Making the post of your Spotify streams depends on getting your music placed on as many playlists as possible. The process is clear: First you get your artist profile verified by Spotify. Second, is to start creating playlists based on genres and artists that you like. The third, and the hardest is pitching your songs to playlists.

So why is it so hard to pitch your music to playlists? First, Spotify does not give the contact information of playlist curators. If you can see the name of the curator, you have to Google the person’s name and hopefully find them. Then there are playlists where the official creator of the playlist will only say “Spotify”. These are the biggest and most popular playlists, and they are curated by Spotify’s editorial team. These are also the playlists that everyone wants to get on and consequently, they are the hardest to get a hold of. By this time, I’m sure you must have guessed that in order to get on these playlists you have to reach out to Spotify’s editorial team. This takes jedi level googling and research skills, and have led to the creation of a few ‘blackmarket playlist services’, which has been problematic for Spotify.  

One of the biggest problems is that these playlist services ask you to pay absurd amount of money to get placed on playlists. This of course disrupts Spotify’s algorithm for playlists, since it means that anyone who pays a certain amount of money can get themselves placed in big playlists.  This lowers the quality of playlists and ultimately weakens the brand of Spotify.

So having sensed the danger, Spotify announced last week that they have created an official playlist pitching platform. In their official statement released last week, Spotify explained what needs to be done and what seems to be the ‘criteria’ for getting your music placed on playlists. Here’s what they said:

“It’s important to give us as much information about the track as possible — genre, mood, and other data points all help us make decisions about where it may fit. You can note the instruments on it, whether it’s a cover, and the cultures you or the song belong to. The data you share will be complemented by what we already know about you — what else your fans listen to, what other playlists you’ve appeared on, etc.”

The translation of this statement is that your past listener data will gave a big impact on whether your music will get placed or not. If users are adding your songs to their playlists and saving your songs, you will have a much higher chance of getting placed on an official Spotify list. So, before submitting your music to Spotify, it would be a solid idea to build a following and good listener data with your music. If you are looking to get your music placed on user generated playlists, feel free to check out this blog post from a few weeks ago and good luck!

Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company for creative artists. Using Adva’s mobile services, you can let your fans learn 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