This is something I wrote up for someone a while back that turned into kind of a useful overview on how to approach increasing Spotify exposure. I’ve updated it a bit recently, but it still just barely scratches the surface lol. It would take forever to write down everything I’ve learned, but hopefully you can get something out of it, and of course feel free to ask me anything. Good luck!

Spotify For Dummies v2.0 by Joranikus

I’m sure you know some of this, but I want to be as thorough as possible. Spotify, aside from Apple Music, is the most popular streaming platform for new artists. It may not pay the most, but it is by far the easiest to grow your platform as an up and comer. And as most people learn the hard way, you can’t simply release music and expect it to be heard. Getting music on Spotify alone does nothing unless people can find it/are looking for it. 

It helps to have outside promotion to encourage people to visit your Spotify profile but even more importantly, you need Spotify playlists to place your songs. Playlists are essentially the new radio stations. If you get on a playlist, you’re guaranteed to get new listeners. With this goal in mind, the general idea is to scour Spotify for playlists matching your genre/style with a substantial following and then somehow find and reach out to their curators. The most important thing is to only reach out to playlists that MATCH your songs, otherwise you’re just wasting everybody’s time. Additionally, it should be noted that this guide is intended for listener-owned/independent playlist, NOT Spotify’s editorial playlists, as those have an entirely different curtain process and are much more difficult to reach. 

With all that said, here are the basic steps for getting placed on playlists:

1. Find a playlist.

  • Search on Spotify for key words within your genre such as “rap” or “acoustic” and then scroll through the playlist results.
  • Look for playlists with a substantial number of followers (1k to 50k usually – not too big, not too small)
  • Ensure that there aren’t too many songs. The less, the better. This means your song will get played more. If there are over 1000 songs, it’s probably not worth the effort.
  • Ensure that the playlist has been recently updated. If it’s been more than a year, the curator is no longer active and probably forgot about the playlist completely. It is possible, but unlikely that they will go and update it just for you.
    • Additionally, playlists that are not actively curated typically don’t have an active listener base anyways.
  • Most importantly, make sure the playlist owner has a linked facebook account. This will give you a full name and their current fb picture. If they created an account without facebook, and only have a username it is generally impossible to find them. (Unless they have a unique username that they have also used elsewhere, such as twitter or facebook)

2. Find the curator.

  • Once you have the name and picture of the playlist curator, go to facebook and search for them. Hopefully their name is unique enough to find them easily (you typically won’t be able to find a “John Smith”). 
  • Add them and/or send them a friendly message like “Hey! I just came across your playlist on Spotify and I’ve been listening all day!”
  • Always be as nice and respectful as possible. Playlisters typically get unsolicited messages like these every day. 
  • Wait and hope that they respond, as your message will not go directly to their inbox until they approve it.

3. If they respond:

  • Ask them how often they update and if they’re open to suggestions. Try to get a good feel for their playlist and mention specifics, like “I saw you added that new kendrick song on there, that whole album was dope” or something along those lines. 
    • Make them feel like you actually enjoyed their playlist and song choices. Their playlist means something to them.
    • This way you’re not as generic and you come across as more genuine. They likely have received many annoying messages like this before, depending on how big their list is and how easy it is to find them on Facebook.
  • Nowadays, many will ask for money for playlist placements. This is up to you, but I personally never sell or buy spots. Songs should get added on their own merit, as this way they are more likely to remain on the playlist. People who treat their playlists like a business often will sell spots for a week or two and then remove your song and sell the spot to a new artist.*
  • Playlists that are run as businesses typically push away their followers. This is because anyone with money and a half decent song can get a spot. That’s not what the listener went to the playlist for. 

4. If they allow you to submit, either for free or not, send them the ONE song that matches their playlist and hope for the best. Tell them that based on the vibe you got from their playlist, you think that your song will fit. And of course be overly thankful. They just took the time to speak to a total stranger and listen to your music. 

*Playlisters who are in the business know what their playlist is worth and will often try to get money from you. This payola became such a problem that last year spotify made it against its terms of use. It continues though. And many people make money by buying playlists with followers from people who do not know their value. Here’s an article on the payola problem. 

Spotify Payola

The artists.spotify website is the best tool you have to gauge your progress. Without it, you’re flying blind. More important than your own streams, it shows just how valuable each playlist is. It’s all about listeners more than followers. For instance, I have a playlist with 30k followers that is contributing less to our streams than one with about 2k followers. This is because people either aren’t actively listening to the playlist anymore or because they’re not open to listening to your songs. This is why it’s very important to match the song to the playlist. It helps no one if it’s a shitty match. The playlist suffers because people don’t like the song, the artist suffers because they get skipped over and don’t get any of the value that they wanted out of the playlist. 

Spotify Stats

SPOTIFY FOR ARTISTS STATS:

Some of the ways I use the information in the stats page:

Obviously, verifying the value of a playlist. It’s like that bite test for fake coins. Helps to make sure you don’t fall for fools gold. Even my contact at Universal told me that followers don’t mean anything, it’s all about listeners. So if we’re on a 30k follower playlist, and it’s generating a really small number of listens, there’s two potential reasons. 

  • Either the song we got added didn’t fit the playlist, and people aren’t listening, OR much more likely, the playlist is fools gold. It only looks good from the numbers. It no longer has any true listeners. However, now that you know this, you can choose to use the inflated perception to your advantage. The reach of your tracks on Spotify is also believed to be a metric used in determining spots for Discover Weekly and Release Radar.

Monthly and daily listeners: The monthly is the main number. This is your worth/ranking in the Spotify world. You want this to steadily increase. The daily number is also pretty cool, and can show you when your listeners are active. For example, we use a lot of workout playlists. For this reason, our numbers are low on the weekends because fewer people are working out on those days. So we don’t sweat it when our numbers swing. The bottom line is you want your monthly to steadily grow until you hit the discover weekly playlist. 

This is where Spotify tests new artists. If your song is getting good reception on discover weekly, you have a better chance at getting added to the major spotify sponsored playlists which is everything. So in the song section, you’ll want to look at two ratios:

1. Streams to Listeners – You want this to be as high possible. It means people are hearing the song and liking it enough to listen more than once.

2. Saves to Listeners – You also want this to be as high as possible. It means people are hearing the song and liking it enough to save it to their own music library. 

High ratios indicate that it has potential commercial success. If the song you’re pushing has weak ratios, you’re basically wasting your time. Knowing this, you need songs that you can push. For Oren, I call them “bangers with bars”. Songs that everybody can get into, that go hard, but don’t sacrifice artistic integrity. You make songs like these to hook people. Then you’re able to promote the true message as they look into your catalog and listen to your core music. It’s kind of unfortunate, but it makes sense. Most people aren’t hip hop heads, so you need songs that are marketable.

Let me know if you have any questions! Lot more info in this world that I’m still learning, but this is the basics as far as upping your streaming numbers.


Respectfully,
Nick Jorgenson
Joranikus Music Group