Ready, Spotify, Pro Curator tips? GO!
Ok, so you’re all set, you’ve decided to become a Spotify Curator and create your own playlist. Whether you are an artist yourself or just an active listener, you want to share your stunning taste to the world and you would like to grow BIG! But how can your Spotify Playlist be visible, for the world to see?
Basic Step
One of the first places to check is the Official Guide from Spotify for Artist, you will find great tips about the topic. To summarise it these are the best practice I’ve gathered so far when it comes to making sure you do EVERYTHING that Spotify recommends to get the
most out of your own curated Playlists:
- Update your Spotify Playlists by removing/adding songs every other week. This way you become an Active Spotify Playlist Curator. A personal tip I apply to myself in that regard is that I’m adding 5 new songs and removing 5 others every Monday. I set it as a MUST do in my todo-list.
- Make it with Style! Customize your playlists with cool art that defines what genre and style each playlist is. Make sure to edit the detail too and add a nice description to it.
- Choose a catchy name. That is probably the most underrated tip. It feels that some people are getting the exposure just because they chose a very good playlist name. I’ve seen kids with like 30k followers on their playlist, even though they only have 20 followers on their personal accounts. Call it luck? Well, I’m guessing there is definitely a bit of luck involved in it.
- Think of the Moods. This is what Spotify for Artists recommends, as per what to think about when it comes to making our curated playlist. “Monday Tough day, or Happy Friday Vibes, It’s Friday I’m drunk already” for example, sounds like a good starting point.
- MAX 100 tracks. Spotify recommends you to start with 25 songs first to begin with. Then you can go up to 100 maximum. Don’t go over, because you may awaken the big Spotify monster and it will eat you up, you and all your lists, watch out!
Don’t mix them!
Curated Spotify Playlists are NOT to be mixed with Playlist that are generated by algorithms,
The main difference here is that mainly to get on playlists, like “Discover Weekly and Release Radar or Wrap up and so on” you need to get a lot of followers, so you should check the tips of Spotify for Artists here: https://artists.spotify.com/guide/promotion on how to promote your music, if you are an artist.
One of the key things here would be to be active on Social Media and to share your work on a frequent basis. Ideally, you would pick one social media channel, and get pretty active in it until you can get traction. Then you will redirect this traffic into your Spotify Playlist. You need to be persistent for this method to work, so BE BRAVE my friend!
An important tip here: The more people that save your song, follow you as an artist and add you to their own playlists, the more likely you are to appear on such playlists, like weekly discovery, release radar, and so on.
Converge all your listeners to your playlists
Whether you are mainly using Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest, it doesn’t matter, you need to tell your audience about your playlist. You can actually take some time to prepare a personal message, where you simply ask nicely to some of your entourage, friends, family or people you know to save the playlist because you truly believe that they would enjoy it. Turns out that, most of the people that actually have Spotify will actually save and follow your playlist.
It’s a good place to start to have between 20 – 80 followers to begin with.
If you keep pushing this way you should shortly target around 100 followers.
DO THE RESEARCH
Try to do the extra step, do the work and research. You can contact blogs that feature playlists in a specific genre. Let’s say your playlist is a lo-fi playlist. Yeah I love lo-fi 😉
Well, you can do the research here and look for blogs that have the keywords lofi playlist. I’m sure you’ll find good places this way. I remember when I was starting out my lofi playlist, I found a nice blog to featured my playlist and they were happy to do it for me, you can check them out here Echo World I know they still accept playlists. You can keep the research and extend it to other genres so you maximize your chances to get your playlists on the most platforms possible..
Also try to make it clear if you want to be contacted by Insta DM, Email or if you’re one step further and you have a submission form. You can use Google form which is 100% free to create awesome forms. This way you will be able to reach out to these people by creating an e-mail list and you’ll keep them updated if you ever have a new Spotify playlist that you intend to curate.
SAVE TIME AND SPARE THE HASSLE
- If you don’t have time to look for blogs yourself, you can try to hire someone else to do it for you. I would recommend you to try Fiverr services for example, which is a great company that most of you guys probably heard of already.
- You can find gigs that offer a list of blogs for instance, and you can then contact these blogs for either a music release you are gonna do soon or contact them to ask them to feature your playlist if that is your main focus.
- Here is a cheap Fiverr gig I created a while ago and that got pretty successful. I mainly created it for Artists to share their music releases to various blogs but this can totally be used to ask each blog to share your awesome Spotify playlists
- In order to get more exposure. Here is the gig I created and it only cost 5 dollars. So I mean even if it doesn’t work for you, it’s not like it made you broke, right?
- Plus, this is still a worthy relevant list of 70 bloggers, so it’s always beneficial to know and get some contacts within the music promotion business. The list comes in both an excel file as well as a .csv so it’s perfect if you want to import a whole contact list at once in any mailing marketing services available such as Mailchimp for example.
I WANT MORE
If you’re looking to get even more contacts at once, I recommend you to head to this gig instead, it would give you access to a list of 200 blogs, labels, and magazines. This is ideal if you’re an artist and you’re willing to share your new release, but it could be interesting as well if you’re willing to get exposure for your Spotify Playlist.
DISCLAIMER: Of course, there are NO GUARANTEES at all that this would work for you, and that these blogs would respond. However, it’s definitely worth trying, and these are SUPER LOW Cost compared to what it would potentially bring to you as a Spotify Playlist Curator.
APPROACHING BLOGS
- Approaching blogs is an art, you have several ways to do it. The fastest way is probably using a mass-emailing such as GMASS or Mailchimp for example to send an e-mail to the whole list with a .csv file.
- This may work but it remains quite impersonal, so this approach is quite neutral and is definitely less likely to work than a more personal method. What’s a personal method you can ask yourself. Well, that would be to take the time to dig in each blog, see who’s owning this blog, try to direct your message to this person, let’s say you are contacting this blog, well address your message to me, Edwin.
- I’ll be more willing to respond to someone that actually knows my name, knows what kind of music I like and what I may be interested in. Let’s say you’re making bedroom pop music, and you’re contacting a Heavy Metal blog, I mean, seriously, you almost don’t stand a chance, and even if you did, would you even like to? You need to ask yourself these questions. In other words, the more time you put into your research and the quality of the blogs you’re contacting, the better the results.
- I really hope these tips may have helped a few of you.
FREE SPOTIFY PLAYLIST SERVICES
I’m not talking about weird, illegal spotify dodgy kind of stuff. I’m talking 100% legal and useful tool to raise you’re following count on Spotify.
Have you heard of DailyPlaylist?
Well if you haven’t go and check it out right away! (I’m not earning anything by mentioning their service, but I just really enjoy it).
To summarise Dailyplaylists allow you to add your own curated playlist and have people submit their song to it, free of charge. If your Spotify Curated Playlist has a minimum of 100 followers, you’ll be able to use DailyPlaylists service.
So it’s perfect if you followed this whole blog post, you should be aware of how to build a list of 100 followers on a given playlist. THE BONUS is that you can set up a gateway portal so to speak that will actually allow you to be followed both as a Spotify Artist or Curator (depending on your choice) and also to get your playlist followed on the same occasion + 2 extra playlists of your choice.
This means that you could create a snowball effect and have many playlists in there so that if someone submits to one, they would actually follow 2 other playlists of yours as well as your Spotify user or your Spotify Artist page if you have one. HOW GOOD is that? Well it’s pretty dope. So make sure to check out this option.
CREATE SUBMISSION FORMS
A good way to get going with accepting submission as a real Spotify Playlist Curator is simply to use the amazing Toneden services. You’ve probably come across one of these submission forms when you tried to submit your music to the playlist I curate here on my blog
I won’t hide it, I believe Toneden is a fantastic way to get more listeners and followers listening to your playlist but at the same time, it really helps you to measure the number of submissions. A great feature is that it can allow you to redirect the person who is submitting his music to your playlist to a private link that you share with him. They call it the “Social unlock” and “Secret link”, that option is awesome and it basically allows you to redirect the person wherever you want. I personally created free Submission forms using Google Form it’s 100% free and it’s really functional and practical when it comes to taking all the information that you need.
Personally, I want to build contacts, so not only I ask for the music link for their track but I also ask if they are willing to be contacted by me again since I am planning on making interviews and other stuff related to music promotions. Another cool thing that Toneden offers is the fact that anyone submitting his song to your playlist, can be automatically following you as an artist (if you have an artist profile on Spotify) and follow your Spotify playlist as well. Although, it’s very possible that this person removes these playlists from his playlist lists, it’s still worth a shot, and can definitely help you get your numbers up!
Talking about toneden, would require me to write another article because their platform is quite deep and you are able to do a lot of things on it. You can even do Facebook campaigns and promote your Music through them if you are an artist. I would definitely suggest you to check it out. I personally use their free version for now, but you can get a lot of good stuff if you opt for the paid version. I’ll definitely try it someday, when I feel it’s necessary.
PAID MARKETING FOR PLAYLISTS
- The same way you can promote and market your music on Social media, whether you choose TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, you can promote your Playlist with paid marketing as well.
- Let’s say you’re making this awesome lo-fi playlist and you want it to get really big. First of all, it has to come from an honest perspective, like you are honestly passionate about this music and you are doing the research in it and making sure you are finding a really good matching playlist that is quite unique. I mean don’t go and find a famous list and copy half of it then find another and copy half of it, what’s the point of that right?
If you truly have a special playlist, something that you made yourself with passion and care, and you really worked on the cover art as well, you made sure it goes well with the songs, well I believe you could give it a try! - I’d suggest you to start low and maybe get started with a classic Facebook/Instagram Campaign with around 50$ in it. You need to make sure that the campaign redirects people directly to your playlist, or if you want to promote many of your playlists, you could try to have people being redirected to your profile as a user where they would be able to browse all your Public Playlists. This way you could get someone following several of your playlists at once. I think both options feel pretty good to me.
- Also, you’re not selling them anything, you’re just showing people that you have a good playlist that is likely to match well with their music taste. You will be able to target certain audience and choose common interest.
- If you’re building that lo-fi Chill Playlist, you would aim for perhaps an audience of male between 20 – 35 years old perhaps to start with and then you could choose people that like lofi or like Chilled Cow for instance, maybe people that like the artist called The Deli which to me is definitely one of the pioneer of the lofi movement, with his fantastic track that came out in 2016, called: 5:32pm
- Paid Marketing and Facebook and Instagram campaign for Spotify Playlists is definitely something I would recommend if you want to be serious with your Playlist Curating if this is something you truly want to strive for and you do believe that you have a certain talent for it. Basically, if it piss you *** to find new music and to make unique and relevant playlists, I really don’t think you should go further and do that, just because some people around you do it, alright? Be yourself and do it if it makes you happy =)
GET EVEN BIGGER
- Let’s say you follow all these steps, and after a while, and a lot of work, updates on your Spotify playlists and activity, your playlist has now more than 1000 followers. Well congratulations mate, you made it! You’re one of the big guys now. You can add yourself as a real Spotify Playlist Curator on the famous platform Submithub
- **IMPORTANT** They only accept Spotify Playlist with a minimum of 1000 followers, so keep hustling guys, the hustle is REAL! The cool thing though is once you are accepted on this platform, it is very likely for your playlist to get even more visible and with time, the road to 10k followers is very near and do-able especially if you’re an active player!
CONCLUSION
- It feels like building and growing your own curated Spotify Playlist is totally something that you could do. Then again, you may need to try to curate several playlists at once in order to maximize your chances of success. Perhaps try different ideas, different moods, different genres until you find a specific style.
- When it comes to me, I like to follow my guts and my personal taste, that’s why all the playlists you will find in Widen Island, are genres and styles I particularly enjoy listening to. I’m a big fan of Surf Rock, Bedroom pop, Indie Rock and more recently I got into more lofi hiphop, chill hop as well. I’m not limited to these two genres, but I could definitely say that I am specified in those genres, just because this is the music I am listening to the most at the moment. I recommend you choose playlists of a genre that you really enjoy as well.
- So don’t forget to do the research, find blogs of the genre of your Curated Spotify Playlist and submit your playlists to several of them. Do proper research and don’t mind digging in deep.
- Try a more personal or effortless method, if you need to find quick info, you can use Fiverr and these two gigs I created to help you in your quest of promoting your playlists: The 70 relevant blog list
- and the 200 Contacts, Labels and Magazines – click here
- Once you’ve done your research well, go and use cool playlists services such as DailyPlaylist which is free again so try to rush to the 100 followers count, because then it will really be easier to grow.
- If you ever get 1000 followers big, you can join the Submithub network, which will help you to be more visible in the Playlist Game and that’s a plus.
- Now the main thing here is to take some time and energy, whether you are trying to find new songs to add up to your Playlists or remove some. You need to be unique to stand out.
- Sure you can get inspired by other big and successful playlists, but all that matters is that you are sincere in your quest and that you are true to yourself and to others. Don’t do this if you know you won’t have time to curate your playlists. You’ll need to be consistent, and then you’ll see the result.
- When you’re passionate, you don’t count the hours, that’s what my grandma says, and you know grandma is always right!
- I hope you enjoyed my tips, and don’t forget, if you wanna support what I do, please consider buying me a coffee, this really helps me to make this type of content.
- Good luck with your quest to conquer the Spotify Playlists world, a brand new world is waiting for you, full of hope and success!