Landing on the right Spotify playlist can be career altering, exposing millions of new listeners to your music; and while placements had been reserved for artists signed to major labels, the streamer recently made the process more egalitarian.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
Getting a placement on a Spotify playlist can be career changing as suddenly millions of people can be aware of you and your music, but until now the chances of that happening were extremely slim if you weren’t on a major label. The company has been trying to democratize its service though and making its playlists more accessible to indie artists is the latest way for that to happen.
Spotify recently rolled out a new feature where your music can get in front of its 100 global editors for consideration on its most influential playlists. The featured actually entered beta in July but has now been rolled out to all Spotify artists. It’s been reported that more than 67,000 artists and labels have submitted music since the feature became available and over 10,000 of those artists were added to Spotify’s playlists for the first time as a result.
To use the new feature, labels are required to submit via the Spotify Analytics platform and artists or managers need to submit tracks via their Spotify For Artists accounts. Spotify has released a video on how to get playlisted (below), where it’s suggested that you pick just one song and send it in for consideration as far in advance of release as possible (with 7 days being the minimum). The reason is that there’s around 20,000 pieces of music to listen to per day so the earlier it’s received the better your chances are of actually getting a playlist placement.
The next thing is to tag the track so it ends up on the most appropriate playlist. Pick the genre, mood, style, language, type of recording and what city you’re from, plus a story about the song, then submit. These tags are very important because there’s not only a human element here, but also a selection algorithm, so the more accurate the tags, the more likely it will be considered.
There are other videos about how to take advantage of Spotify for Artists here.