How Spotify’s new playlist placement feature is helping artists
Getting placements in one of Spotify’s official editorial playlists has never been an easy process for independent artists or labels. But in a bid to democratize the submission process a lot more, Spotify have launched a new feature that allows the opportunity for an artist to submit their music to specific playlists via the Spotify For Artists platform. With the likes of MINT, Rap Caviar, and Beast Mode being some of the platform’s highest-grossing playlists in terms of stream count, this is certainly a very welcome move from the perspective of independent artists. After all, with “Spotify pluggers” charging upwards of $1500 for a campaign, it allows an artist to use that money to invest directly into their career (such as Facebook ads or commissioning remixes) instead. With a team of over 100 playlist editors in multiple continents around the world, the new beta feature rolled out by Spotify seems to have a substantial impact on the ability for undiscovered artists to go viral.
During the submission process, an artist (or potentially their manager/label) will have to add a lot of detailed information about the release so that editors have a lot of context towards a song when listening to it. For example, artists may decide to include the genre, release date, instruments used, featuring artists, promotional plans etc. This detailed form of documenting allows Spotify to instantly search through a global database of music in order to find appropriate tracks that they’d like to add to their playlist.
Even if an artist does not get added to an editorial process on Spotify during the release campaign, there are still many benefits towards this process. For example, if a track is submitted 7 days in advance, the song will instantly be added to the release radar of your followers. If you strategically target your collaborations towards artists that have a substantial following on the platform, there is the opportunity to gain several hundred thousand (or even millions) of streams without the need of an editorial playlist.
During a statement, Nick Holmsten, Vice President of Content & Global Head of Shows & Editorial at the company, said. “We’ve listened to feedback from the creative community and developed a new feature that enables them to easily submit unreleased music for playlist consideration to our entire worldwide team of playlist editors”.
Essentially, artists now have the ability to have a direct relationship with the appropriate curators for the majority of Spotify’s editorial playlists. The platform is then able to use this information to determine how & where to feature your music and understand the consumer demographics of what other artists your listeners are following. This helps the editors at the company make a reliable & informed decision about what playlist(s) to add your music to.
Another announcement from the company said that “no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists” and that editors choose tracks considering “data about what’s resonating most with their community of listeners.”
With the platform now democratized, the next few months will certainly be interesting in regards to breaking artists via this new submission method.
