A few months ago I made an introduction about how playlisting is changing the way we listen and consume music. Certainly at the heart of the streaming revolution is Spotify and it’s playlisting algorithm. With playlists, it is so much easier to discover new music and Spotify knows how to do it through its crowdsourcing algorithm. You can read the details in the post above, but the gist is simple: the more playlists your tracks show up in, the more listeners you are likely to be discovered by.

From many independent artists’ perspective, getting more Spotify listeners remains a huge mystery. Let me tell you from the start, there is no magic formula and there is no shortcut, even for artists who already have huge following. You have to do the work in order to reach out to people. Here’s how:

The first step is to get your artist profile verified by Spotify. Simply go to artists.spotify.com to get started.

The second step is to start creating playlists based on genres and artists that you like. It’s really effective to create a playlist with one or two of your songs and the rest would be songs that you like. Be sure to pick a catchy title to make sure it shows up on more searches.

The third step and the biggest work is pitching your songs to playlists.The easy part is to search for keywords, genres or related artists that you sound like and find playlists. Once you find a couple of playlists that you can see your songs in, check out the top of each playlist. Here you will find the name of the playlist curator. Then the challenging part comes, which is to google the person’s name and hopefully find them.

Then there are playlists whose curator simply show up as “Spotify”. These are the most popular playlists and you’ve guessed it, they are the hardest ones to get added to, because the curators are anonymous. You have to do the research on Google to find playlist curators at Spotify for that particular genre. Once you find some names, I suggest typing their names in Spotify app. You can get a sense of what their music taste is like and then you find them on social media and send them a message.

I know it seems challenging, but pitching your songs is not so different than trying to book a gig. Just like many highly rewarding avenues in music industry, the barriers are really high to get your music to more people in Spotify. But what matters is to remember that the name of the game is persistence. If anyone could pitch their music and get 1 million followers in a month, then everyone would do it.

What’s to our advantage as musicians is that we are the content creators of Spotify, and this platform is home to 70 million plus music fans waiting to hear new music all the time. This is an unprecedented concentration of listeners in a single platform, and I think as independent musicians we should take advantage of it. After all, streaming is here to stay and it is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company for creative artists. Using Adva’s mobile services, you can let your fans about your latest creative work, run contests, take surveys, reach out to your superfans and engage with them.

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Alper Tuzcu is a Berklee College of Music and Denison University alumni, and a Boston based guitarist, songwriter and producer. His new EP ‘Lines’ was released on November 2017 and his debut eclectic album ‘Between 12 Waters’ featuring 8 different vocalists is available on Spotify. In addition to being a musician, he regularly teaches workshops and masterclasses internationally. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter, and for more information you can visit his website www.alpertuzcu.com