ORGANIC SPOTIFY PROMOTIONS DECODED FOR INDEPENDENT ARTISTS AND LABELS

Spotify has been around since 2008 and as of now, it boasts of a 299 million subscriber base worldwide, with a better royalty pay-out than some of the competitors like JioSaavn or Youtube Music. Streaming is one of the only revenue streams available to an artist with the live scene shut nationwide in India and slowly coming back to life in very few parts of the world. This piece may help you if you are an Artist/Independent Label in understanding the Spotify Eco-System and how you can leverage that Eco-System to promote your own music.

SPOTIFY ECO-SYSTEM EXPLAINED -

Spotify is completely based around playlist, the whole user experience is based upon playlists created by Editors, Machine, and Users. There are basically three major kinds of playlists -

• Algorithmic Playlists — These are machine-made playlists purely driven by Data and AI, for example, Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Your Daily Mix, etc,

• Editorial Playlists — The are curated by the in-house Spotify editorial team, and these are one of the most engaged playlists on the Spotify platform, for example — Rap Caviar, Mint, Dance Rising. These playlists have helped a lot of independent artists to get recognition overnight, there is a catch though Editorial playlists are a bit difficult to land. The only way you can submit for these is through your Spotify Artist access dashboard or Spotify Analytics if you have a label account.

Tip: Spotify recommends submitting tracks at least two weeks prior to the release date.

• User Generated Playlist — These playlists are generated or created by normal users like you or me or an artist. In terms of sheer numbers, these user-generated playlists occupy the chunk of the population amongst playlist on the Spotify platform. Some of these have pretty big followings on their playlist or a big network of playlists for all kinds of genres. For example — Indiemono, Soundplate, Trapnation, Strange Fruits, etc, How can you submit to them? You have to find the right playlist for your song first, search for relevant keywords on the Spotify Desktop app and listen to the playlists and see if it fits the vibe of the playlist. Sometimes these playlist lists out the accepted genre or mood in the Playlist description section. Some curators also leave their submission emails or website address for submission.

• How can you promote yourself leveraging the Spotify playlist ecosystem? — Reach out to independent playlist curators and try to land on these independent / user-generated playlists but relevant playlists. Landing on the wrong playlist with high followers may not yield expected results. Artists and Labels must also use the Dashboard submission tool to submit the track for Editorial placement consideration, if done two weeks prior to release the track will at least show up on release radar.

• Label Playlists — Labels have their own playlists on the Spotify platform this could be the smaller independent playlists like Spinnin’ Top 100 by Spinnin’ records, Dharma worldwide, Mau5etrap or major label playlists operating under the following brand names — Filtr by Sony, Topsify by Warner and Digster by Universal music. An artist can reach out to these label playlist curators especially when you are releasing through one of the sub-labels owned by these major labels, you would want to look for people working under artist and label partnership department or Music editor job title on LinkedIn or Facebook.

PROMOTION ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO BRING ENGAGEMENT ON SPOTIFY -

• Pre Release — Promote on social media asking friends, family, fans, and supporters to pre-save the track prior to release, this will bring engagement on your Spotify profile prior to releasing. You can use these third-party tools to run a pre-save campaign — Toneden, SmartURL, etc,

• Post Release — Promote your track on your Social handles post-release, the goal here would be to bring saves and follows, again you can use a tool like Tonedon or SmartURL to achieve this or embed a Spotify Follow button on your Website.

PROMOTION THROUGH YOUR OWN SPOTIFY PLAYLIST -

• Like any user, you can also create your own playlist and link it to your Artist profile. You can share your own music or what you are listening to right now through one of these playlists. Be creative with your playlists, you can also let your fans collaborate on these playlists or make a mixtape out of your own playlist featuring your favorite artists or songs. When your playlist grows in engagement your songs inside them also generate streams.

These are all organic ways to promote a new single or album on Spotify, independent artists can use without breaking their wallet. I would like to add a little note here, the user-curated playlist scene is a hit and miss if not dealt with diligently, some playlists have inflated numbers and could also be using bots.

I hope this article helps the readers in better understanding the Spotify Eco-System and provides them with some insights on how they can use the tools available to them to achieve a better reach for their original music.