ease at which you can just place your music on them can’t hold much weight, but it certainly is better to be on them than not.

A variation of this that I believe would be a much stronger strategy is to get a few friends together or other musicians you know of and develop a playlist together. Granted this won’t be collaborative in the sense that others can openly add to it but at least this way you know all the people adding to the list and have a better chance of monitoring it and having everyone cross promote it. I have also seen this with collaborative albums where people will create a playlist for music they have worked on together and promote it together. Conclusion In closing, I strongly suggest that you focus on strategies that provide you with the most control in the end. I personally would focus on building your own playlists and giving them the attention they need so that they become an asset for you down the road. With that said there is certainly merit in hustling to find potential playlists that you can submit your music to and get an extra boost in your following and engagement. Just remember that you get what you put in and sometimes the easy way doesn’t always amount to the desired result. Have a plan and strategy in mind and make sure that you are using your time effectively to arrive at your desired outcome. If you found this post helpful be sure to share it and let us know in the comments what your experience has been like trying to get on the different types of playlists discussed! Music With Flavor was created to help independent artists like you, build a business around their music careers. We do this by providing you with relevant, actionable and fluff-free content that you can implement today! We know that the music industry can be complicated and stressful at times, so our goal is to help you turn those feelings of overwhelm into confidence that you are on the right path. https://musicwithflavor.com

“Choose ONE contact method only - don’t send messages to the same curator via multiple platforms. And always try to choose the method that you think the playlist curator feels most comfortable with. Don’t just choose the method that’s easiest for you!” - PlaylistRadar.com

2 TYPES OF SPOTIFY'S ALGORITHMIC PLAYLISTS, HOW TO LAND YOUR MUSIC ON THEM by Randi Zimmerman, the Symphonic Blog © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

If you're trying to get your music heard on Spotify, there's no better way than to get it scooped up by some of the platform's top algorithmic playlists. Here we look at some ways you can manipulate the platform to increase your chances of this happening. Trying to gain some real success on Spotify? Landing your music on some of Spotify’s best algorithmic playlists will boost those chances. Growing your audience through the exposure of one of these key playlists will help you gain the occasional listeners and die-hard fans that you’ve been looking for. Spotify’s unique algorithm automatically creates and frequently adds tracks to these playlists. “Tracks move up or down on playlists depending on their performance,” says Amelie Bonvalot, Senior Director, Digital Sales & Account Management. What determines how your track is performing? Spotify’s algorithm is taking note every time people save your music to their queue, library, or their own playlist. It also takes into consideration the number of followers you have. All these factors can help you land a spot on one of these playlists. These playlists are a great way to gain more exposure and get your tracks heard by fans, other artists, major record labels, blogs and more. This increased exposure only ups your chances of getting the publicity you’ve been looking for to propel you to the top of the game. And of course, the more playlists you can get on, the better. Which Playlists Are We Talking About Here? There are 3 main playlists the algorithm can help you get featured on: Discover Weekly, Release Radar and Daily Mix. These are all algorithm sourced playlists that update frequently and harbor great potential for success. However, each one is a little different. Discover Weekly If you’re an avid Spotify user, then it’s likely you’re ready for your updated Discover Weekly every Monday. The songs are tailored to the user’s personal listening history and that of other Spotify users with the same taste. When your followers save your tracks to their own library, this generates even more features for you.

Release Radar This playlist is curated with up to 2 hours of brand-new songs and relevant tracks from artists the listener has been showing a lot of interest in, and is updated every Friday. The cool thing about this playlist is that it captures new releases from artists they follow on the platform and new discoveries based on the user’s listening history. If you’re someone who consistently drops new music or you’re worried about your fans missing your newest hit, getting featured on this playlist is the perfect way to keep your listeners up to date. Daily Mix Daily Mix playlists are curated based on different genres listeners have been into lately. This is really cool because the more styles of music a user listens to the more mixes Spotify will generate. At most, users can get up to 6 different mixes, each different from the last, yet still all things they love the most. The more frequently they listen to each mix, the more frequently that mix automatically updates itself. Establishing yourself in your genre can really help you maintain a spot in your listeners Daily Mixes. So, we’ve talked about how these playlists update themselves pretty often, but how can you keep your tracks circulating through this system? 1. Have your fans follow you on Spotify so these followers can have your music automatically added to their respective playlists. “If there is an add to a collection or a save from that playlist, that’s going to contribute to the performance of the track within the playlist,” says Bonvalot. 2. Be vocal with your audience! To keep your music on everyone’s radar, your followers need to be saving, sharing or liking your tracks. Take to other social media platforms and share your songs via Spotify Codes. These codes let anyone scan your song’s unique code and make sharing and promoting your music easier than ever. 3. When more people are following your page, that’s more listeners being updated every time you release a new project. The more people listening to your new track, the better shot you have at more people liking, saving and sharing your tracks. 4. Be timely with how you promote yourself on certain playlists. If you’re trying to be featured on a playlist that’s updated every week, you have to be sure to update your fans as soon as possible when it updates. Playlists that are genre based and update themselves less often have more wiggle room as to when you should be promoting everything. 5. Because these playlists are driven by an algorithm, the only way to continue being featured is to keep consistently using these tips! Remember that nothing worth having comes easy. Once you’ve been added to the playlist you’ve been after, the work doesn’t stop there. Always strive to continue your personal growth as an artist, a brand, and a pro in this ever-changing music landscape. I'm a Content Writing Ninja & Music Addict @symphonicdistro

SPOTIFY IS PERSONALIZING MORE PLAYLISTS TO INDIVIDUAL USERS by Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Spotify is starting to algorithmically personalize some of its curated playlists, making a major change to how people discover music on the streaming service. Spotify is already known for having some of the best personalized playlists in the industry, which automatically present songs based on what each listener enjoys. But it’s also known for having excellent human-curated playlists, like RapCaviar, which have become musical tastemakers due to their immense popularity. Those curated playlists have, until now, not included any personalization — there was one canonical playlist, and everyone received it. But now Spotify is going to make some of those playlists part curated, part personalized. Human editors will still pick and choose which songs fit on which playlist, but every song will no longer show up for every listener. Instead, Spotify will automatically adjust the playlist to better fit a listener’s tastes. Spotify says it’s been testing this out, and listeners seem to like it more. People seeking out songs after discovering them through a playlist is up 80 percent on these personalized ones, and track saves are up by 66 percent. The change isn’t being made just for listeners, though: it’s also for music labels. Major music labels have been complaining that they aren’t featured enough on Spotify’s playlists, Business Insider reported last year. Nearly one-third of listening on Spotify is done through curated playlists, according to the report, and streaming music overall now accounts for three-quarters of music industry revenue. So labels have a lot to gain by getting their artists on Spotify’s playlists.

By personalizing the playlists, Spotify is able to put more artists and songs on each one, since they won’t all appear for everyone. Spotify says the number of artists on each playlist goes up by 30 percent and the number of tracks goes up by 35 percent. While labels may not love that songs will be hidden from some listeners, their songs will theoretically be put in front of people who actually want to listen to them. For now, Spotify isn’t saying which playlists are gaining the personalization feature, just that “some” of them will. Artists may be able to help figure out which is which, though — when their song is added to a personalized playlist, they’ll be given a custom link to share with their fans that will place their song at the top, ensuring they can hear it. Playlists that aren’t personalized will just have a single public link. Jake Kastrenakes @jake_k is reports editor for The Verge

“To ensure that I’ll listen to your track, include the lyrics and write a paragraph or two about them and yourself. What inspired the track? What are the lyrics about? Who are you? And give me a list of all your important links, social channels and beyond. I just won’t have the time to go hunting for information about you. It’s not a playlist for solving mysteries.” - Tommi Tikka, Playlist Curator Music to Celebrate Life https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1wF7TwL6JAPRrNyTCJFM0r

music curators i

WHAT IS A MUSIC CURATOR? by The Vibe Project © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

I was recently looking down a Run-of-Show (the detailed schedule for events) and saw, “4:00pm: DJ arrives.” I knew I had arrived at 4pm, but I didn’t bring any gear, tables or refer to myself as a DJ. Hmmm, I thought, I think I need to explain the difference between a DJ and a music curator. It’s true, there is a lot of overlap. Both DJs and music curators have extensive knowledge of music, are able to read a crowd and are hired for their taste. DJs are typically on-the-go. They’re hired for a specific event or gig, play their tunes and get outta there. The music they play for an event is not usually saved or shared with the party-goers. Music curators also work on projects that are not event-based, but more brand-driven. Brands (a brand can be a space like a hotel or restaurant, or retail etc.) need music all the time, not just for their events. A hotel has to think about the different elements of their space and what they’re being used for, as well as their clientele. A music curator fits the music to a brand by mixing science-backed research, market research, brand research, client interviews, understanding of lifestyle and music trends, music knowledge and knowing how music will sound in a specific environment with specific people. Oh, and having a great filter for what music works and what doesn’t. Then a playlist is born. This playlist belongs to the brand, represents the brand, breathes the brand. And can be shared and enjoyed endlessly. A music curator isn’t just curating music; their curating an experience, an atmosphere, a culture. We know that the powers of authentic experiences and atmospheres increase customer loyalty, spending and helps a brand to differentiate. We also know that music and community have the immediate effect of making people happier and enhancing everyday experiences. That’s a win/win. The Vibe Project celebrates this by working with spaces and brands in creating more moments of happiness. https://www.thevibeproject.co

I WANT THAT JOB: WHAT A SPOTIFY MUSIC EDITOR ACTUALLY DOES by Nicole Webb, Collective Hub © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

On the scale of dream jobs, we think a Spotify Music Editor would be up there. An abundance of very now headphones, meetings that are like band jams and a hoard of enthusiastic music lover colleagues that are ready to hit a live show at the drop of a hit. But what does a day in the life of a Spotify Music Editor actually look like? Well, it’s kind of similar to what you’d expect: think exclusive concerts, a buzzing, creative office environment and a lot of ‘plugging in’ to listen to the latest releases and emerging talent. (We weren’t far off). Arguably holding one of the most envy-eliciting jobs in the biz, Spotify New York’s Meg Tarquinio had an unusual path to the DJ chair, as a former PhD candidate in literature and cinema studies. “I originally completed a bachelor in the music industry, and loved working at local venues, but a fateful last semester modern poetry class inspired me to pursue a master’s in literature,” she tells Collective Hub. “But I missed being part of the music community, so I started interning in my free time for an amazing Swedish start-up that looked to explore the possibilities of digital curation. Three years ago, that company, Tunigo, was the first to be acquired by Spotify.” When Spotify’s creators Daniel Ek and Martin Loretzon met in Daniel’s house in 2005, little did they know that they would later disrupt an industry that what was on the brink of diminishing completely. Since the Spotify launch in Sweden in 2008, the multi-platform service has allowed listeners to access mass amounts of music at any given time. With over 2000 employees worldwide and reaching over 30 million paying subscribers, Spotify has become a staple listening service, also serving as a haven for mass music consumption and perfectly curated lists. (Who can live without Discover Weekly?) For Meg, a senior editor and content programmer, it’s evident considering the company’s quick growth that a lot more is at play than simply choosing a ‘top 10’ playlist – there’s also a careful consideration of long-term strategy and an ability to collaborate at play. “Our days are pretty dynamic,” Meg explains. “It all depends on what’s coming down the pipeline – internally or externally, from a new product feature or programming tent pole to a major new release. There’s a nice weave of project management, communications, creative development, and curation.” But while there are many facets of the job, it’s evident that music stays at the core of what Meg does. “One mainstay – and the best part of every week – is Friday mornings. I’ll make a double espresso, sit down at my desk, throw on my headphones, and before I know it hours have passed. First, I go through my notes and plans for my priority releases. Then, I’ll get lost in discovery – scanning the week’s new releases, finding new artists, and just soaking up as much as I can.” Her love of music is most evident, understandably, when creating playlists. “When I’m creating playlists, I never think about trying to make something popular in and of itself. I always think about fulfilling some kind of purpose, soundtracking a specific mood or moment or sharing a specific time in our music history.”

In 2015, Spotify announced that through their platform, artists were paid US$3 billion dollars, and statistics like this prove the adaptation of the music industry is crucial in keeping up with consumer patterns. It’s this same adaptation and curation that has kept Spotify growing in popularity and continuing to meet music lover’s needs. And while Meg’s job seems like one of the greatest to have in the music industry, there is one, ultimate other question her job seems to boil down to: how do you create the perfect playlist? “The human element,” Meg shares. “Music is the ultimate social object, and digital playlists encompass a new kind of conversation – a social mixtape mentality. Some playlists are the digital version of a coffee table strewn with eclectic vinyl: they say something about who you are, or how you want to be seen by your peers. Others encapsulate something essential about a shared human experience – whether it’s just spending a lazy night in bed reading magazines (or skimming Snapchat) or singing alone at the top of your lungs until you burst out laughing when you make eye contact with the person in the car next to you at that red light. “I think as long as you’re curating for a specific moment, mood, or genre that you feel passionate about sharing with the world, or your friends, or just one person, that’s going to be a great playlist.” Nicole Singh is a Sydney based writer, who’s previous battle with grammar and spelling would have her high-school teachers in a state of disbelief. She has previously written for Harper’s Bazaar and Elle Australia, writing about everything from the world of haute couture, the local music scene and the latest emerging businesses on the start-up scene. Not one to do things the normal way, Nicole has dabbled in many a creative art form – a true embodiment of the ‘slashie’ – starting off as a pre-professional ballerina, then television presenter, then digital producer and now turning to words. As a self-confessed ‘nanna’ you’ll often find her on a Saturday evening wearing an ugly pair of mismatched pyjamas, watching some form of trashy television and eating Nutella straight from the jar. https://collectivehub.com/author/nicolesingh

FOUR POINTS THAT PLAYLIST CURATORS LOOK FOR by Stephen Cirino, medium.com © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

When pitching your music to a playlist, what are the curators looking for to confirm placement? Let’s dive into it. Landing the right music discovery opportunities can provide independent artists the momentum they need to jump start a sustainable career and add value to a developing fan-base. Spotify and Apple Music Playlists have become the main driving force behind music discovery and consumption for developing and established artists. Marketing and promotional efforts have now shifted to focus on playlist pitching as getting a track onto the right Spotify and Apple Music playlist can generate millions of plays and an abundance of new fans.

From his experience with AWAL for pitching tracks to Playlist Editors, John Rigo has discovered 4 key factors that can help close a playlist pitch in an artist’s favor: 1. Social Followers and Activity Developing artists may not have a massive budget for radio, a PR campaign, or the traditional marketing tools, so developing your social media presence is extremely important. The number of people following your social media profiles indicates to streaming services that your music is solid and deserves attention. Here are some additional factors that can help convince Spotify or Apple to include your track on one of their key playlists: Get fans and media outlets to talk about your music, and to believe in your vision. Ask fans to follow you on social media as well as your artist profile on Spotify and Apple Music Connect. Follower counts are important to streaming services, as they see it as a potential to connect new listeners to the service. Make sure your website and socials point back to your content on Spotify and Apple Music. Showing your support to these business partners is an important way of showing that you are doing your part in marketing your own music. 2. Optimize Your Own Account: Verification & Playlists Once you’ve started making progress with your social media fan base, make sure you are verified on both Spotify and Apple Music Connect to start engaging with your fans. Once verified, you are able to create your own playlists on your profile to help create a bond with your fan base to give some personality to your presence on the platform. Not only does this give you a direct way of communicating to your fans, but it also shows the streaming services you are invested and that you want to connect with listeners. Fans love to hear what inspires their favorite new artist, what they’re listening to on tour, or singing in the shower. Choose a theme or two and start putting some effort into creating well curated playlists. Once you’ve got a nice playlist made (featuring some of your own songs of course), start posting and tweeting on social media. One cool, well thought-out playlist will not only get fans to engage with the playlist but will show Spotify and Apple that you are potentially bringing new subscribers into their service too. 3. Website Links Another element that streaming services look at when considering your tracks to add on their key curated playlists is making sure you are including their links on your website. Many artists forget to include a Spotify play button or playlist widget on their website. Streaming services need to feel like they are a priority along with your social media profiles and download buy links. Please be sure to include Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services links on your website (and socials too, potentially).

4. Help Algorithmic Playlists Find You In addition to the above, there’s another area of playlisting that is becoming big for discovery on Spotify in particular, algorithmic playlists! These are auto-generated playlists that are based on music sharing and blog activity. Believe it or not, you can do things to try and affect your chances of landing in algorithmic playlists (such as Discover Weekly and Fresh Finds). Some things you can do to help your chances of getting picked up on these algorithmically based playlists are simpler than you might think, and don’t require a tremendous PR budget. Ask all of your fans to follow you on Spotify and Apple Music and make concentrated efforts to grow your follower numbers. Be sure to send your relevant pitching materials or one-sheet to you or your publicist’s music blog contacts. Positive attention from the blogs could result in being added to Fresh Finds. Once you’ve established a base, reach out directly to a tastemaker by first following them on Spotify and then sharing your track to them with a note asking if they will include your track on their influential playlist. The bigger your social presence you have when you contact a tastemaker, the better chance that they will add your music to their playlist when you offer to share the playlist to your growing fan base. Obviously, you’ll want to focus on tastemakers with similar musical tastes as your music with a large number of followers for the best chances of inclusion. Spend time curating a good playlist on YOUR profile. The better the playlist is, the more likely a fan will follow and share it. Share your playlist as wide as you can and focus on getting it to people that you think it will resonate with. Ask your fans to share your tracks or playlists to try and create as much buzz as possible. By focusing on getting fans to share your music and getting included on tastemaker playlists, you will increase your chances of getting picked up on Spotify’s algorithmic playlists. Stephen Cirino is CEO - futuremgmt / Sr. Lecturer @UArts / Curator of relevant music business news / www.futuremgmt.com

“There are millions of playlists on Spotify. Every user has the ability to create multiple playlists. So understandably, Spotify doesn’t want EVERY single playlist on their platform to be publicly searchable. In order for YOUR playlist to grow as much as possible, you’re going to want to show up in a search on Spotify. That way your reach extends beyond your existing fanbase.” - Chris Robley, DIY Musician Blog https://diymusician.cdbaby.com

THREE NIGHTS FOLLOWING SPOTIFY PLAYLIST EDITORS AROUND NEW YORK’S LIVE MUSIC SCENE by Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Verge © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

In an otherwise boring conversation about some press release or another, a Spotify PR person mentioned to me that an artist who had a big hit on the platform’s Fresh Finds playlist was discovered when one of the curators just happened to see them play a show in Bushwick. I was as surprised as anyone really can be by an email from corporate PR. Fresh Finds is one of Spotify’s prized products, a weekly playlist crafted from a combination of two different data inputs: it identifies new, possibly interesting music with natural language processing algorithms that crawl hundreds of music blogs, then puts those songs up against the listening patterns of users their data designates “trendsetters.” What’s going to a show in Bushwick have to do with it? I had visions of a bunch of suits using their business cards to get into cool shows for no reason other than to feel like Vinyl-era record execs for a night. It seemed extremely redundant, and more than a little like posturing. Why bother? “It's basically their job,” I was told. Okay but, excuse me, how is that a playlist curator’s job? To find out, I asked if I could tag along with on a few of them on their nights out. I did not expect the answer to be yes, mostly because I thought it should be obvious that my intention was to point out how weird the whole thing was. But the answer was yes. So, for three weeks, I went with Spotify playlist curators to live performances in Chinatown, Bushwick, and an infamous club on the Lower East Side. I got dozens of half-answers to the question: Why are you here? Athena Koumis: Fresh Finds I met Athena Koumis on a Saturday night outside an office building in Chinatown, for a SoFar Sounds show happening on the fourth floor. Tickets to SoFar shows are often sold based on the value of the company’s brand name, with the individual acts as total surprises. Attendees bring wine and bread and jars of olives, and toast each new act they’d never heard of. They seem to be enjoying the music, but they also seem drunk, so it’s hard to say. My first question for Koumis is, “Why are you here?” Why would someone whose job relies on data, and whose product doesn’t have any relevance in a live space, need to see the acts they “program” on their playlists in person? She seems a little confused by the question. “All the curators are involved in actually seeing the music too,” she tells me, furrowing her brow. Sure. But why would Spotify care how people interact with music when they’re not on Spotify? This sounds ridiculous, like if Instagram suddenly sent people out in the field to see how many IRL verbal compliments I was getting on a new shade of lipstick. Just to see, just because it was important to them to know.

“Hearing the music on a computer is one-dimensional. We need to see how real people interact with it,” she sort-of explains, without quite getting at the question of why Spotify cares. I ask her if she’s ever wandered into smaller live music spaces and made discoveries, and she tells me a story about seeing Princess Nokia making a surprise appearance at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg. Princess Nokia is already famous, but I get what she means. “Those moments still happen,” she says. Koumis started her career at The Echo Nest, a startup acquired by Spotify in 2014 to build its recommendation system. She became an editor when her team’s pet project, which combined Spotify’s massive bank of data on users considered “tastemakers” with a human editorial check, got shared around internally. With the incorporation of a new element — the blog-crawling algorithm — it became what’s now the Fresh Finds playlist. Every week, she considers 1,000 new tracks for Fresh Finds. Unlike Spotify’s other curated playlists, this one isn’t open to pitches. “What I want is an artist who didn’t know anyone at Spotify,” she says. This is how she found Rayana Jay, who we are at this show to see, about a year ago. Her song “Sleepy Brown” was one of Koumis’ weekly 1,000 tracks, and she started it off on two smaller low-fi hip-hop and “jazz vibes” playlists. It took off, and Spotify’s internal tools showed that it was getting buzz on social media too, so Koumis let Rayana know that she wanted to meet her in person and listen to new music. “I’m interested to hear if she can sing the way she does on the record,” she says. “Is there a lively interpretation? Does she leave an impression? Hearing it on Spotify is one thing, but can she inspire people to start talking about her?” I ask her what she thinks of the way hit-making seems to work now. Does sifting through data ever feel like removing the element of chance? Turning alchemy into algorithms? She says no. She says the age of streaming and the tradition of live music and serendipitous discovery aren’t separate: “If anything, streaming means new artists get the opportunity to play live faster. And algorithms are tapping into the ears of real people. It’s not just some math equation, it’s studying and listening to what real people are listening to.” The second act, a Seattle-based singer-songwriter named Ings, plays cutesy Frankie Cosmosstyle songs about boys and puppies and time travel. She has circular yellow glasses and a teal nurse dress and encourages people to buy her t-shirts, which have kittens on them. While we’re milling around in the hall waiting for Rayana Jay’s set to start, Koumis leans into french doors at the back of the conference room to listen for a second. “You know how you were asking if there are still surprises?” she says, bouncing back into the hall. “She has a really beautiful voice. I’m gonna go home and listen to her stuff. I can pass it to another editor who curates a playlist it would work for.”

John Stein: Indie, Focus, Chill On my birthday, I take two buses to Elsewhere, a Bushwick warehouse venue that opened four days prior. Kllo, an Australian electro-pop duo with a sizable Brooklyn following, are playing in a 250-capacity bar space called “Zone One,” at the front of the building. It’s packed, so I stand outside to talk to John Stein, an editor focused on indie, alternative, and electronic music for some of Spotify’s biggest mood playlists. It is freezing. My first question for him is, “Why are you here?” He laughs. “I’m a fan, that’s a big reason I’ll make it out on a Saturday night... Listeners respond really well [to Kllo] on platform, but live is a different experience. Can they sell out the room? What’s the audience like? I try to understand why. You need to feel like you’re a part of the music and making sure you’re involved in the scene.” Okay, John, but why? My nose is really running, as we are standing outside and it is November and I have a cold, but I try hard to make John understand that he is not answering the question. I ask him: if this act is good and the live show is good and other people seem to think it’s good, what will change for them when you sit down at your desk on Monday? He explains that there’s a difference between a live hit and a Spotify hit. He likes to find out what songs people are singing along to in the real world. “That’s something we don’t see in the data,” he says. “They’re not always the catchy ones. They’re surprises. And over time, people come back to those more.” He says he likes music that has substance, which you “can’t fake,” not just perfectly crafted pop songs with the chorus at the front. “You can’t build real fans by following such a formula in that way.” He started his career at WFUV, Fordham University’s radio station and an affiliate of NPR. His whole job was playlists, and “unwrapping CDs for six hours a day.” He says the biggest difference between his job at Spotify and a radio station gig is all of the data, which he “never could have imagined” before he saw it. (Spotify can track social media buzz around songs, how they perform relative to other tracks in a playlist, how the song performs on the artist’s own page, relative to how it performs in the playlist, and scads of other metrics.) He says he wants to figure out what a “single” means in the age of Spotify, where listeners have access to a whole album at once, and how to contend with “the new version of a one-hit wonder” — a song people love that goes viral from playlists and algorithms, but doesn’t help the performer take off in the same way. “People save [the song], but they don’t even know who the artist is,” he says. “It’s hard to connect the dots between selling tickets and a song trending on social media.” I ask him if he’s seen a recent report by Pitchfork’s Marc Hogan, about how Spotify has altered the formula for a pop hit. The report quotes music industry experts who talk about how the first 20 seconds of a song has to serve as “an executive summary,” or thesis statement, of the rest of it, to avoid the skip. The chorus has to enter fast. “Catchy bits come early and at a quick clip,” Hogan wrote, “There’s often an enormous introduction followed by a suspense-ratcheting succession of repeated hooks.” He’s seen it. “It makes me a little nervous,” he says. “I don’t like that aspect.” The publicist at his elbow barely winces.

Later, while I hover near the bar with my friend and co-worker Lizzie Plaugic, who did not want me to spend my birthday with just some guy who works at Spotify, John finds us. He says he’s leaving because it’s too crowded. “That seems like a good thing!” I scream. “People are cheering and stuff!” He says “Haha, yeah.” AJ Ramos: US Latin The first Manhattan performance for Dominican-born, New York-raised, LA-based artist Jenn Morel is at midnight in the music venue SOB’s on the Lower East Side. There are approximately 30 people in the audience— a steep drop from the earlier show with an 18-year-old Massachusetts rapper named Token, who brought his mother and grandmother to the club. AJ Ramos, an editor on the US Latin team, is also the MC for the show. He takes the stage before Morel, while I am falling asleep at a table behind one of half-a-dozen 8-foot-wide pillars in the middle of the dance floor, and informs the crowd, “There’s going to be over 1,000 people the next time you see Jenn Morel.” I’m grumpy, because it’s Wednesday and it’s midnight, but I’m doubting it. My first question for Ramos is “Why are you here?” He is ready for this question. “SOB’s is such a trademark and stamp as to what’s happening,” he said, flipping imaginary pancakes in the air in front of him. “Chance the Rapper, Big Sean did their first New York shows here. This is Jenn’s first time back in New York. I want to see if she has a following; if people are singing her songs... And it’s our job to be culturally supportive of the artist.” (Here is a good time to point out that AJ has worked in the music industry — on radio and TV — for much longer than Athena or John, and his answers, while ostensibly sincere, also sound a lot more like catch-phrases.) He says his job as a playlist curator is to “capture cultural moments and even the playing field.” He says “even the playing field” at least seven times during our conversation. Earlier that day, he says, Morel played him her new music, which bounced from a sample of a new tropical artist to bachata to trap. “Cultural gaps are being bridged. Right now, more than ever, different genres and cultures are learning how to work together.” He refers to himself and Angie Romero, the first two curators hired for Spotify’s US Latin team, as “arroz con pollo” and says he talks more to the people on his team than he does his own family. Their job, he says, barely breathing between sentences, is to “educate and excite the artists as to what Spotify is.” And even the playing field. He’s taken 500 meetings in the last two years, he claims, from Daddy Yankee to Bad Bunny, with a focus on urban and tropical music, but a little salsa, a little inspirational Spanish Christian, a little trap. He sends and receives 500 Instagram direct messages a week, goes to five listening sessions on a slow week, listens to music non-stop, gets up at four o’clock in the morning every day, just got back from the Presidente Festival in the Dominican Republic, “living the culture, going to the clubs.”

I believe him, like I believed Athena and John, when he says that he loves music and would be doing this anyway, and cares about understanding the live cultures that his digital work draws on. But I wonder how someone this committed to a democratic approach comes across to major record labels, which definitely expect special treatment. “Everyone’s just excited,” he says, waving the question away. He restarts the conversation. “I’m a person of the streets,” he explains, as slowly as a middleschool teacher. “I want to know what somebody’s vibing to in their car. Blogs, data, viral charts, we can learn from everyone. We’re here to even the playing field.” But does it ever stress him out, I ask, being an arbiter of taste on a platform that is increasingly becoming the arbiter of taste in music? He shrugs. All the playlists in the US Latin tab are made by committee, and “You can put a song on a playlist, but if the users aren’t feeling it…” He shrugs. “It’s the people who are listening to Spotify who decide what the next hit is.” He shrugs again. “It’s a mix of gut and data.” Conclusion At the end of the three weeks, I still feel as though I have only a blurry idea of why Spotify is sending its playlist curators out to live shows. When I follow up with Athena, she mentions that she was charmed by Rayana Jay’s sense of humor — on the merits of a lively performance that had tipsy audience members laughing and cheering, she sent Jay’s new song “Everything” to the editor of the Mellow Bars playlist, which has 500,000 followers. “Everything” is now the 12th track on that playlist, which is something, I suppose. She sends me a longer answer to my original question, saying she feels “a strong sense of accountability” to Spotify users and to the artists who are hoping to find their big break in a Spotify playlist: “Accountability to make programming decisions that best serve listeners, accountability to give artists equal consideration, accountability to seek out new sounds and new artists and connect them with the right audience[.]” She calls it a huge responsibility. John tells me something similar, when I follow up about Kllo. (I’d already noticed that “Predicament,” the fourth song on their new EP, was added to the Indie Mixtape playlist the Monday after the show.) “With so much music coming in and so many shows for us music editors to get to, sometimes I feel pressure that we're missing stuff,” he says. “There's so much great music coming out, and audiences are more open than ever to hearing new music from new artists.” I believe that these people care deeply about their jobs and understand that what they do is a significant driving force in the culture around music. I understand why someone committed to giving every artist a fair shake and giving other people music they’ll love would want to be as thorough as possible. That doesn’t mean I can shake the feeling that Spotify is milking a ton of client relations work and positive PR out of this sincere passion. The company has spent the last few years dodging rumors that it would ever experiment with signing artists directly to an inhouse label, but it’s also spent the last 12 months launching initiative after initiative designed to turn “emerging” artists into commercial megastars.

It’s also sending playlist curators out to take meetings with musicians, attend their listening sessions, and watch their early shows in Brooklyn bars. The record label rumor is even less than a rumor, more like a conspiracy theory, but its clear that Spotify does want to wield cultural, taste-making power — to the point where it’s not even asking its young editors to pretend otherwise. On the contrary, it’s asking them to go out and advertise it. Kaitlyn Tiffany@kait_tiffany is a tech reporter for @thegoods | formerly @verge, forever the web's 1 jake gyllenhaal newsletter.

“With so much music coming in and so many shows for us music editors to get to, sometimes I feel pressure that we’re missing stuff. There’s so much great music coming out and audiences are more open than ever to hearing new music from new artists.” - John Stein, Spotify Curator (Indie, Focus, Chill)

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PITCHING YOUR MUSIC TO CURATED PLAYLISTS ON SPOTIFY by Chris Robley, DIY Musician Blog © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

A song placement on a big Spotify playlist can get you hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of streams and — contrary to what you’ve probably heard — generate real money. How many thousands of songs are being released every single day though? What are the chances your song will find its way to the curator of a popular playlist all on its own? Have you proven that you should be taken seriously on the platform? Building your playlisting resume on Spotify There are some steps you need to take in order to increase your chances of being noticed by Spotify’s in-house editorial team or their algorithm. Also, before you reach out to the curator of any prominent Spotify playlist, you’ll want to build your playlist resume first. That means you should:   

Become a verified artist on Spotify Build some of these kinds of Spotify playlists on your own and make sure they’ll show up in a search Get your music onto some of these playlists by collaborating with friends, fellow artists, and your own fans

Getting music onto playlists outside of your immediate circle of influence Okay, let’s imagine you’ve already gone though all the steps listed above. Now that you’ve laid a solid foundation and done as much DIY playlisting as possible, it’s time to reach out to other playlist creators. But start slow: approach independently curated playlist creators first. After some success you can work your way up to the big playlist curators. Who should you be pitching to? It’s impossible to recommend specific playlists in a blog post like this; it differs dramatically for every genre. But rest assured that opportunities are out there — hundreds (even thousands) of great playlists exist for every genre.

No matter the genre though, the same pitching principles apply: 

Google is your friend — A good genre playlist (and the contact info for its creator) usually isn’t hard to find online. Do a simple search and you’ll be on your way.

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Do your research — Browse around. Get lost on Spotify. Ramble from playlist to playlist. Takes notes on the ones that really leave their mark. What kinds of artists and songs do they include? Which of your songs might fit best on that playlist?

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Follow the playlists you want to pitch to — Be a good citizen. Don’t just spam them. Follow them. You like the music anyway, right?

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Build a relationship with the playlist creator — Follow them on Twitter or Facebook if they have a profile. Leave comments on their blog. Communicate. Compliment.



…THEN pitch your music — Once you’ve shown yourself to be interested in and knowledgeable about the kind of music the playlist features, write to the curator and politely (and briefly) suggest one of your songs that’d be perfect for their playlist.

Cross your fingers — If they add your song, awesome. If they say no thank you, don’t unfollow them or get snippy. Your NEXT song might be the winner! More playlist activity, more listeners Once your music begins to perform well through your own branded playlists, collaborative playlists, and independently curated playlists, the Spotify algorithm may begin to suggest your songs to Spotify’s in-house editorial team. That’s the real path to getting a song onto a playlist such as “Your Favorite Coffeehouse” or “Fresh Finds.” Discover Weekly and Release Radar Spotify’s algorithm might also begin to serve your music automatically to fans via personalized playlists such as Discover Weekly, updated every Monday with up to two hours of new songs and relevant tracks from artists the user has shown interest in. This is another reason why it’s crucial to get your fans to follow you on Spotify, since your new releases could be automatically added to your followers’ Discover Weekly playlists. The more followers you have, the more fans who’ll never miss out on your new tunes. In addition to encouraging your fans to follow you and engage with your music on Spotify, another way to boost your chances of your songs being seeded to Discover Weekly playlists is to release music more frequently.

Don’t just think in terms of albums An album only gives you ONE chance to get your new music out there (and onto a Discover Weekly playlist). Instead, think about more frequent releases (singles and EPs) that will put your music onto fans’ radars far more often. If you release a series of singles that are eventually included on an album, those songs can retain the same ISRCs (unique identifier codes for individual songs) as long as the sound recording is identical. That means that the play-counts for the previously released songs on that new album will automatically carry over. Money, Money, Money: The streaming license fee, plus publishing royalties Any of these more prestigious placements should boost your plays AND streaming income significantly. When that happens, not only will you be paid for each stream through your distributor (hopefully CD Baby), but — if it’s your original music — you’ll also generate publishing revenue in the form of mechanical royalties. This money is owed to you as the songwriter. However, these royalties can be difficult or impossible for you to collect on your own from royalty collection societies without the help of a publishing rights administrator such as CD Baby Pro. For every $100 in streaming revenue you generate, you’re owed, on average, an additional $15 in publishing royalties. It’s YOUR money. With CD Baby Pro, we’ll help you claim and collect what’s yours. Let the outside world in Spotify isn’t an island unto itself. What you do in the “real world” and elsewhere online matters to listeners, playlist curators, and Spotify’s team. So be sure to tour, make videos, get your music reviewed on blogs, or anything else that helps you grow your fanbase outside of the streaming platform. That momentum and buzz will drive playlist activity and streaming engagement within Spotify. Don’t ignore Facebook A huge number of Spotify users have integrated their Spotify accounts with Facebook to share their listening habits, favorite playlists, and more. If your Facebook page is a ghost town, and if your engagement on Facebook is low, that looks bad to not only those listeners, but also Spotify. The “music industry” cares about your stats. Numbers create an impression, and impressions matter. If you’re looking to attract label attention, a manager, a booking agent, or a publisher, an impressive play-count on Spotify, along with a robust history of playlist activity, is one way of demonstrating you’re worth investing in.

What are your Spotify “stats” as of today? If you’re distributing music through CD Baby, you can view Spotify trending reports and analytics within your members account. These reports, updated daily, give you a detailed look at: • • • • • •

Total streaming activity Your best performing tracks Demographic info for your fans (age, gender, device usage, etc.) Where your fans live Which playlists are featuring your music And more

This data can be super helpful when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of your Spotify promotions, online marketing, and playlisting strategy, as well as help you make smarter decisions when it comes to tour routing, targeted ads, and more. Well, hopefully this info gives you a framework from which to build your Spotify resume, get your music onto playlists big and small, make more fans on the platform, and earn more streaming money. Chris Robley is the Editor of CD Baby's DIY Musician Blog. I write Beatlesque indie-pop songs that've been praised by No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, & others. My poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, & more. I live in Maine and like peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, a little too much.

THE ART OF THE PITCH: HOW TO MAKE CONTACT WITH INDEPENDENT PLAYLIST CURATORS by PlaylistRadar.com © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Pitching your music to independent playlist curators can seem intimidating. Most music creators would rather be making music, not selling. And no one likes rejection. Fortunately, there are ways to make the whole process a lot easier. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that playlist curators are music fans too. Most independent playlist curators aren’t paid to create playlists; many do it for personal enjoyment. Assuming you’re targeting the right playlists, they probably WANT to hear the kind of music you do. All that being said, it’s important to have a professional approach when reaching out to playlist owners. This doesn’t mean pretending to be something you’re not; you can be professional and real at the same time. Read on!

What’s the best way to contact playlist curators? Often, curators who are open to receiving pitches will specify the contact method they prefer right in the description of their playlist. If so, use that method! Always respect the curator’s wishes when it comes to making that initial contact. Many playlist owners even create dedicated submission forms to accept playlist submissions, which makes the process convenient for both the artist and the curator. If the curator hasn’t specified any particular contact method and there’s no submission form available, then it’s up to you to choose an appropriate contact method. Many curators connect their Spotify accounts to Facebook, and therefore expect to be pitched via Facebook Messenger. Other possible contact methods can include direct messaging via Instagram or Twitter, Snapchat, etc. Here’s a rundown of some of the most commonly used contact methods: Facebook: Most users allow you to send them a message via Facebook Messenger, even if you’re not friends with them on Facebook. Be aware however that Facebook limits the number of messages you can send per 24 hour period, so be careful not to abuse this feature. (Messages you send to a Facebook Page don’t count towards this limit.) Instagram: Instagram allows you to send private messages to users via their Direct Messaging function. If you’re on a Mac, you can install a free program called Flume for Mac; Windows users can download the free Instagram app from the Microsoft Store. Both of these programs allow you to send messages directly from your computer desktop (assuming that’s more convenient for you). Twitter: Some Twitter account holders customize their Direct Messaging settings to accept messages from people they don’t follow. If you can’t DM someone on Twitter, try following them first (they may accept DMs from followers). If you still can’t DM them, you can wait a few days to see if they follow you back. Alternately, you can send them a public @ tweet. Other social media: Platforms such as SoundCloud, Mixcloud, LastFM, and Reddit all have private messaging functions. You’ll need a user account on these platforms in order to access private messaging, so it’s a good idea to create accounts for your band on all of these platforms. Email: It’s easy to get lost in someone’s inbox, so generally it’s a good idea to avoid using email – unless of course the curator has specifically requested you use that method. In that case, include words like “music submission” in the subject line of your email so the recipient knows right away what to expect. PRO TIP: If you’re sending out more than a couple emails, include the playlist name in the subject line (e.g. “Music submission for your Sunday Morning Chillout playlist on Spotify”). Because email clients like Gmail group message threads together by subject line, this ensures any replies to your email don’t get mixed up with other replies.

OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER: Don’t send out mass emails to curators, and DON’T SPAM. Send polite, personalized email inquiries ONLY. Website contact forms: Many companies and brands provide contact forms on their website. You can treat these essentially the same way as email (see above). Choose ONE contact method only – don’t send messages to the same curator via multiple platforms. And always try to choose the method that you think the playlist curator feels most comfortable with. Don’t just choose the method that’s easiest for you! What should I say when pitching to a curator? The best strategy is to be brief, be personal, be clear, and be yourself. Be brief: The vast majority of playlist curators DON’T want to read your lengthy press release or life story. A brief introduction (“Hi, I’m a singer-songwriter from Ohio”) is all you really need. Try to keep your entire message to no more than 50-75 words. Be personal: Do you respond well to boilerplate form letters? Neither do playlist curators! Take the time to personalize your message to the person you’re contacting. Generic pitches like “Check out my new track!” just come across as lazy. Be clear: Be clear about what you want – and specify which playlist you’re pitching! Remember that many curators own several playlists, so “Please consider my song for your playlist” might not cut it. Be yourself: Above all, make sure you’re being authentic. Write as naturally as you can while still being understood. Don’t pretend to be a manager or publicist; just be you. Remember that playlist curators are real people, just like you. As music fans, they already appreciate the work that artists do, so just be honest about who you are and what you’re trying to achieve. How many tracks should I send them? In your initial message, include the Spotify link to ONE track only. That’s right. JUST ONE. Don’t send them the link to an entire album or to your Spotify profile. Most curators won’t take the time to click through and listen to more than one track. If they like the track you send to them, they can easily check out the rest of your catalog on Spotify. What kind of response will I get? You’ll either get a positive response, a negative response, or no response at all. Let’s break it down: Positive response: Ideally the playlist owner loves your song, adds it to their playlist, and then writes back to you let you know. Yay! Some playlist owners will simply say “Thanks, I’ll check it out!” Thank them in return, and then give them lots of time. You can follow up with them later if you want to, but only if it feels right. Don’t be pushy!

PRO TIP: Remember to treat every curator as a potential new fan. Be prepared to reply quickly if you get a response, especially on platforms like Facebook Messenger where people expect immediate responses. If you can strike up a conversation, even better! Negative response: In our experience, this rarely happens. Curators who don’t like your music usually won’t bother replying. Occasionally you may receive a polite “Thanks, but it’s not the right fit for my playlist” response. Don’t take it personally! Thank them for taking the time to listen to your song. If they seem friendly overall and the vibe feels right, you can ask them if it’s okay for you to send them more songs in the future. No response: Most of the time, you’ll get no response. This is normal! People are busy, or they might not see your message, or they might be taking a break from Facebook (or whichever platform you’re using to contact them). Some playlist owners will add you to their playlist and not bother replying to your message. This is normal too. While most of your replies will come in within the first 48 hours, some take a lot longer. It’s not unusual to receive replies months later. (We’ve even seen some replies take a year or more!) If the playlist owner really loves your music, they may check your back catalog for other tracks. Don’t be surprised if you see your other songs pop up on their playlist(s). In some cases the playlist owner might not add the track you pitched, but another track from your back catalog. PlaylistRadar.com (no longer active) was a service that helped independent music creators grow their audience on Spotify.

“The reason I first started curating playlists was to promote my own music. But I soon realized that by doing so, there was equal benefit to helping fellow indie artists. It is indeed true that what you do unto others, will be done unto you.” - Cocoy Claravall, Artist and Playlist Curator https://open.spotify.com/artist/7or90S16MNx8VogdeOqlKq

HOW TO GET YOUR MUSIC ON A HUMAN CURATED SPOTIFY PLAYLIST Andrew McCluskey, medium.com © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

** Update June 2019 — So track subs now regularly exceed 1,000 a month and certain lists are getting 4 to 5 subs a day. The good news is with the changes to our track submission form and with many more artists reading this article, the quality of submissions has continued to increase and we are publishing more independently submitted music than ever before. But if you’re here for the first time — you should definitely read on…*** ** Update April 2018 — This article was written in December 2017, since then we have received almost 4,000 track submissions and while the quality has improved, there’s still a huge percentage that clearly didn’t read this. If you’re looking to submit to a Music to playlist you should definitely read on… *** Since we started counting in late April 2017, musicto.com has received 882 tracks through our generic submission form. Of those 882 tracks — I think we’ve published maybe 5 or 6 on our playlists. Why do think that is? I’ll tell you. It’s because the vast majority of the people who submit their music to us are either clueless, or lazy or both. That might sound a bit harsh but — the data doesn’t lie. Evidence for Clueless Half of the tracks submitted are for Spotify branded playlists that we don’t curate. I get it — I’d love to have my music on one of the big Spotify lists — getting a track on Rap Caviar can change your life — but what makes people think we have access to them? I think we’re pretty upfront with what we do and how we do it - it stuns me to see that people seem so blinded by their own desires that they don’t stop to read what’s on the screen in front of them. Which leads to the next point.

Evidence for Lazy And yes — I’m being intentionally provocative here — I know that if you’re working a day job and then recording in the evenings and hustling at the weekends the last thing you can be accused of is being lazy — I live the life — but what else can explain the vast numbers of cut and paste entries for the same track to 6 or 7 different playlists? I get it — you’re short of time — there’s a thousand different playlist sites out there and you’ve got to submit your track to every one of them — who has time to craft a unique and pertinent submission to each playlist curator? The One Thing You Need To Take Away From this Article The #1 thing you can do to get a Music to curator to listen to your track is to write a compelling couple of paragraphs about why your track would be a good fit for their list. Err — but Andrew — you already say that on the intake form — where’s the new knowledge — the giant insight that I’m here for? Well — sometimes things are so obvious that they need reiterating several times. But if you’d like me to break it down — here goes: Human Curated Lists Are Curated By People You know the difference between algorithms and people? Algorithms have time and people don’t. That’s why your Discover weekly or Pandora station eventually falls into lameness —  Spotify can’t afford to employ the millions of people it would take to human curate your individual playlist recommendations. One of the advantages of human curated lists is that they bring back randomness and creative associations that to date -  artificial intelligence just doesn’t have. But more importantly for you the artist looking for an audience, Human curated lists come with context, they come with a reason for people to listen. Music to playlists only publish one track a week and that track is promoted to the list audience for 7 days — in a world with practically infinite music and infinite playlists — context and promotion is everything. Music to Curators Read First Listen Second You should probably write that down. Have you ever sat with someone where they’re sharing a song and you’re not really digging it so you look at them to find they’re grinning at you saying “wait for the hook” — and you wait and you hear it — and it’s awesome…? I don’t know about you — but some of my favorite tracks took me a good two or three listens to “get” and then fall in love with but there was always a reason, a context as to why I persevered through those early listens.

With an ever-growing number of submissions, sitting down and listening to every track is impossible, in fact nowadays even listening to the whole track becomes improbable. There are places like Submithub which are tackling this and doing a great job — I’m a fan — but curators are making decisions after what — 15 / 20 seconds of listening — some don’t even get to the chorus before they’re making a decision to reject. If tracks are going to be judged on the first 20 seconds or so — then music’s going to look pretty homogenous pretty quickly. If you want a curator to not just listen to your track but in fact give you enough of their time to listen to all of it — you have to convince them with something that isn’t just your music. It’s About Them Not You When you cut and paste a track submission what you’re saying to the curator is: “My time is more important than your time.” You’re saying that you don’t care to find out if your track really is a good fit, you’ve put the onus on discovering that onto the curator. Unfortunately for you — even though you may be the hottest thing since Justin Bieber appeared on YouTube — everyone else is doing the same. So, the curator’s reality is that they’re listening to a load of songs that don’t fit their list and they’re wasting their time. Remember that a Music to curator may have less time than you do. They also have a day job, they’re also balancing family and work and studies and finding time to read and listen and publish. But remember why you’re submitting to them in the first place — they have done the work of building an audience. They’re the ones who showed up every week to share and promote their track, to build their social audience to slowly but legitimately grow their followers and subscribers. When your first interaction with someone who has built something that you want is pretty much “I’m more important than you!” — it’s kind of unlikely that they’re going to give you their time. Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That! Yes, yes actually lots of people do have time for that. Every now and then we get a killer track submission. Someone has taken the time to listen to the playlist, has commented on the tracks that they like, has read the curator bio, even sometimes checked out their music and referenced it in their submission. They write lovingly about their track — where it came from, what it means to them. They talk about how it would fit on the list — the kind of track it could sit next to. They add all their social links — drop us a link to a killer image and let us know they’re up to answering questions and being interviewed.

And when that happens — we tend to listen to the track — and if we don’t like it or it doesn’t fit our list we think of our community and wonder if it could fit on someone else’s playlist. When an artist goes out of their way to save us time and respect what we have built — we will go out of way to help them as best we can. Your Choice It comes down to this — you can continue rushing from one site to another, cut and pasting your track submission and maybe getting your track out to 1000 different lists and maybe less than 0.5% of them add it. And maybe that takes you 10 hours. Or you could take 30 minutes and research a playlist curator and their list and write a compelling track submission. That means you’d only hit 20 sites in the same amount of time — but I’m betting not only would you get added to more lists — you’d start to develop a relationship with a playlist curator that could last you a lifetime! Be A Music to Curator If you’d like to curate your own list, come and check us out. We are a growing global community of music lovers who love to share our playlists with the world. We are growing our audiences one track at a time and having a blast doing it. https://www.musicto.com/become-a-music-to-curator Working to connect the world through human curated playlists. "Music to" is a growing global community of music curators who love to share our playlists with the world. We are growing our audiences one track at a time and having a blast doing it. http://Musicto.com

THE REAL REASONS ARTISTS SUCCEED ON SPOTIFY — FROM A PLAYLISTING PRO by George Goodrich, Playlist Push and Paul Resnikoff, Digital Music News © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

George Goodrich of Playlist Push has witnessed thousands of successful Spotify playlist campaigns. He partnered with Digital Music News to share the most important tips he’s learned. (1) Write long albums with short songs.  

Rappers like Drake have turned this technique into an art, with albums loaded with lots of shorter tracks. And he isn’t alone. The strategy generates far more plays, thereby ensuring a top-charting album while multiplying per-stream revenue. For developing artists, the strategy also increases the odds of landing on big playlists — while also increasing positive metrics around songs (more on that later).

(2) Make an impact in under :30 Fact: Spotify doesn’t pay for any song that gets skipped before the 30-second mark. But this goes beyond the simple payment. “Curators and streamers alike want to be captivated by a new song in under 30 seconds,” Goodrich told us. “Make your song flow well, but also don’t waste time during the first crucial seconds of a song.” (3) Songs are getting shorter — so think about length. Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ is just 1:53, the shortest chart-topper since 1965. And that’s hardly the exception: Lil Pump’s ‘Gucci Gang’ is just 2:04, while Kodak Black’s ‘Calling My Spirit’ is 2:32. Songs are definitely getting shorter, and Goodrich says the reasons are simple. People are more distracted, and shorter songs grab people faster and reduce the chances of skipping. They also result in bigger payouts for artists (see #1). (4) Repackage to win. This one’s genius. Goodrich told us that clever artists are now re-releasing older tracks, with the same ISRC code and previous playcounts. “Artists that are smart are repacking singles into albums or compilations,” Goodrich said. The repackaging pushes the ‘brand-new’ tracks with lots of plays into ‘new’ algorithm playlists like Discover Weekly, New Music Friday, and your followers’ Release Radar. The refresh can result in a surge of new interest for an older cut. (5) Use Spotify for Artists — correctly. Most artists are doing Spotify for Artists wrong — and that dramatically reduces their chances of playlist inclusion. The number one mistake: artists should be uploading tracks into Spotify for Artists at least 7 days before it hits the platform. Otherwise, the track isn’t guaranteed to hit your followers’ Release Radar playlists, which means that all of that free promotion is lost. “A lot of artists are gunning down playlists but don’t even have access or utilize Spotify for Artists,” Goodrich said.

(6) Be nice to your distributor — you need them more than they need you. Stop bitching at your distributor and start working to become their favorite artist. “Most distributors have direct deals with Spotify, which means at least one person at your distributor speaks directly to someone at Spotify,” Goodrich told us. “There are always different brand deals and playlists opportunities that can pop up only via your distribution company.” (7) Own your genre — or pioneer your own. Hip hop is huge, but other genres are also generating lots of money on Spotify. Overnight, bedroom producers are minting cash on platforms like Lo-Fi Beats, and they don’t even have to tour. But that’s just one playlist catering to a growing class of people using music to focus better. “Thanks mainly to the start-up world and people just trying to focus better at work, stripped down repetitive beats are the top choice when it comes to writing or doing detailed technical work,” Goodrich said. Even crazier: Goodrich said playlists like Lo-Fi Beats and Yoga & Meditation are spawning an entirely new generation of artists who are making a living off of Spotify. “There are hundreds of artists out there making thousands of dollars on these micro-niche genres across the platform,” Goodrich said. “Most of them with little-to-no fanbase outside of the platform, which they are completely fine with!” (8) ‘Going viral’ is a fool’s errand — think long term, release lots of songs, and develop long release schedules. Songs still go viral occasionally, but ‘going viral’ isn’t a good strategy. “In order to get noticed and get on Spotify playlists, most artists think they need a hit or just one banger to put them on,” George said. “In reality you don’t need a hit, you need to release more records to drastically increase your chances of creating a banger. The more releases, the more chances you have to trigger the algorithms when a new release hits Spotify.”

(9) Try to establish a direct connection with a Spotify curator. Yes, you can directly connect with Spotify curators if you’re lucky. No, you cannot do this by spamming them constantly. George recommended LinkedIn as a good place to start finding curators. Try starting here. Just make sure to target the right person for your genre (i.e., don’t splatter-spam). It’s timeconsuming and not guaranteed, but the right connection can result in a plum playlist add. “If you do choose to go this route be polite in your messaging and don’t expect them to respond instantly,” George said. (10) Pay attention to cover art. Album art isn’t a lost art — even though it’s a tiny thumbnail these days. “Visual should not be an afterthought,” George said, while urging artists to imitate the artwork of releases from successful artists. But don’t go crazy on a thumbnail — just make it high quality and fun. “Don’t spend $5,000 on a designer,” George laughed. (11) Obey the simple rule of thumb: engagement is good, disengagement is bad. Nobody knows Spotify’s exact algorithms for rating a track. But some basic principles apply. Anytime a listener saves a song or adds it to a personal playlist, that’s good and shows positive engagement. Anytime they skip it or remove it, that’s bad because it indicates disengagement. Keep this basic guideline in mind. (12) Dedicated followers = “guaranteed playlist real estate” Artists with lots of Spotify followers are “guaranteed playlist real estate,” according to Goodrich. The reason is that anytime an artist releases new music on Spotify, it automatically populates the customized Release Radar playlist of every follower (just make sure you’re releasing properly through Spotify for Artists). That doesn’t guarantee placement on a top playlist, but it builds a lot of momentum.

(13) Start big, end big to reduce skipping. Artists like Kodak Black immediately hit you with the hook to grab your attention. But Goodrich is noting another trick: a lot of artists are now ending with the hook to keep listeners attentive. MORE NEWS: Why a DJ Khaled 'Monster Lawsuit' Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Billboard — And the Music Industry at Large Slower fade-outs and energy drops can lead to late-stage skips — which can result in negative strikes (see #11). (14) Avoid long intros and slow builds. More often than not, long intros kill placements. So it’s better to avoid them. “There are long intros that work, but if you want to really crush it on Spotify, long intros aren’t the way to go,” George told us. (15) Off-Spotify popularity helps, too. Artists with weak Twitter and Instagram followers can have difficulty gaining traction on Spotify playlists. “It’s all relevant,” George explained, while noting that he politely guides artists with IG followers under 300 back to their SoundCloud accounts. But beyond social networking, there’s also Google SEO to think about (SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization,’ and basically refers to your Google search ranking). For example: is your song appearing in the first page of Google results, and preferably, is it one of the top, above-thefold results? Remember: Google owns YouTube, so a YouTube result with good track metadata and information will often bubble to the top. “If the song’s performing well, it can go into feeder playlists like Fresh Finds, and then an actual human at Spotify may listen to it,” George explained. And another pro-tip: George also advised shouting out Spotify in tweets, IG posts, and Facebook blasts. They just might notice.

(16) Should you get signed? A note on the power of major label representation. It’s hard to say exactly what transpires between major labels and Spotify. Major labels oftentimes have serious sway with Spotify, but George warned us that this really depends on the specific label. “We really don’t know what happens behind closed doors,” George said. “Some labels have better relationships than others.” In many cases, however, the impact can be dramatic. Beyond pulling favors and blasting Drakestyle promotions, major labels are oftentimes experts in crafting streaming-friendly songs. “They know how to create and craft songs,” George said. Hopefully these tips were helpful! Happy playlisting. Paul Resnikoff is the founder and publisher of Digital Music News, the authority for people in music. His coverage focus spans streaming platforms, artist royalties, format disruption, the vinyl resurgence, copyright battles, startup struggles and financing. George Goodrich is CEO of PlaylistPush. He is a music business entrepreneur whose passion is to guide independent artists careers through the development of digital products, social platforms and hands on career management.

“Spotify is one of the most important platforms, so it is very important to grow on it. My advice is to create some playlists of your own based on genres. Update them monthly with new music and try to promote them on all social networks to increase followers and listeners.” - Torrex, Playlist Curator founder of Semantic Sounds https://www.semanticsounds.com

HOW SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS CREATE HITS by Steve Knopper, Rolling Stone © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

With more than 60 million subscribers, the streaming service can make or break a song. Here’s how the industry is adjusting Last month, Spotify reported that it has 60 million subscribers – a 100 percent jump from last year (its closest competitor, Apple Music, has 27 million). Streaming revenue has jumped from $1.8 billion to $3.8 billion in two years, and its users like being turned on to new music: More than half of Spotify users listen to the service’s constantly updated playlists, like Today’s Top Hits, which has more than 16 million subscribers. For artists, getting placed on a prominent playlist has become nearly as important as radio play. “Labels obsess over that,” says Ben Swanson, co-owner of indie label Secretly Group, which represents rockers like the War on Drugs. As playlists become the new radio, here are some of the music industry’s new rules. Curators Are the New Gatekeepers Spotify’s top hip-hop play?list is RapCaviar, with more than 7 million listeners. It was formerly curated by Tuma Basa, a former programmer at MTV and BET (now working at YouTube) who became the service’s head of hip-hop in 2015. “Tuma Basa is like an artist,” says Daniel Glass, president of Glassnote Records, who saw his client Childish Gambino get a huge bump when Basa added his song “Redbone” to the playlist. “Radio stations picked up on that – ‘If RapCaviar can play it, then I can.'” To achieve this kind of placement, managers employ consultants like mtheory to meet with execs, present data and make their case. “Hopefully, you’re seeing a bunch of good play counts and save ratios,” says Zack Gershen, executive vice president of mtheory. “Then you go back to Spotify and say, ‘Have we gotten to a point yet where we’ve earned a spot in a playlist?’ Release week – sometimes it’s not gonna happen.” Timing Is Everything Big names like Ed Sheeran are almost guaranteed space on prominent playlists. For smaller names, the journey takes longer. Electro-pop singer Lauv, who currently has a Spotify smash with his single “The Other,” first released the song two years ago. At the end of 2016, Spotify added it to a lower-tier dance playlist. It did so well that the track eventually made its way to Today’s Top Hits. “I saw the song go from 8 million streams to over 100 million streams,” says Lauv. “It’s insane.” The buzz allowed the DJ to launch his first headlining tour. For record companies, it’s all about knowing the right moment to lobby for a playlist add: “If we ask for it too quickly, it’s going to land with a thud,” says Gershen. “It’s like catching a wave with surfing.”

It’s Good to Have a Friend With a Popular Playlist Everyone from Father John Misty to Frank Ocean curates their own playlists for Spotify. Diplo and Friends Radio is a popular artist playlist, with 250,000 subscribers. The DJ regularly adds his favorite music, which often includes people he knows. He recently added a tourmate’s song, the Australian DJ Anna Lunoe’s “Godzilla,” giving her a 25 percent bump in streams. “One artist talks to [another]: ‘I include you, you include me,'” says Cory Llewellyn, a former Epic Records digital-music executive. Glass says the negotiations aren’t quite so transactional. “I haven’t heard of artists saying, ‘I’ll take care of you if you take care of me,'” says Glass. “But I’m 99 percent sure it exists in the pop world when they’re in those strategy meetings.” As playlists become bigger marketing tools, Glass worries about corruption. “I predict you’ll see people trying to manipulate and curry favor with each other. Just like an agent trying to get someone on tour – you’ll see artists and managers trying to get on playlists.” Elevator Music Pays Big Spotify’s most popular playlists include Peaceful Piano and Deep Focus – ambient music people relax to. Those songs rack up tens of millions of streams, which means big paydays for their copyright owners. The owner, some say, is Spotify itself. Music Business Worldwide reported that Spotify pays some producers a flat fee to create ambient music within specific guidelines, then retains ownership of it. “It’s absolutely untrue,” says Spotify’s Chief Content Officer Stefan Blom. The reality may be more complicated: Some suggest Spotify commissions the music – much of it is recorded in Sweden, where Spotify is based – and pays those creators smaller royalty rates than other artists. “It’s shady,” says one insider. “But it’s difficult to call out, because it does make sense what they’re doing.” New Playlist, New Audience Playlists can broaden audiences in a big way. After country singer Sam Hunt played a gig for Spotify in 2014, his debut single, “Leave the Night On,” started appearing on Spotify playlists. “I was seeing a large amount of female African-Americans coming to shows,” says his manager, Brad Belanger. “[I would ask them] ‘Did you guys hear this on country radio?’ ‘No, on Spotify.'” These days, Hunt is basically a pop artist; his single “Body Like a Back Road” is a Top 20 hit on the Hot 100 – and Belanger calls Spotify crucial to Hunt’s success. Steve Knopper is a Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson (Scribner, 2015) and Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Business in the Digital Age (Free Press, 2009). He has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Traveler, Fortune, New York and many others. He has been a guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the NBC Nightly News and a featured expert source in ABC's The Last Days of Michael Jackson and All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records. He lives in Denver with his wife, Melissa, and his daughter, Rose, who took this most excellent photo in Edwards, Colorado. http://www.knopps.com

HOW TO GET ON RAPCAVIAR: HIP HOP’S HOLY GRAIL OF SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS by PlaylistPush © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Why Rap Caviar? Once ran by Tuma Basa as head curator Rap Caviar has gone through some major changes. First of all you can stop searching for Tuma Basa’s contact info. He no longer runs Rap Caviar, but his dead email is [email protected] if you were curious. Rap Caviar is now ran by the Spotify editorial team and the barrier for entry has been lowered. If you have a Hip Hop track that bangs follow these steps to give yourself a shot at landing on this massive playlist. Hundreds of artists ask me “Can you get me one Rap Caviar”? When I check the artist out for my own entertainment, I’m usually unimpressed at what I see: weak cover art on Spotify, profile not setup (no background photo), weak Instagram with less than 300 followers and no online presence. If you are not all in on your career and have no hustle to finance your dreams I will politely navigate you back to your SoundCloud account. If you’re ready to run it up and get on Rap Caviar follow these steps closely. Have An Aggressive Release Schedule In order to get noticed and get on Spotify playlists most artists think they need a hit or just one banger to put them on. In reality you don’t need a hit, you need to release more records to drastically increase your chances of creating a banger. There are multiple artists we work with that have releases for the next 16 months lined up. The more releases, the more chances you have to trigger the algorithms when a new release hits Spotify. Just make sure you don’t sacrifice quality, move as fast as you can work harder and longer and put out high quality records. Be on Team Spotify Social shout-outs can catch the attention of Spotify’s marketing team. I have seen multiple artists shout out Spotify on twitter and get invited to visit their main office in NYC. Get to tweeting and make it interesting. Its also a good look to share a playlist with your followers when you get added regardless of the playlist size. Crush it in your “Rap Niche” Spotify has over 100 different genres just for Hip Hop. You need to find what lane you fit in on Spotify and stick with it. I see rappers create a Drake sounding song then their next single sounds like Tekashi 6ix 9ine. This will make it harder for Spotify to segment you to a specific genre which will help to get you into micro-genre lists on Spotify. These include:

Most Necessary New Artists (your best chance) Get Turnt High Energy Hip Hop SignedXOXO Pop Rap/Crossover Once you start landing on those smaller official lists your chances are 10x better to get placed on Rap Caviar. See the hip hop genres below to find what lane you fit in and stick with it! Concious Hip-Hop (Mos Def, Immortal Technique) UK Hip Hop (Ambush Buzzworl, T MULLA) Trap Rap (Future, Kodak Black) Pop Rap (Drake, 6LACK) Browse for your genre at everynoise.com. Work Your Distribution Connects A good distribution company is key when trying to get on playlists, after all they should have a tight relationship with Spotify. Therefore if you are working with a distributor that takes a percentage you should really press them to help you market the song on digital services like Spotify. Above all build up some momentum and keep a close relationship with your distributor. When I worked for a distributor multiple brand deals would come our way for the artists who worked with us. Obviously the cool artists we had a relationship were always top of mind. Get in touch and find the key players at your distributor. List of distributors in good standing with Spotify: CD Baby EmuBands FUGA The Orchard (Owned by Sony Music) Distrokid

Approach Spotify Directly Spamming or annoying the hardworking staff and employees at Spotify will get you nowhere. Here are a few tips to help you get in touch with Spotify. Build some awareness about your music through your dedication to Spotify. Multiple artists have had multiple blog features around them and making $$ from their streams via Spotify playlists. This eventually gained them a meeting with Spotify where they were able to build that relationship. Find key players are Spotify by browsing Linkedin. Record label executives ignore linked in but almost every Spotify employee is active on linked in. Go here to view them: https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotify/people/. If you do choose to go this route be polite in your messaging and don’t expect them to respond instantly. Trigger Spotify’s Algorithms Getting on smaller hip hop curator playlists is huge when trying to land on Rap Caviar. You need to start small and build up some momentum. Getting on user created playlists is the secret weapon for new artists. Playlist Push has a network of over 600 quality Hip Hop playlists, getting on these lists and building up your monthly listeners is the biggest key to success on the platform. We help you build listener data which is crucial when trying to get on Spotifys radar. We work with artists that are just starting out on the platform and help bigger major label artists get their music into the ears of hip hop heads on Spotify. We help independent artists get their music on playlists and give playlist curators a way to monetize their playlist while discovering new music. https://playlistpush.com

 

SPOTIFY'S TUMA BASA ON CURATING RAPCAVIAR, WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN PITCHING AND WHY HE'S NO 'GATEKEEPER' by Andy Gensler, Billboard © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Editor's Note: Tuma Basa is no longer working at Spotify. However, this interview has been included because it provides many valuable insights for artists of all genres. It's all about the qualitative, the quantitative...and the good soup Spotify’s Tuma Basa is one popular dude. Despite the power he wields as Spotify’s global head of hip-hop, in which people all over the globe are gunning for his blessing to be included on the hugely popular RapCaviar playlist (with over 7 million followers) he oversees, among others, he is incredibly grounded. The former programmer for Revolt, MTV and BET straight up refuses to take any individual credit for his playlists’ successes, instead crediting collaborations across Spotify and, most critically, the wealth of data to which he has access. "The amount of information I have, I almost feel like I’m cheating," Basa says. "What the audience wants is all right there." In between his modesty, Basa seems philosophical as he talks about "tire-kicking" songs; the "reputation economy"; how listening critically to music is like tasting soup; and avoiding the “same ol’ same ol ’same ol’ same ol" conundrum. Here, too, are also practical tips non-naming conventions and building a story that may just someday land your music on one of Spotify's playlists. Billboard: Do you have to wear a mask when you go out? Tuma Basa: [Laughs] Nah, I chose this life. Everything’s a blessing. Do you have a lot of "friends" lobbying you to get on Spotify playlists? I have a concept called “good problem, gratitude.” You’re talking about volume of communications and stuff like that -- that’s a good problem to have when people are interested in your take, or they want to get something on your radar. If you’re an unknown artist and you have the greatest song in the world and you want it on RapCaviar, how should they approach you? I just like information and knowledge, qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative, like, "What’s the story? Where is this coming from? Who’s the crowd, what kind of momentum, what stage of the life cycle is it at?" Wherever the song and the artists’ movement are at.

And how do you get that information? I have the ability to verify through our tools and our back end to see if people are searching for it, if it’s being put on people’s personal playlists or if it’s being saved. If we put it on a playlist, we can see whether those placements are converting to people saving them onto their own playlists or saving them to their own music, or if they’re following the artist. We can tell the passive listeners from the active listeners. The fan, the super fan and if they become loyalists; we have all kinds of categories. Do people ever misrepresent the data they’re pitching you on? Even as we speak on the phone, I can be looking at fan insights and verify if they’re B.S.’ing or not, which, back in the day, was not possible. And when I say back in the day, I’m talking about a couple of years ago. Now it’s all in real time. It’s like, “You’re telling me someone is the hottest rapper out Dallas?” I can go look while we’re on the phone. Do you ever correct people when the data’s wrong? I tell them what’s happening on our platform with our audience. But it’s still music, and this is still life, and anything can happen, right? When Vine was around and something was popping on Vine, it was just a matter of it trickling to Spotify’s users' behaviors. But I don't like to leave room for misinterpretation or disrespect with correcting somebody. Do you ever feel like a data analyst? No, no, that’s just a tool. That’s just a vehicle. It’s the difference between a wagon and a car; the data is basically just making it more efficient. But it’s still about how hot something is in the gut. Music is still an emotional product. We’re not talking widgets or units of something, this is like whether it makes you move or not. The data just basically is saying what immediate attention is there. How many emails do you get per day? I get thousands. I get a lot. Wanna know a trick? When I’m at home and I want to hear some music and I'm about to vibe out, I do an inbox search for "open.spotify," which for a lot of Spotify links is the naming convention. And I listen to a whole bunch. People who include Spotify links in their emails get some kind of advantage. How do you have time to listen to all of that? I’m not going to listen to the whole song. In my world it’s like having a soup: I can taste a teaspoon of the soup, I can tell if the soup is hot, if it needs more salt, if it’s oily. I won’t listen to a whole song; that’s a waste a time, at least until the beat drops and then you can tell.

But you might be getting 2,000 soups a day in front of you. We live in an internet world, and in an internet world you have a reputation economy, whether it be Yelp or Uber or Airbnb, where people give each other stars. I’ve been doing this long enough to know the people who are going to bring me the dope stuff. And people have track records and social capital, which people in positions like myself know that they had better not come with some B.S. If I know so and so is always on a roll or has a track record who is reputable in terms of them helping to eliminating garbage records, guess what? I’m gonna pick up the phone, I’m gonna check out the record and give them feedback. So social capital matters. Not even just as your job, but in the culture. We’re talking about a culture. We’re talking about a community of people. If you’re part of this, if you’re immersed in this and you know what you’re doing, if you’re culturally competent, you're not just fulfilling duties and a job, this is your life. How many people work under you? We have a different structure at Spotify, I work in several departments. It’s not the typical reporting structure like you have at other companies I have worked at. It’s very collaborative and we have global curators all over. They do their own thing, they’re not reporting to me. We get together once a week and discuss what’s happening in our markets and if it’s relevant to other markets. They’re all experts and specialists. They’re putting me onto stuff, I’m putting them onto stuff. It’s more collaborative than anything else. What other ways do you find music? It might come from a show last night where the crowd responded to one particular song that doesn’t seem to be on the radar; or it might come from the studio visit, where they’re like, “We have this song but you don’t have to...” And then, Pow! That was the song, that was it. So there’s also that part where the energy and reaction in the room where the artist can come in and play us music and everybody is bobbing their head; and then on another song everybody’s looking at their phones. By the way, that’s how you keep things interesting, because otherwise it becomes formulaic and boring and that starts to showing up in your work. And it doesn’t feel like you’re enjoying the work because you’re doing the same ol', same ol', same ol', same ol'. Do you ever find songs you love that have poor metrics, but then later catch fire? Yeah, that’s happened several times, actually. If I experience that discovery, then there can be a ripple effect where someone else experiences that discovery. We don’t call it an emotion, but there’s a feeling that comes with discovering music, discovering excitement. It’s just like nostalgia; there’s an emotion that comes with nostalgia and reconnecting with music that reminds you of the 8th grade. That happens all the time.

What’s the hardest part of what you do? There’s a discipline factor where I have to remember it’s not about me, it’s about the audience. If I like something, I have to translate in my head: “I like it, does that mean the audience is gonna like it? What reasons do I like it?" I have to do a root-cause analysis in my head. "The beat, oh. This, oh. So and so carried that track. Is that what people care about? So and so’s verse was wicked, but do people care about people’s verses?" I have to do tire-kicking in my head. What track are you most proud of discovering? That’s like asking what’s your favorite child. I couldn’t answer that. What are the best practices for approaching you? On my email, there’s a form, it’s like a Google doc where you can put your track on there, the name, etc., and get on my radar at least. If I keep on hearing about the same song from unrelated people independently, whether it be from web sites or on our platform or just going out and about, that increases the likelihood of it sticking. How do you handle the stress of everyone coming at you? I’m happy. I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve never seen it at this level of feedback from audiences. I like detailed feedback from the audience. Sometimes even when I’m doing my work, the amount of information I have, I almost feel like I’m cheating, because it’s all right there. The answers are right there. What the audience wants is all right there. In the past, in this line of work, there was a lot more guess work that used to happen. That guess work has been eliminated by these tools that makes us super-serve or hyper-serve our audience. As somebody who also loves this stuff and is also part of the audience, I’m just grateful that we’ve gone this far, that it’s gotten this good. It’s about the music and the culture; that’s the reason why we do this. It helps us get it right, rather than dictating and imposing what we want. This is what the audience wants, and it’s right there and we’re very accountable. With so much instant feedback, are you ever like, "Crap, I should have done this or that"? But you can fix it, that’s the cool thing. Playlists are not static, they’re living, breathing organisms that are constantly evolving and changing. In one of those moments you can easily go and alter [something] as soon as you realize it. That’s probably why people like them so much; it’s like a pencil with a eraser on it. I’m writing in my note pad and making this great song and then, "Whoa, hold on a sec." Then I take my eraser and, "Let me change that to that... Ahhh, this is perfect!"

You’re a gatekeeper with thousands of people wanting your attention. Well, first of all, I’m not a gatekeeper. I don’t want to be called that. I feel like the gatekeeper era is over. The gatekeeper era is the past, when magazine editors, A&Rs, program directors, they all could determine people’s lives and everything. I consider myself a facilitator. My job is not a bouncer to keep people out or to kick people out, it’s to get people in. It’s to get the right people in and to keep the party popping. What do you tell all the people coming at you? I tell them, go build a story, go build a playlist on Spotify. Use our platform to build a following and for us to see the traction. I really, really love what 2 Chainz did with Trap Music, but it was a playlist. That guy was updating playlists and having guest curators like Kevin Durant and Erykah Badu on his playlists. I would encourage all the people on the outside to get on Spotify, build these playlists, build followings on playlists, the same way you would build a following on Instagram or build a following on Twitter. We’ll see that activity and say, "Hey, this is organic. This is happening. This is energetic. This is momentum, this is traction, this is popping." At the time of this interview Andy Gensler was a journalist for Billboard. He is now Executive Editor, Media and Conferences at Oak View Group (Pollstar, VenuesNow).

“Marketing is just as important if not more important than the track itself. Without marketing you will not be heard. You need to reach out to playlists, Spotify’s editorial team, and various curators for the chance to be featured to thousands of people. Remember to only pitch to curators that promote the genre you have made. There is nothing worse than receiving a demo in the wrong genre.” - Ryan & Ariel, Playlist Curators The Drunken Coconut https://www.thedrunkencoconut.com

HOW I GOT ON OFFICIAL SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS AS AN UNKNOWN INDEPENDENT MUSICIAN USING ONLY SMART MARKETING, SHOW.CO AND ZERO MONEY by Braden Lam, Braden Lam & The Driftwood People © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

I am an independent songwriter from Halifax, NS and the front man of folk-pop band Braden Lam & The Driftwood People. I have been singing since I could talk and playing guitar since I could walk — but in the eyes of the world, I’m still a relatively “new” artist. Now twenty years old, I juggle being a full-time university student with being a full-time musician. This past summer, I embarked on the biggest project of my life. Having only the four months of my summer break from school, I needed to record an album, form a marketing plan, and execute all of it within this small window of time. No label, no manager, no team, no budget. I was doing this myself. For a relatively new independent artist, I ended up with some great results. Especially when you consider that I had no connections and no budget. Just an open mind, consistent effort, a solid plan, and the FREE marketing tools that CD Baby gives to all their clients. Let’s dive into how I did it. My #1 goal: Get on an official Spotify playlist. Fortunately, I had a summer job that allowed me to listen to music while I worked. So during the first two months of the summer, I plowed through every single episode of the CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast. Every day my desk would quickly fill up with scribbled sticky notes of what I’d learned. After assessing my abilities, time restraints, and the little budget I had, some major goals for this project began to form. The top goal was to get a start on my streaming game, and that meant getting on an official Spotify playlist. The streaming world is exploding, and it makes perfect sense to focus my energy on these platforms that will (fingers crossed) be essential to my future music career. Developing a game plan to get my music onto playlists. The next question of course was how to go about that. In case you’re unaware, Spotify’s editorial playlists are the ones curated by people who work for Spotify, the so called “gatekeepers” of Spotify success. Songs are selected based on:    

trends in the data (algorithmic discovery) pitching direct submissions and, of course, editorial taste

For someone like me who had extremely low Spotify traction at the time, and no connection to Spotify editors, it all seemed like a mystery. But, through the DIY Musician Podcast, I realized I do have powerful online marketing tools such as Show.co that can be used to “hack the system” and juice the Spotify algorithm upon the release of my songs. That helps attract the attention of Spotify’s editors. I wanted to find a way to make the Spotify algorithm serve my music on a platter to the right editor. But I still had to RELEASE the music! After two months of recording the album in my bedroom studio, I was ready to develop a marketing plan. I decided to release the single “Dawson City” on August 10th and then push out the full 6-track EP “Driftwood People” on September 14th. By the way, I recommend you always release music on a Friday. Also, when releasing a single first and then a follow up single, EP, or album, I would release them within 28 days of each other (Spotify’s monthly listener turnover point) to make the biggest impact in a short amount of time. Enter Show.co… I decided to test out two different Show.co marketing plans for each release. Both campaigns lead to playlist successes on Spotify, and I’ll highlight them both below. The Lead Single My first goal was to increase my number of Spotify followers. I had between August 5th and August 10th (the release date of the single) to do it. If I could get a bunch of people to follow me in those five days right before the release happened, it would look really good to the Spotify algorithm. I started out with 144 followers on Spotify before launching a “Social Unlock” Spotify-Follow campaign on Show.co. If you’re a CD Baby client, you can run this kind of campaign for FREE! I also included the email-list signup option for people who were not Spotify users since my email list consisted of a measly 33 people. After choosing a suitable image that matched the branding of my album and worked well on both the mobile and desktop views of the Show.co campaign page, this is what I came up with:

The “Hook” The most important component of your campaign is the content that you use as a hook for people to follow you. Think of it as the reward they get for following you on Spotify. With the Social Unlock campaign, when someone performs the desired action on your campaign, they can unlock a link to anything on the internet…maybe a cool video, sneak peak of a song, unreleased demos, etc. This is where you can get really creative! Overall, your deliverable needs to be fresh content that creates intrigue. Every word in your campaign needs to incentivize a fan to press “Follow” and unlock that reward or experience. For my campaign, I made a music video for the intro track of my new album and labeled it as the “Official Album Intro.” My points of intrigue were: 1. keeping it unlisted on YouTube so it was exclusive to people who unlocked my campaign 2. conveying that it was an unreleased track See the wording I used in my campaign above. Here’s an example of the analytics you can get from your campaign once it’s running. Pay attention to these stats; if you are not getting a great response, change your message, picture, or promotion strategy. Remember, marketing is all about trying new things as you go along and seeing what you get the best response from! Don’t just stick it out if it’s not working. Keep trying new things.

To advertise my campaign, I simply posted natural content on all my social media platforms that would pique someone’s curiosity. I found success in posting screenshots from the secret video and putting intriguing questions in the caption, lyrics from the song, or cool behind-the-scenes info. You could also use Facebook Ads Manager to run some social media ads on Facebook and Instagram to reach a greater number of people. The full album launch The goal for my second campaign was to take advantage of the Pre-Save option available on Show.co. Here I used a combination of a couple platforms to execute the campaign I wanted. I didn’t want my fans who are Apple Music users to feel left out again. So, this time I hosted my primary landing page on SmartURL with a Spotify pre-save, Apple Music pre-add, and iTunes pre-order options:

To clarify, the Show.co pre-save only works on Spotify, so when someone clicked the Spotify Pre-Save button above, they would land on my Show.co page that looked like this:

[Note: Once the song is released, your Show.co “pre-save” campaign will automatically switch to an “add on Spotify” campaign, as you’ll see above.] My hook this time was a different unlisted YouTube video of a live recording that didn’t make it on the album.

Again, it was unreleased content that naturally drove curiosity. In addition to promoting this on social media, I also ran a giveaway contest for anyone who pre-saved the album on Spotify to win a signed CD and band t-shirt. I knew that running two similar campaigns within less thnn a month of each other would be tough to get the same response, so the contest incentive gave the campaign that extra push. The results  





After running the single campaign, I had gained 54 new Spotify followers and 81 new additions to my email list. On the day of my single release, I was featured on Spotify’s New Music Friday Canada playlist which has over 220K followers. I was literally shaking when I first saw my name on that list and I remember shouting “It worked” out loud in the middle of a restaurant where I was eating with friends. The song was also added to Spotify’s Down Home Country playlist (I guess my folk song had some country vibes), and a week later was also added to the Fresh Finds: Six Strings playlist. So not only was my song noticed on its release day, but it continued to get attention and moved around playlists. The album pre-save campaign a month later was unlocked 42 times and was also successful in getting the title track of my album onto Spotify’s Folk & Friends playlist which has over 107K followers.

Keep in mind, I also submitted my songs directly to Spotify for playlist consideration. This is especially important to do in the case of an album to identify the song you want featured. So, in summary, I used a combination of creative online tools and content to run a simple, effective, and low-cost marketing campaign that worked. Now it’s your turn to make your own unique campaign. I hope this helps you with your next release! More Pro Tips (from a total amateur) Want to make your pre-save/follow campaign even more professional and effective? Here are some quick tips to try and take it to the next level: 1. Purchase a custom domain (optional, but only $15/year). I used driftwoodpeople.com and adjusted the domain forwarding to land on my Show.co campaign since it looked better then the non-customizable Show.co URL. 2. Show.co has an option to make your campaign a Spotify pre-save AND follow campaign at once. Try that out; it’s like a 2-for-1 deal. 3. Don’t give away your secret. If you are using a video for the social unlock, as tempting as it may be, don’t use part of that video to attract people on social media. Keep it exclusive! Braden Lam is a 20-year-old independent folk-pop musician from Halifax, NS. He released his award-winning sophomore album Driftwood People in September and recently completed an Atlantic Canada tour with his band. This article originally appeared in the October 2018 DIY Musician Blog. https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/music-promotion/how-i-got-on-official-spotifyplaylists-as-an-unknown-independent-musician

“For those of you creating your own playlists - show up and be active. Never give up on curating your playlist just because you don’t see the results immediately that you want to see. The listens will come as you stay invested in your playlist!” - The Artist Union, Playlist Curator https://theartistunion.com

THE MURKY BUSINESS OF SPOTIFY 'PLAYLIST PITCHING' by Aric Jenkins, Fortune Magazine © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

The stories about Spotify seemed to come in a wave last year. “The Secret Hit-Making Power of the Spotify Playlist,” reads a May 2017 Wired report. “’They could destroy the album,’” The Guardian wrote of the streaming service in August. A month later followed a Vulture profile of the most influential Spotify playlist of all: Rap Caviar. The piece’s headline: “How a Hit Happens Now.” In other words, streaming killed the radio star. It’s no longer a secret how important Spotify playlists can be to an up-and-coming recording artist, but the means for which an artist can get a song’s placement on those playlists remains a bit murkier. The traditional route: Promote on social media. Tour as much as possible. Sell merchandise. Maybe even hire a publicist. Anything to generate buzz and consideration on a playlist like Rap Caviar, which boasts nearly 10 million listeners and can add hundreds of thousands of streams to an artist’s song. But all of that can take time. If you have money, a new crop of companies will offer a shortcut. This burgeoning industry does what is known as “playlist pitching.” That is, companies pitch an artist’s music to curators with popular playlists on Spotify. Artists pay these firms for a campaign, which can cost hundreds of dollars. The companies review the tracks and, if deemed the right fit, pass them along to a network of curators within the appropriate genre. The curators, paid by the pitching companies, review the songs themselves, deciding if it’s good fit for their playlist. Either way, they’ll give the artist constructive feedback on the composition of the tracks. But if the curator thinks it will mesh with the rest of their playlist, they’ll add a song, potentially exposing the artist to thousands of streams, one by one increasing their popularity and royalty payouts. There are a few catches. The most important one: None of these curators are employed by Spotify. Artists can’t pay to get on one of the 4,500 in-house playlists that are served up to the streaming service’s 170 million monthly active users. Spotify tried to address this matter in July, releasing a feature on its artists’ platform that lets musicians and labels upload unreleased tracks for consideration on playlists managed by Spotify editors. But the feature is still in beta, and there is no guarantee tracks will be accepted. “We want to make something crystal clear: no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists,” Spotify states. “[Our editors] make these decisions using data about what’s resonating most with their community of listeners.” So, artists who want guaranteed placement on playlists have to rely on independent curators instead. They might be DJs, or musicians themselves, or an everyday Spotify user who enjoys curating parties or road trips. The curators do, however, need to manage playlists that have a significant following. One notable pitching company, Playlist Push, requires a playlist to have at least 400 followers.

Playlist Push, established last June, says it has more than 300 curators on its platform, and works with more than 600 artists and brands to date. The company claims its network of playlists combined reaches more than 8.4 million users. Its founder, George Goodrich, tells Fortune that in just over a year, Playlist Push has run more than 1,200 campaigns, with artists on average getting added to 12 to 15 playlists. Those can range from Christian worship to hip-hop to jazz and so on. Another pitching service, The Falling Apple, offers similar numbers: more than 8 million total Spotify followers. A spokesperson added that the company has generated more than 210 million streams for its clients, with more than 5,500 placements on Spotify playlists. With numbers like that, it’s easy to see why musical artists are willing to pay for instant connections to playlist curators—DJs for a streaming age—rather than gradually building their brand. “Spotify is really tough to navigate as an artist,” Goodrich, whose company’s rates for a campaign start at $150, said. “It’s really hard to find people to listen to your music. You can only tweet your Spotify profile so much.” And placement on independent playlists can help artists move up in the Spotify playlist ecosystem based on harvested data. “When your fans save your music to their playlists, it’s one more signal about the type of music they like,” the Spotify for Artists guide to playlists states. “We can use that to help recommend your music to people who have similar listening habits as your fans.” There are, of course, questions about the legitimacy of these pitching services, their playlists, and whether they’re working for or against Spotify. Spotify itself declined multiple requests for comment on the matter, but the company states in its terms of service that “accepting any compensation, financial or otherwise, to influence the name of an account or playlist or the content included on an account or playlist” is prohibited. Brian Hazard, a synthwave artist who goes by Color Theory, published several blog posts about his experience using pitching services. A track he sent to The Falling Apple was rejected, though Hazard tells Fortune he respected that decision because it indicated the service was more selective. Playlist Push, however, accepted the same track, “Glory Days,” and sent it to 53 curators. Of those 53, five ended up adding it to their playlists. One of those playlists doubled in two days from 13,500 to 26,000 followers, indicating it added fake followers, which he says is rampant on the Spotify platform. Hazard describes another as “a grab bag of artists with low listener counts. My guess is that it was created as a repository for all Playlist Push tracks.” Other curators, he said, gave vague reviews of his track or seemed to approve every track sent their way despite quality in order to earn maximum income from reviews. Altogether, Hazard saw little to no movement on his Spotify streaming numbers. Goodrich ended up offering Hazard a re-do after the posting of his first blog post and said he had a better user experience the second time around, though his streams still didn’t increase as much as he’d have liked. Asked about his current feelings on Playlist Push and companies like it, Hazard says: “A lot of people say these guys are scamming artists. It’s a crooked industry. I would stress you’re really paying to use software to connect with curators. That’s kind of all there is to it. I see it as neutral at this point.”

Managing expectations is a critical aspect of the playlist pitching business. Scroll through threads on Subreddits like WeAreTheMusicMakers and you’ll find comments like, “DONT [sic] USE PLAYLIST PUSH. THEY RIPPED ME OFF. $300 down the drain…” Goodrich said he tries to make his company’s capabilities clear from the beginning. “If the artist posts their first song on their [Spotify] profile and they have no audience, should they expect 2,000 streams? Probably not,” he says. “We don’t guarantee anyone any amount of streams.” The Falling Apple told me the opposite. “We always pitch as long as needed in order to hit our guarantees. We always guarantee results within a specific range.” One thing appears to be clear: From the curator perspective, pitching services offer playlisters a chance to monetize a hobby. Spotify user TJ Jones was attending college and driving Uber cars on the side when he posted a viral tweet that led to thousands of Spotify followers. “So I just started driving for Uber and Lyft and I’ve been getting a lot more compliments on my music since generalizing my passengers by 1 of these 11 playlists,” Jones wrote, with screenshots of playlists with titles like “Heady bros” and “White dudes who look like they rap.” Jones now boasts more than 45,000 followers on Spotify and curates playlists for Playlist Push and SubmitHub, a platform that allows artists to pitch music bloggers, record labels and Spotify playlisters. Jones says that in the four months he’s worked with Goodrich and Playlist Push, he’s made enough money to quit driving Uber for good and focus solely on playlist curation. He said he makes $7 to $8 per track review—regardless of whether he adds a song to his playlists—which is based on a points scale that measures the amount of Spotify followers and playlists he has. He estimates he works about three hours a day and pulls in roughly $350 to $400 a week curating music, and says he’s gotten artists placed on official, personalized Spotify playlists such as Discover Weekly. The pitching services, he says, are “really just about music promotion. I didn’t mean for these playlists to blow up, but now I have this opportunity to help artists.” The desire for both sides is there, but it remains unclear how this relatively new industry will proceed, or if Spotify itself will intervene. “It’s a whole wild, wild west for these playlist pitching companies,” says artist Mayo Staccato, who requested not to use his real name. “I don’t know if there’s enough quality control yet.” But, he adds, the concept has potential and likely isn’t folding anytime soon. “It can be legit. Sooner or later we’re going to come across a service that has some sort of accountability,” he says, “As long as Spotify is dominant, like it or not, I think this is going to be the future trend in music marketing.” I write and live in Brooklyn. Currently, I work as a staff writer at Fortune covering the intersection of business and entertainment for the website and magazine. Before Fortune, I was a reporter at Time, where I carved out beats in politics, business, and culture. I additionally covered general assignment and breaking news on Time’s News Desk and contributed to other Time Inc. brands such as Money, Travel and Leisure, and Food and Wine. http://fortune.com/author/aric-jenkins https://www.aricjenkins.com/about

THE RISE OF FAKE SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS by Jason Grishkoff, SubmitHub + Indie Shuffle © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Spotify is hot right now. So hot that fake playlisters are making a business out of selling "placement" on their "playlists." I've fallen for the trap and some of these playlisters have managed to get onto SubmitHub (and been kicked off). I need to do a better job cracking down on them, so here's an article that'll help make all of us savvier. Intro Chances are if you're an artist trying to get your music heard these days, folks have told you that it's all about the Spotify playlists. And they're not wrong -- getting picked up by one of Spotify's featured playlists can break an artist overnight. The problem is that Spotify has stopped featuring independent playlisters, and the only real ones that seem to have any significant impact moving the needle are official playlists -- which are notoriously hard to get featured on, let alone find a contact for. Spotify seems to do that intentionally, and with good reason. So, what about these 3rd party playlists? How do you figure out which ones are good and which ones aren't? We've had a tough time over at SubmitHub figuring that out, and have misstepped on more than one occasion. Perhaps a good place to start is by breaking down the types of playlists that exist. The Various Types of Spotify Playlists [GOOD] Official Spotify Playlists The holy grail These are the only playlists that get featured on Spotify. Their editors are notoriously hard to contact -- and some of them are run using magical code. [GOOD] Old-school independent playlists Created roughly 2 years ago when Spotify used to feature playlists that weren't made in-house. These folks built up lots of genuine followers in short order (sometimes in the millions), but 2 years later many of their playlists seem to get very little activity even though most of the followers are there. A prime example is Indiemono, one of the largest genuine independent Spotify playlisters out there who didn't do anything shady to get a following.

[GOOD] Label / blog / artist / brand playlists These guys have a reputation behind them and so are often able to generate a good following based off their existing fanbase. An example? Indie Shuffle's Spotify, which has picked up nearly 1,000 followers in roughly 12 months of being linked on our sidebar. They don't generate millions of plays, but they're genuine and so are their followers (many of whom are in the industry, so you want them to discover your music). [BAD] Download-gated playlists These guys have built up 10s of thousand of followers through download gates -- a system where free downloads of songs are offered in exchange for following a subset of people on Spotify or SoundCloud. While their numbers often look great, this methodology of picking up users results in a playlist that gets virtually no engagement. [BAD] Fake playlists The rise of platforms like SubmitHub have given individuals a reason to buy Spotify followers -they can now monetize the hype! These guys are preying on independent artists who are desperate to capitalize on the popularity of Spotify playlists -- somewhat like Bitconnect did with Bitcoin. While we try to be diligent about catching them at SubmitHub, we've fallen for it more than once. How do you a spot a fake playlist? Well, for starters they tend to look very legitimate. Beautiful cover artwork? Check. Wellcurated playlists? Check. Social presence online? Check. Tens of thousands of followers? Uh... check!!! At face value they all seem quite legitimate. Start digging in, though, and things get sticky. There are a couple ways you can do that: Tools like Chartmetric allow you to monitor the playlist's growth over time. If you see them picking up 1,000+ followers in a day it's probably a pretty huge red flag. Open up Spotify, look up the playlister, and take a look at who's following them -- sometimes you can tell quite easily that all their followers have fake usernames. Do they have links elsewhere? A Facebook page with 100 followers can often be a pretty good sign that a playlist with 100,000 followers isn't likely.

How many plays does their playlist generate? This one's a lot harder to track down, but if you find a song on that's been on a playlist for a few months but has barely any plays, it's another red flag. Find an obviously fake user and see who else they follow. Here's an example. Most of the time they're following other artists (who likely paid for their likes); occasionally you'll spot a playlist in there. Want to see an example fake playlister? Check out CriticalNetwork. They've got great artwork and even have a legit website. There are two red flags, though: Head to their profile tab on the Spotify app and you'll see their 11,000 followers primarily include usernames such as "0rayking" and "0reneedaddy" and "0ryan" -- the list goes on and on and on, with the first number growing occasionally (and not one of them has a profile picture). Chartmetric data shows that their playlists went from 0 followers to 10,000 in one day, followed by ~2,400 additional for each successive day. When I called him out on this he said "we ran a legit campaign with Facebook for our Playlist. I do not understand where you get that our followers are fake." Apparently, they ran a really shitty Facebook campaign if all their followers have usernames starting with numbers. Is there any benefit to getting listed on one of these playlists? To be honest, I don't know. One school of thought is that there's no such thing as a "bad playlist" because Spotify's formulas use "how many playlists a song is on" as a signal in their automagic playlist generation formulas. On the flip side, I've heard multiple people say that buying Spotify likes gets you a "strike" on Spotify's system, so it's possible they've excluded these playlisters from influencing the formula. When one further considers that Spotify places heavy emphasis on song trajectory and retention* as one of their strongest signals, the impact of getting featured on an inactive / fake playlist is going to be even smaller. Conclusion I need to do a better job trying to identify fake playlisters. And if you're a budding artist or publicist, you'll probably want to do the same. Be wary of the ever-increasing number of websites that guarantee you Spotify playlisting and plays. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I am the founder of Indie Shuffle (http://www.indieshuffle.com/), a platform that streams more than 6 million songs a month across web and mobile. I launched SubmitHub, a platform that makes it incredibly easy to send music to influencers. I have a passion for building new products from the ground up, and I'm a former Googler :)

“Curators and streamers alike want to be captivated by a new song in under 30 seconds. Make your song flow well, but also don’t waste time during the first crucial seconds of a song.” - George Goodrich Playlist Push https://playlistpush.com

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HOW TO BOOST STREAMS WITH A PRE-SAVE CAMPAIGN ON SPOTIFY by Chris Robley, CD Baby DIY Musician Blog © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Pre-saves make it easy to build momentum on Spotify before your music’s official release date. A high stream-count on its first day can be an indicator of success for your newest song or album on Spotify, as it shows Spotify that your music might be worth sharing with their users via:    

algorithmic playlists (such as Release Radar and Discover Weekly) email notifications to your followers Spotify’s official playlists and more

But Spotify’s algorithm isn’t just interested in your stream count; it’s looking for a quality stream-to-engagement ratio. Meaning, of all the people that heard your song, how many of them saved it to their library, queue, or playlists? That’s the kind of activity that really gives your music muscle on the platform. With a Spotify pre-save campaign, you have the chance to demonstrate both quality and quantity, boosting your first-day stream totals AND getting fans to save your song to their queue. While pre-saves have most notably been employed by superstars like Kendrick Lamar, Avicii and Miley Cyrus, they’re now available to independent artists as well — FOR FREE — thanks to CD Baby’s suite of marketing tools: Show.co. For a step-by-step walk through of creating a pre-save campaign, check out the video at this web page: https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/music-promotion/boost-streams-pre-save-campaign-spotify What is a pre-save on Spotify? Similar to download pre-sales on iTunes and Amazon, a pre-save campaign on Spotify gives you a window of time where your fans can actually DO something with the music you’re promoting before its release — namely, save the song or album to their queue so they’ll hear it as soon as it becomes available on Spotify. No sense in sharing your excitement about your upcoming release in a tweet or email if no one can click to buy, save, or hear it!

With a pre-save you can incentivize your audience on Spotify to take action during that promotional period leading up to the release by running a contest or offering access to exclusives, while also ensuring that your songs makes the biggest splash possible on Day One (which, again, is a key factor in the release’s algorithmic performance). Just as download pre-sales are tallied as first-day sales (improving your chances of charting), the more people that pre-save your release on Spotify, the more impressive your first-day streaming activity will be. I ran a pre-save campaign for my single “Irretrievable Beauty” and had a blast putting the thing together and trying to find creative ways to get the message out there. My traction on Spotify is admittedly modest, and I got a fair amount of email replies saying something like “can’t wait to hear the new song, but I’m not on Spotify,” but I will say that of all the Spotify streams the song got on its release date, a little under half of them were driven by pre-saves — so it was clearly worth doing. SO HOW DO YOU RUN A PRE-SAVE CAMPAIGN ON SPOTIFY? 1. Set a release date and work backwards If you’re going to make your music available for pre-save a month in advance of its release, that means you need to get things in gear with plenty of time to execute the campaign. If all the information about your release is entered completely and accurately during the distribution signup process, CD Baby can deliver your music to Spotify lightning fast, but I would still recommend building an extra week or two into the process as a buffer. For example, if you want your music live on Spotify on December 1st, and you want your presave campaign to begin on November 1st, I would suggest you sign everything up with your distributor by mid-October. You’ll see why below. 2. Distribute your music As I mention in the step above, you need to get your music onto Spotify via a distributor (hopefully CD Baby). During the signup process you’ll enter the target release date. Once your release has been finalized, we’ll deliver it to Spotify — and all our other download and streaming partners — and those platforms will make it available on the release date.

3. Get your Spotify URI What is a Spotify URI? A Spotify URI is a unique identifier for a song, album, or playlist on Spotify. This is different from a URL, which is a web address. You can find the URI for any music that is ALREADY available on Spotify by clicking the ellipses next to the track, album, or playlist within Spotify and scrolling down. It will look something like this: spotify:album:5HsLJuoLxi83psFBAhAAe7 But how do you find the URI for music that isn’t released on Spotify yet? Ask your distributor to send you the URI, which they’ll likely be able to find through some API magic. Again, this could take a little bit of time because Spotify has to receive your music before they can assign a URI and send it back to the distributor, so be sure to build any waiting period into your planning. Once you have the API… 4. Figure out how you will reward fans that pre-save Maybe being the first to hear a new song is enough for your fans. But if you’re trying to boost interest, it’s worth considering other options to get people to click “pre-save” when they arrive at your campaign page. A t-shirt giveaway? Backstage passes? Access to private Soundcloud tracks? Once the person clicks “pre-save,” you can lead them wherever you want to unlock a file, URL, or experience. Oh, and if you’re doing a giveaway or random drawing, you’ll have their contact info as well. 5. Create a pre-save campaign through Show.co With Show.co, available to all CD Baby clients FOR FREE, you can create a Spotify pre-save campaign. To launch a pre-save campaign via Show.co:       

Log into your Show.co account Click “New Campaign” Select “Social Unlock” Choose “Spotify: Pre-Save” from the campaign-type dropdown Enter the Spotify URI for the track or album Enter the release date Customize the look and messaging of your campaign

6. Find the hook “Be the first to hear my new single” might be an enticing headline for your die-hard fans, but try to find that extra hook, something that has an emotional appeal. A couple real-life examples that come to mind: “Hear the song that got us kicked off stage.” “Hear the song that made me move 500 miles from home.” What’s the human story, the drama, the mystery related to your new music? Play that up in your Show.co campaign’s messaging. 7. Promote the pre-save Once the Show.co campaign is created, share it through all the usual channels (email, social, etc.). Be sure to put a link to the pre-save page any time you post anything related to your new single or album. As you can see, a pre-save takes a little extra planning and coordination, but it’s worth doing if you want your new release to make the biggest splash on Spotify (and get noticed by Spotify’s algorithm). I should also mention that on the official release date, your Show.co campaign will automatically switch from a pre-save campaign to a Spotify “save” campaign. Hope all this helps, and if you launch a pre-save, I’d love to see it. Feel free to contact me. Chris Robley is the Editor of CD Baby's DIY Musician Blog. I write Beatlesque indie-pop songs that've been praised by No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, & others. My poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, & more. I live in Maine and like peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, a little too much. @chrisrobley

WHAT STREAMING MUSIC SERVICES PAY By Daniel Sanchez, Digital Music News © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Find out how much you’ll earn from the most popular streaming music services – Pandora, Napster, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and more. Early last year, Digital Music News published its streaming royalty payouts list. Thanks to information from third-party websites, we ranked streaming music services according to their per-stream rate. We found Pandora had the highest per-play royalty rate. At $0.01682 per play, an independent artist would need around 87,515 plays to earn the US monthly minimum wage of $1,472.

YouTube had the worst per-stream payouts. At $0.00074 per stream, artists and content creators would make $1,472 after 1,989,189 million plays. Now, using information gathered from real artists and third-party websites, we’ve updated our streaming music services payouts list for 2019. Take a look. Napster remains king of streaming music payouts, but at a severe cost. Earlier this year, with Microsoft’s Groove Music shutting down, Napster remained the king of streaming music service payouts. The service had paid $0.01682 per play. According to two sources – Information Is Beautiful and David Crosby – that number has steadily risen. On average, Napster now pays out $0.019 per stream. To meet the monthly minimum wage amount in the US, an artist would need 77,474 total plays. With 5 million paying subscribers, the service loses around $7.00 per user. Unlike its rivals, however, Napster remains a profitable streaming music service. Jay-Z’s beleaguered TIDAL remains a top player, at least in terms of payouts. This year, Jay-Z’s streaming music platform, TIDAL, has remained embroiled in multiple controversies. These include accusations of hacking users’ accounts to inflate Beyoncé and Kanye West’s total streams. Nevertheless, the service had remained friendly to artists. The service reportedly paid out $0.01284 per stream earlier this year. That number has slightly fallen to $0.0125. Artists on TIDAL now need 117,760 total plays to earn $1,472. Jay-Z’s streaming music service reportedly loses $6.67 per user with an annual loss of $28 million. Apple Music takes third place. Historically, Apple Music has paid artists much better than its streaming music rival, Spotify. In 2017, the service paid $0.0064 per stream. That number rose earlier this year to $0.00783. Today, that number has settled at $0.00735. Artists on Apple Music would need around 200,272 plays to earn the US monthly minimum wage amount. With Apple closely guarding its user metrics, it remains unclear how much Apple Music loses each year on the service as well as per user.

Don’t count out GPM just yet. Despite the introduction – and subsequent failure – of YouTube Music, Google Play Music (GPM) remains a strong competitor in the streaming music market. The search giant likely won’t shutter the service anytime soon. In 2017, the service paid $0.0059 per play to artists. Earlier this year, and right behind Deezer, GPM paid $0.00611. That number now stands at $0.00676 per stream. Artists will need around 217,752 total streams to earn $1,472. Like Apple, Google closely guards GPM’s user metrics. According to Information is Beautiful (IiB), Google Play Music has 10 million total users, with 5 million paying for the service. It remains unclear how much GPM loses each year as well as per user. Deezer falls to fifth place. Launching several years ago in the US, French-based streaming music service Deezer still doesn’t have an established presence in the country. Last year, at $0.0056, the service topped GPM in terms of payouts. Earlier this year, Deezer paid $0.00624. That number has slowly risen to $0.0064, placing it right behind GPM. Artists will need 230,000 total plays to earn the US monthly minimum wage amount. According to IiB, the service has an annual loss of $27 million, losing $1.69 per user. Deezer reportedly has 16 million users, with around 9.12 million – or 57% – paying for the service. Spotify finally beats Amazon. Previously ranked as the service with one of the worst payouts, Spotify has steadily increased its per-stream rate. Last year, the service paid out $0.0038 per play. Earlier this year, Spotify increased its perstream payouts to $0.00397. The streaming music giant now reportedly pays $0.00437 per play. According to award-winning cellist and composer Zoe Keating, she received $0.00543 per play on average this year. At $0.00473 per play, artists will need around 336,842 total plays to earn $1,472. With over 191 million monthly active users, and 87 million subscribers, the service has lost over $584 million so far this year. Per user, the service loses $2.68.

Amazon falls behind. As with Napster, Apple, and Google, Amazon closely guards its user metrics. Earlier this year, The Trichordist found Amazon paid indie artists $0.0074 per play. That number has now plummeted to $0.00402, placing it behind Spotify. Artists will now need around 366,169 total streams to earn the monthly minimum wage amount in the US. Pandora continues to struggle. Last September, Liberty Media’s SiriusXM finally purchased struggling digital radio service, Pandora Media. The service has historically struggled to remain afloat. It’s also paid indie artists dismal amounts in terms of royalties. Last year, despite having the second-highest amount of total users in the US, Pandora paid artists $0.0011 per play. Earlier this year, the digital radio service slightly increased that rate to $0.00134. The company has now settled at paying artists $0.00133 on Pandora Premium. Artists will now need 1,106,767 total plays on Pandora Premium just to earn $1,472. The service reportedly loses $250 million each year, with loss per user calculated at $3.09. Pandora has over 81 million users, with around 6.8 million subscribers. YouTube pulls a U-Turn. Historically, YouTube hasn’t ever been an artist-friendly platform, thanks to its horrendous payouts. In 2017, the popular video platform paid $0.0006 per play. Earlier this year, the company increased its rate to $0.00074. Executives have now pulled a U-Turn, choosing to pay artists $0.00069. To earn the monthly minimum wage amount in the US, artists will need around 2,133,333 total plays on YouTube. The video platform reportedly loses $174 million each year, with loss per user calculated at $0.17. So, what’s our advice? Once again, please don’t ever make a career out of your earnings on the popular video platform. Trust us. You’ll regret it. Daniel is an avid writer who was born and raised in Los Angeles. Alongside writing, he is also a passionate reader and an English teacher for ELL students. He dedicates his spare time to raising his three baby girls. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/author/dsanchez

SPOTIFY PAYS ARTISTS SHIT. SO HOW COME THEY’RE STILL USING IT? by Heather Kitching, Roots Music Canada © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

We’ve all seen the anecdotes circulating on social media. Peter Frampton got paid $1,700 for 55 million streams of “Baby I Love Your Way.” Danny Michel blames streaming services for a 95 per cent drop in album sales in one year. Artists need approximately 438 streams on Spotify just to earn enough money to buy a box of Kraft Dinner – because the average Spotify royalty rate is $0.00331 per stream, according to the latest survey by The Trichordist. Now Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon are actually appealing a US Copyright Royalty Board decision to raise those rates – a move artist advocates have described as “suing songwriters.” There’s no question music streaming services are raking in billions in revenues while paying next to nothing to the artists their businesses rely on – all the while cannibalizing what was left of the market for recorded music. About the only thing the streaming services haven’t done is hold guns to artists’ heads and force them to make music available on their platforms. Which raises the question, “Why do they?” “My music is on Spotify in part because I use it as a listener,” singer-songwriter Christa Couture told me via email, noting that she misses the days of HMV listening posts and sees Spotify as today’s alternative. “I didn’t want to benefit from the service but deny others from accessing my music in the same ways.” Christa Couture is on Spotify in part because she uses the service as a music fan, so it’s only fair that other fans can check out her stuff, right? Christa buys music by artists she discovers on Spotify, she said, but she realizes many people don’t, and she admits she hasn’t completely resigned herself to the idea that some people will only choose to listen to her music on a nearly-free platform. “As it stands, I wouldn’t lose much if I weren’t on Spotify, but I don’t want to lose it nonetheless,” she said. “I haven’t considered dropping it because I think that ship sailed a long time ago – or I’m not principled enough.” Artist manager Mark Watson, who represents David Francey and Madison Violet among others, agreed with Christa that streaming is here to stay, so artists and industry people have little choice but to adapt. “If I don’t have my artists participate, their music doesn’t get heard,” he said. “Resisting it and trying to force people to buy would be like pushing cassette tapes. Unfortunately, music is basically free in the eyes of the public.”

What’s more, Mark pointed out, granting organizations and other industry bodies use streaming numbers as a measure of success or failure the way they once used album sales. Good luck convincing FACTOR – the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings – to loan you money for a tour or a new collection of songs if you don’t have thousands of streams to show for your previous efforts. And since many folk, roots, and world artists rely on support from funding bodies to grow their careers, giving up streaming simply isn’t an option. Still, Mark said, as an artist manager, he hopes the streaming deals for artists improve. Is Spotify the start of better things to come? True North Records president Geoff Kulawick noted that the deal offered by streaming services is already better than the situation that immediately preceded their arrival – the proliferation of illegal file-sharing services such as Napster, which paid no compensation to artists whatsoever. “I’d rather have low proceeds than no proceeds,” Geoff said. From his perspective, streaming services deserve credit for putting illegal file-sharers out of business and creating an infrastructure in which artists and their allies can mobilize for better pay. What’s needed now, he said, is a healthy field of competing services to help drive royalty rates up. “The fact that Spotify is not Google, Amazon or Apple is a good thing,” he said. “The bad guys here are the big tech companies, especially Google, who are constantly trying to drive down the value of content on their platform.” So, what happens if you’re not on Spotify? But while competition among streaming services might pave the way for better pay in the future, it hasn’t happened yet. And that’s why at least one successful band in the Canadian roots milieu refuses to play ball. “We’ve exchanged an illegal system that paid us nothing for a legal system that pays us nothing,” said Nicolas Boulerice of the Juno and Felix Award-winning Quebec traditional music giant Le Vent du Nord. Le Vent du Nord’s brand-new album, Territoires, is currently on Spotify, but the others are not. Around two years ago, the band members asked their label, Borealis, to pull the band’s music from streaming services after fans started telling them they “no longer needed to buy their albums. “For a band that still sells around 15,000 copies of each new release, the loss of those sales was a serious concern” he said, speaking on the phone in French from his home in Quebec.

“In folk, people still buy albums,” Nicolas explained. It’s not like genres such as pop and rock, where the music-should-be-free mentality took hold with the advent of the mp3 – or at least with the advent of connection speeds that made it feasible to transfer them – and where the idea of free music is now so ingrained in a generation of fans that artists have little to lose by going along with it. Le Vent du Nord announces to fans at its shows that its albums are largely not available to stream, he said, and it encourages them to buy them at the merch table on-site. The result, he said, has been more sales! Still, Nicolas concedes, the band recognizes it will miss out on opportunities if it bypasses the streaming services completely. He cites as an example the case of a reviewer in California who told the band he only reviewed albums he could access streams of. For this reason, the band is considering posting a compilation of songs on the services while holding back their full albums to sell at shows or through their label. At the same time, it’s trying to educate fans about the low low streaming rates, in hopes that they will choose to consume music in ways that compensate artists more appropriately. “For a lot of people it’s cool, Spotify. They don’t realize the damage it does,” Nicolas said. “I believe that music lovers, if they knew the situation, would choose their music differently.” Correction: A previous version of this story mis-stated the average Spotify royalty rate and the number of streams needed to earn enough money to buy a box of Kraft Dinner. Heather Kitching is Managing editor of Roots Music Canada is your home on the web for Canadian roots music, founded on Nov. 17, 2009, Gordon Lightfoot’s 71st birthday. https://www.rootsmusic.ca

5 STEPS TO BECOME THE GREATEST PLAYLIST CURATOR ON SPOTIFY by TJ Jones, PlaylistPush © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

   

Step 1: Upgrade Your Playlists Aesthetics

You want to find a niche in your knowledge base. Use the cover photo, title and bio of your playlist to let potential followers know what they’re in for. Include keywords in your bio people are searching for, this maximizes chances of your playlist getting discovered.

People are often searching for specific artists so include them in your playlist bio. Keep keywords limited and tasteful. Choose a title that will grab someone’s attention i.e. know who your target audience is very well. This will also come in handy when looking for a cover photo. Visualize the personality of someone who would listen to the artists on your playlists (yourself included) and find a photo that embodies that in one way or another.

Use images that are your own or royalty free. Spotify can delete your playlist for copyright infringement. I find most of my images on unsplash.com and photoshop them to include the title on the playlist cover. This makes your account look more legit, and will convince people who don’t follow your playlists that they should be. Step 2: Take Your Playlist Streamers On a Journey A giant playlist with all of your favorite tunes is a great starting point, but if you want people to follow your playlist don’t stockpile your music library into one playlist. Categorize your taste into seperate, cohesive playlists. Your playlist should have multiple, but related genres. Each track doesn’t have to seamlessly blend into the next, but what you don’t want is a Death Grips track playing directly after Beyonce. My technique is listening to my playlists with a crossfade between tracks.

This provides insight into how well it flows as a whole. There’s nothing artistically significant about Spotify’s algorithms generating a list of songs based on user data. There is something special about your personal, lived experience that lead you to resonate with an artist or particular type of music. Get a sense of why you connect with it, and add artists you relate to for the same or similar reasons. A great playlist has meaning to you. Mutual fans of the same artist will discover new artists, and follow your playlist, if they can sense it was built with intention. The top 8 tracks are your first impression. This is where users are most likely to pick the first song they listen to, and if those tracks are garbage they wont give your playlist a second thought. Step 3: Grow your following with a variety of tactics Playlist followers are nothing but a vanity metric, you want your playlist to gain them for credibility. What’s actually important is the number of monthly listeners your playlist generates for artists. A playlist with 10,000 followers may look really good and draw attention to your profile, but if 9,996 of those followers are inactive, your playlist is worthless. Gaining the first few followers can be difficult and potentially discouraging. Keep your playlist private, not public, until it’s perfected and ready

…then drop it using these 3 techniques: 1. Promote your playlist on your social media accounts and ask friends and family to follow them. A playlist with 5 followers will show up in a search before a playlist with zero. 2. Join zany Facebook groups for your kind of music and post in niche subreddits. 3. Once your playlists have gained a little traction, you can search for independent artists looking to get on playlists, if they haven’t already started coming to you. Ask those musicians to share it on their social media accounts and make your playlist their “Artist’s Pick”.

Don’t ask artists to endorse your playlist until you’re sure it can gain streams and has a dedicated following. You should only ask if their music is a good fit and you genuinely enjoy it. If you want a career in the music industry, or just want to share great playlist with a large amount of people, good rapport with musicians and mutually benefiting each other’s career is the best way to do so. Checking artists’ “Discovered On” for your playlist(s) is a good way to get a sense of how active your playlist is. Step 4: Keep Your Followers Engaged Update your playlists regularly but don’t go brazy. People are following your playlists because they saw music that they enjoy. Rotate tracks in and out of your lineup gradually. The single worst things you can do is a major rebranding and delete the majority of the tracks and add new ones all at once. This will almost always result in a swift decline in playlist followers. Most Spotify users won’t unfollow a playlist they don’t listen to. Spotify’s folder feature even encourages grouping playlists so users can follow a large amount but keep their sidebar organized.

Keep your playlists between 50-90 tracks. A playlist with over 100 songs can overwhelm a potential follower looking to discover new music, while a playlist with under 40 songs may give them the impression your playlist has finite potential for discovering their next favorite musicians. Listen to your playlists regularly the following 3 reasons: 1. Your profile followers can see your activity in their friends feed and discover your playlist. 2. Search results are ranked by how many listeners those playlists are gaining. 3. You want to keep your current followers actively streaming from your playlists. If you come across a track you’re sick of listening to, chances are your followers are too. Use SpotOnTrack.com to keep track of follower growth and other cool playlist stats. Once your playlist has over 400 followers you can sign up to become a curator on Playlist Push and start making money from your playlists. You can also easily track your playlist activity and manage your playlist. Step 5: Strap In For The Long Haul If you want to make the next great Spotify playlist don’t expect your playlist to gain hundreds of thousands of followers overnight. The speed your playlist grows really comes down to two simple factors: How easily people searching can find it and if it’s good enough for people to share with their friends. You could get lucky and craft a viral social media post with the first hundreds of followers come with ease. But in the likely case you don’t, follow these steps and you’ll maintain and grow a successful playlisting career. I’m truly so lucky to get to curate playlists for a large audience. I consider what I do an art form, and it’s very therapeutic for me. @TEEJUS___

“A playlist curator compiles playlists. There is a lot to look at. From hundreds of tracks, I have to choose which ones are good enough to get into the playlist. Also, it has to suit the listeners of my playlist. And it is important to be up-to-date about the latest tracks” - Jesper Hesseling, Spotify

HOW TO BUILD A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST THAT SHOWS IN A SEARCH by Chris Robley, CD Baby DIY Musician Blog © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

You want to land a song on a big Spotify playlist? It (probably) won’t happen overnight. First you have to build your playlist resume. Once your songs start seeing lots of lower-level playlist activity, Spotify’s algorithm will take notice — and THAT’s when you’re more likely to get the attention of prominent playlist curators. The more you build a presence for your songs on smaller playlists, the more chance you’ll have of getting a big playlist placement. Step #1: Create your own playlists This is an obvious place to start building a playlist presence, since you have complete control over the song selection. Creating your own playlists gives you a great way to:    

connect with fans between album cycles re-purpose your catalog in countless ways by putting old songs into fresh contexts highlight the music of your influences, local music scene, new discoveries, etc. and much more

But before you put too much effort into playlisting, you’ll first want to become a verified artist on Spotify so you can display and promote your playlists right from your artist page. How to create a Spotify playlist  

   

Within the Spotify app, click “(+) New Playlist.” Give your playlist a name and description. Be sure to use rich keywords that mention the style of music, specific artists within the playlist, or other organizing principles for the songs contained within. Upload a custom image for your playlist. Add a URL to the “insert link” field linking to a pre-order page or music store. (Be considerate and don’t link to a competing streaming service.) Click “Create.” Add songs! You can do this by searching for the song on Spotify and dragging it into your playlist in the left-hand sidebar, or by clicking the ellipses next to any track and selecting “Add to Playlist.”

Playlist best-practices for Spotify There are millions of playlists on Spotify. Every user has the ability to create multiple playlists. So understandably, Spotify doesn’t want EVERY single playlist on their platform to be publicly searchable. In order for YOUR playlist to grow as much as possible, you’re going to want to show up in a search on Spotify. That way your reach extends beyond your existing fanbase. There are some recognizable attributes shared by many playlists that Spotify serves up in their search. Might as well emulate what’s working, right? Here’s how to make an effective — and search-friendly — playlist. Build playlists around your interests. If you’re enthusiastic about your playlist, you’ll make it awesome! If not, you’ll lose steam and neglect it. Which brings us to… Update your playlists on a regular schedule. To make a playlist that’s worth following, it should be dynamic and change over time. Otherwise a user can just listen once and be done with it. Choose a day to make updates each week and keep it consistent to build expectation among followers. Only ONE song per artist. Unless a playlist’s sole purpose is to highlight the music of one artist, it’s best to make the song list diverse. Spotify’s algorithm can downgrade a playlist (in search and relevance) that is too heavily weighted towards one artist. Seed your own songs! Nestle your song perfectly among a bunch of great tunes by other artists. But remember: just one song per playlist, unless it’s a playlist organized around your music alone. Playlists should have between 20-60 songs. Spotify’s algorithm favors playlists with more than 20 songs and less than 60. Aim for 25-30 when you first create the list, and then add more songs on a regular basis. Once you’re approaching 60 songs, shuffle the oldest tracks off the list. (You can even create an archive playlist to house all the songs that have been moved off the primary playlist). Cover artwork. It’s not make-or-break, but seeing one of those default playlist covers with the four smaller images is a little disappointing. You’re curating a musical experience; why not also provide a custom visual that helps listeners enter your world?

Use smart keywords in your description. You should describe your playlist using words, phrases, genre descriptions, and artist names that listeners will be searching for. Spotify gives you plenty of text space to do it. Optimize! Your playlist name is SUPER IMPORTANT! Which do you think is more likely to appear in a search: “Prog-Rock Classics from the 1970’s” or “Brand New Crystal Visions of Dancing Planets Outside of Time?” Choose a playlist name that sets clear expectations. Promote your playlists. Share the playlists you create with your fans on social, e-mail, etc. Ask them to follow your playlists and ask for their suggestions for songs or artists you can add to your playlists in the future. The more followers your playlist has, the more likely it will be served up in a search on Spotify. Tag, tag, tag. Whenever you add tracks to the playlist, tag those artists on social (this is the more passive version of notifying the artist directly, which we’ll get to below…) Ask your fans to save a song from your playlist to their own playlists. Again, Spotify’s algorithm takes special notice whenever a user is motivated to move a song from a playlist they follow to one of their own playlists. This is the MOST IMPORTANT action a fan can take to support you on Spotify. So provide a link to your playlist and ask your fans to do just that! Notify other artists who’ve been added to your playlists. Reach out via Twitter, Facebook, or email. Let them know you love their music, have added a song to your playlist, and ask them to follow the playlist and promote it to their fans. Embed your playlist. Spotify also smiles favorably upon playlists that are being shared outside of the their platform. Embed the playlist on your own website, and ask your fans and friends to do the same. The wider your reach online, the better you look in the eyes of that mysterious Spotify algorithm. To embed a playlist:    

Go to the playlist page on Spotify Click on the ellipses Scroll down to “Copy embed code” Paste that code into website

Alright, that’s enough playlist tips for one day. Keep ’em in mind and your playlist will have a good chance of appearing in Spotify’s search. You’ll also be on your way towards building a bigger playlist presence. Chris Robley is the Editor of CD Baby's DIY Musician Blog. I write Beatlesque indie-pop songs that've been praised by No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, & others. My poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, & more. I live in Maine and like peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, a little too much. @chrisrobley

MY STORY: FROM INDEPENDENT ARTIST TO PLAYLIST CURATOR by Cocoy Claravall, Recording Artist (and curator) © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

 

I started sharing my music in Spotify back in 2015. Like any indie artist, I tried almost everything under the sun to get more streams, follows, and shares. It's been a long journey, yes. You really have to be patient and steadfast. For me, I was very clear on why I was doing this. It wasn't for commercial purposes, but more to get the music heard, and spread God's love and mercy. Any commercial benefit was just a bonus. But I realize for some, if not most indie artists, it is a source (or potential source) of living. That's fine. Create Your Spotify Artist Profile For those new to Spotify, first things first, - Get your Artist Profile verified! Follow this link, it should be very straightforward - https://artists.spotify.com Update Your Profile Once verified, ensure you have updated bio, pics and social media links. This is important as it shows the person behind the music and allows for people to contact you. Back then, it was so difficult to get the music heard unless you rally all your friends, family, officemates and social media followers. I did that, and while it was ok, it doesn't really scale. And at some point, you have to throttle it so as not to become spam.

How about buying streams and followers? This is a sensitive topic Do a search and you will see many articles on the subject. What I can tell is this, you may get the streams, and the follows, but the quality is usually amateur, and not long lasting. Whether it's a $5 gig at Fiverr or a more expensive marketing plan from XYZ company, my experience has been wishy-washy. What's been useful for me though in Fiverr gigs is getting the additional social media exposure and collaborating with other artists globally. Playlists!!! That's probably the best thing that happened to me in my journey in Spotify. I realized that you do get “paid” by the value you add to other people. So early on I curated playlists, from many kinds of genres that interested me. As I was a Beatles fan, I made different Beatles playlists, not the regular ones, but those that were unique back then – Beatles Acoustic Ballads ( https://spoti.fi/2P97fay ) Beatles Rock Tribute Collection ( https://spoti.fi/2XyziEo ) Beatles Unplugged ( https://spoti.fi/2H75pTP ) and Beatles Solos ( https://spoti.fi/2XCIjg1 ). I gained an early following then from fans, not fans of my music, but Beatles fans. Then came artists that do Beatles covers, who would message me directly to ask to be included. I would listen to their songs, if I liked a song, I would include it. Then slowly, I built playlists that included my songs. And guess what? The followers and streams came. As listeners liked the playlists, they followed and saved it. And since Spotify also allows you to share what you are listening to, the exposure expanded. Some of my more popular playlists that include some of my songs are Acoustic Worship ( http://spoti.fi/2FInRlx ) Good Vibes ( http://spoti.fi/2vSD6QN ) Senti Playlist ( http://spoti.fi/2DAaYnF ) Ang Pinoy Senti ( http://spoti.fi/2szu4dz ) and Jesus Jam Worship ( http://spoti.fi/2ExBEdi ). Worth mentioning here btw is my most popular playlist to date, and no, I don't have a song there (even if I was tempted to include one). It's my New Wave 80s vs Alternative 90s playlist ( https://spoti.fi/2BFCm5A ). It has over 45K followers (and growing). I decided early on as a playlist curator to be very strict with the theme of each playlist. So, in the case of this playlist, while I received numerous requests for newer alternative songs to be added, I had to decline as the era has to be 80s or 90s. And of course, it had to appeal to my taste.

Because of this, I had to create two new playlists, Indie World Music ( https://spoti.fi/2OlP52n ) and Indie Synth Pop Rock ( https://spoti.fi/2PPIuhB ). Instrumental playlists were also quite popular in my experience, check out my Guitars n' Roses ( https://spoti.fi/2GoTtfG ) and Acoustic Drive ( https://spoti.fi/2EANgxo ) playlists. Those of you that are interested to have your music screened can submit it here: http://bit.ly/2VRjZTc While I won’t be able to reply to each request, I assure you I will listen to each and will add the song if I like it ... for FREE! As you can see, I've curated a lot of playlists - mostly in the hundreds of followers with some in the thousands. A fellow indie artist recommended a site to me a that allows for sharing your Spotify playlists to other platforms like Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, Soundcloud and the like. I've been using it since for a few months now. So far it has been a good experience. Check out the guys at https://soundsgood.co for more information (this is not sponsored, to be clear). It is really good to be generous; it always comes back in one form or another. If you can, exchange playlists with other artists or curators. But choose whom you want to exchange. You must like their music and playlists too. What I also like doing is monitoring my stats - daily. Aside from Spotify for Artists (you should have been verified now, right? All your stats will be there), I also started trying out sites like https://app.chartmetric.com to get more drill-down insights. Last year was the breakthrough for me. It was then when Spotify allowed artists to submit unreleased songs for their editors to consider. Again, using Spotify for Artists, you submit the song, properly identify its category, and tell the story behind the track. If they like it, it will most likely be included in the weekly New Music Friday playlist. Make sure to submit at least 1 week before the launch date of your song, to make it to the Release Radar customized playlist of your Spotify followers. That's one week of free exposure to a very broad audience! And if your music is really good, then there's the chance to move to a bigger Spotify editorial playlist. I've been fortunate enough to have experienced this on multiple occasions, with one song reaching close to 30K streams in one day – all real plays, NO BOTS here. At the end of the day, as an indie artist, it's your craft that will determine how far you want to go in this adventure. So, continue making great music, experimenting and trying new things, and collaborating with other artists. Be very clear also what your goal is and spend the time and extra effort to pursue it. I have a day job and career which is not music related and love it, but songwriting and recording is what I love outside of that.

I really want to thank Spotify PH ( https://twitter.com/Spotify_PH ) for allowing indie artists like me to be able to share this passion. It has never been easier to do this now, compared to back in the 80s when I first wrote my songs. I also want to give a shout-out to the guys at https://routenote.com , who have been very helpful in publishing my music. You can reach me @CocoyClaravall in the links below: Spotify – http://spoti.fi/2sQgCQJ Facebook – http://bit.ly/2IfgbqQ Twitter – http://bit.ly/2rZxxML E-mail – [email protected]