An individual, recently furloughed, is forced to work from home. No longer at the mercy of the office radio, they scroll Spotify, exercising their new found freedom. Chill hip hop beats to study and work from home to? Don’t mind if I do. The speaker jumps into life, and their ears are blessed with the sound of an aspiring artist. An artist who’s realised playlists are the new line ups, curators are the new gig organisers, and the audiences are bigger than ever.  

Is your music ready to reach thousands? 

Having a song featured on a Spotify playlist is an amazing way to quickly rack up streams, gain huge exposure and earn some of that much elusive revenue. With official and unofficial playlist curators being reciprocal to submissions, these days independent or DIY artists can now take more control of their releases, saving time and money avoiding the ‘traditional’ route. Although you can still pay a PR expert to utilise their contacts and pitch your music to playlists on your behalf.  

But be warned, not all playlists are created equal. Many PR companies or experts may offer exposure to hundreds of curators in exchange for a fee, although bear in mind many of these playlists may offer very little plays, the pitches may be lacklustre or the PR may have a poor relationship with the curators. Avoid being lured in with the quantity, a few strong pitches by a capable, well connected professional to a few high listener traffic playlists will garner the best results.  

Before money changes hands or time is wasted, it’s always worth keeping budget in mind and whether the money could be better spent elsewhere on your music project. As a general rule of thumb, one thousand Spotify streams will earn the artist between two and four pounds, so keep this in mind when deciding on how much to spend on PR. A new valuable service which can help gauge if a playlist is worthwhile is ‘Is It A Good Playlist?’, Is It a Good Playlist (IIGP) uses analytics and data gathered from across streaming platforms to summarise the performance of a playlist. Does it have a lot of monthly listeners? Do songs generally perform well on it? Or is it full of payola songs, using fake listeners, with an unresponsive editor? IIGP is a great resource for researching the right playlists for you.  

Top tips for maximising your playlist success 

• Ensure your Spotify and social media profiles are up to date, with well–written bios and high-resolution images. When emailing your pitch, remember to personalise where possible and include a press kit. 
• Manage finances. Doing DIY PR can run into the thousands, so always keep track of spending to make sure you’re using your money wisely.  
• Stay organised, remember who you’ve already messaged and record where the track is being played and by whom.  
• A track can only be pitched to most Spotify playlists at least 7 days prior to its release. 

Spotify do their best to de-mystify the process and here, Spotify Q&A, answer various questions on the subject. It’s well worth a read for further research or to learn more on how the editors work. Below is a list of curated Spotify playlists which take submissions to get you started. 

Spotify Playlists 

Indie Mono 

Genre: Everything judged by merit  

Sound Plate  

Genre: A wide range of individually curated playlists 

Musicto  

Genre: Multiple playlists categorised on moods rather than genres 

For The Love Of Bands  

Genre: Indie/alternative/guitar 

Spotify  

Genre: Anything and everything  

Submit Hub  

Genre: A variety, dependent on individual curators  

Soave Records  

Genre: Electronic/House/Pop 

Daily Playlists  

Genre: Everything and anything 

My Sphera  

Genre: Pretty much anything you can think of 

VGM And R  

Genre: New Music 

Song Pickr  

Genre: Warm, vintage, organic 

This-List (Rock-Out)  

Genre: Rock (although more genres are covered on the site) 

Drop Track  

Genre: Various 

I-musician  

Genre: Everything, even niche styles like neo-classical or K-pop 

Analog Collective  

Genre: Helps independent artists, supplying free and paid for playlists of all genres  

Howard Zhu  

Genre: Pop/RnB/Club 

To find out more, check out our courses here.