After spending many laborious hours crafting the perfect Spotify playlist, it can be understandably disappointing to discover next to no one one is following. Rather than let all that careful curation go to waste, we here look at several key tips and hacks to drive traffic towards your playlist.
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Guest post by George Goodrich at the Slotify Method
You’ve spent hours creating the most fire Spotify playlist of all time just to find out that not a single person has followed it. Sound like you? Not to worry here are a few tips and hacks that will make it easier to gain [listeners] and eventually turn them into followers.
Spotify only gives you limited information on your followers and most of the time you have no idea where they are coming from. The best approach is to cast a wide net outside of the platform to find the right people willing to follow and engage.
In order to attract followers you have to first think like one. What are people searching for? Are they searching for “David’s Fire Trap Mixtape” probably not. Are they searching for an upcoming festival that they just bought tickets to, absolutely. A good way to start out in the playlist game is to find festivals who do not have a presence on Spotify and fill that void. Here are two methods to create playlists that will gain followers.
Music Festival Method
- Do some research on festivals in your home country or find out where some of your favorite artists are playing.
A simple google search will do.
- Create the playlist and title it after the festival. Add the flyer or logo of that festival for the image.
- Search Facebook for the event page for that festival and drop the playlist in the comments. “Here is the Official Playlist for _____ Festival, Enjoy!”
- Search Reddit for the same event or find an page for the genre of music at that festival. Drop the same message with the link to the playlist.
- Listen to your playlist to ensure it flows nicely and has solid selections.
- Update your playlist every week: add new tracks, delete some, and move them around.
This method can gain you anywhere from a few hundred up to thousands of followers. Timing is the most crucial part of the process. One to two months out from the event works best.
Mood Based Method:
More and more playlists are popping up that are mood based. People love to listen to playlists that match their mood and instead of listening to just genre based music. The best part is how diverse the music can be in one playlist. For example the playlist “Depression” has Wiz Khalifa, Fleetwood Mac and Katy Perry on it. As long as the song matches the mood genre becomes secondary.
After you create your mood based playlist go out and track people down who fit that mood. For example r/depression on Reddit has 200,000 subscribers and I doubt there is much competition for playlists there! Think outside the box and get creative around the mood that you choose, make a good playlist that fits it and you will gain followers.
Additional Tips:
Making a great playlists can be very time consuming. If you are going to take the time to do it make sure you nail it.
-Your playlist should be in the range of 25-40 songs.
-Think like a DJ and arrange the tracks to have solid transitions.
-Update your playlist weekly and make sure you add new tracks to the top of your list.
-Add a engaging description. Your description is basically a sales pitch to get a user to follow or listen to your playlist. For example this is the description of the “Road Trip” playlist: Going on a road trip this weekend? Maybe just a trip to the beach? “Go cruisin with indie rock, pop and some classics to soundtrack your road trip.”
-Take the time to add attractive playlist cover art. Services like Canva make it extremely easy to make a nice looking image or graphic for your playlist in a matter of minutes. You can even use Adobe Spark on your iPhone and make one seconds.
Best of luck!
George Goodrich who runs SlotifyMethod.com where he helps indie artists and labels get their music onto Spotify playlists. He blogs about Spotify and music marketing. His first book, “The Slotify Method: How to use Spotify Playlists to Launch your Career in music,” is available on his website and on amazon.com.