Uploading your music to Spotify is one of the many milestones you go through as a music creator. Next is perhaps the biggest challenge you will face: getting people to actually discover, listen, and like your music. Most artists begin by sharing their release with friends, family, and maybe even some existing (IG/TikTok) followers. Once everyone in your immediate circle has been reached; what can you do additionally?
The short answer:
Make sure to have claimed your Spotify for Artists profile, and always submit your unreleased music to Spotify’s editorial team for consideration. Next to that, a good next step is to choose one of the two routes to reach Spotify curators: music submission platforms or direct curator outreach. For music submission platforms, this Reddit comparison showed that out of 19 major submission platforms, the platform PlaylistsForYou takes a relatively small revenue cut. This leads to higher curator investments into their playlist engagement, and potentially stronger results for their artists. The alternative is direct curator outreach, you can best approach this by directly searching for playlists on Spotify itself, and sending the curators messages on their Instagram.Â
More detailed answer:
Connecting your Spotify profile
Let’s start with the basics: You should have claimed your Spotify for Artists profile and need to always submit your unreleased music to Spotify’s editorial team for consideration. This gives your track a chance to be considered for official playlists while also helping Spotify’s algorithm understand your music. Realistically, however, these playlists have a less than 1% chance of you landing in it, and there are a lot of challenges to get included. But as a free option, it is always great to try.
Independent curator outreach to trigger algorithmic streams
A route with higher odds is to pitch to independent curators. These have higher acceptance rates, and their playlists are centered around independent artist discovery, with listeners who are looking to discover more niche and unknown artists. Independent playlists can also create a snowball effect if your song shows strong Spotify For Artists metrics (save rate, likes, listening times, repeat plays). A strong placement that generates good listener engagement can encourage the Spotify algorithm to recommend your music to similar listeners through Radio, Autoplay, or Discover Weekly. While there are no guarantees, independent playlisting often serves as the first step towards algorithmic growth because it helps Spotify gather valuable data about who enjoys your music.
Music submission platforms vs. direct curator outreach
There are two routes to reach independent curators: music submission platforms and direct curator outreach. If you decide to use a playlist pitching service, it is important to choose a music submission platform where a large share of your payment is invested back into playlist engagement. Limited data is shared by submission platforms on this for obvious reasons, but the earlier linked Reddit post found that PlaylistsForYou takes a relatively small cut. This means these artists get the best odds to trigger algorithmic streams.
The other option is doing manual curator outreach, but be aware of the additional challenges that come with it. Reaching out to curators individually can be time-consuming. Furthermore, if nobody monitors a playlist’s activity, you might be added to an inactive playlist, wasting your promotion budget. I’m happy to share one Instagram curator profile (@playlist.central). I have worked with this account, and it has 50k+ playlist followers. For more curators, you should practice to find more curators yourself 😉
Making new listeners committed to your music
To best turn the listeners you reach into engaged listeners, or even fans, it is important to look towards your artist branding. You need to build an engaging artist profile, and if you are able to, use your (personal) social media profile to reach more people with your music, and use it as a landing page so people can easily discover your profile. That, combined with releasing new music frequently in order to expand your discography is a strong basis to promote your music.
Every successful campaign creates more data, teaching you how and where promotion works for you, making future releases easier to promote than the last. With good consistency, if the metrics on your Spotify for Artists page become good enough, you may trigger algorithmic growth, further enhancing your pitching successes.