HOW TO GET YOUR MUSIC ON SPOTIFY’s DISCOVER WEEKLY PLAYLIST ?

Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist is an algorithmic playlist with a sole purpose of recommending never heard before songs to users. Every Monday the playlist is refreshed with 30 new songs which users may have never heard before, The Discover Weekly is one of the most successful music recommendation tools out there, it absolutely works like a charm. The Discover Weekly playlist is completely algorithm driven with no human element present in the curation process at all.

Spotify Users Have Spent Over 2.3 Billion Hours Streaming Discover Weekly Playlists Since 2015, from the Artist perspective The Discover Weekly plays a fairly important role in finding your music new ears thus driving algorithm backed discovery for Artists.

The Discover Weekly driven streams for Artist over their career span could be anything between 10 to 20 percent of their total streams. The total share of all algorithm driven playlists could be as high as 1/3rd of all streams for a song, and the Discover weekly is one of Artist’s best friends to drive those discovery streams.

How to Land your new Song Release on Spotify’s Discover Weekly ?

The Discover Weekly placement could take anywhere between 3 to 8 weeks from the release date to kick in. I have seen the Discover weekly kicking in as early as 2 to 3 weeks from release date and as late as 10 weeks, but the first 4 weeks after the release day is absolutely crucial if you want your song to land a Discover Weekly slot.

The song has to be pushed through all fronts in the first 4 weeks to get some traction on the Spotify platform, as of now we know that Spotify’s machine learning considers a plethora of factors to curate the Discover Weekly playlist.

The main factors Artists need to take into consideration when trying to land on Discover Weekly would be :

Saves Rate - The save rate is the number of times somebody saves a song to their Spotify library divided by total number of listeners (a save is defined by Spotify as when a user saves a song to their library or adds it to one of their own playlists btw).

Skip Rates - Skip rates is basically when a user skips a song before 30 seconds of it being streamed. Although there is no metric available to know the skip rates of a song, there are some ways to avoid higher skip rates. (more on this later)

Engagement - Engagement means how the user is engaging with a particular song, it could be in the form of sharing the song on their Instagram Story or may be sharing the song over whatsapp or Facebook.

There could be other factors responsible for a Discover weekly placement but we don't know for sure since Spotify hasn't publicly shared much information regarding this.

How to achieve higher Save rates, lower skip rates and more engagement on your song?

Increase your Save Rates -

Encourage your fans and supporters to save your new release in their library or one of their playlists. If you don’t have a large following try running giveaway contests where you giveaway something for free to get more of those saves on your song. It could be a piece of merch or maybe a free download of your song or a free ticket to your next live performance.

Small Independent Playlists - Playlists are like the official currency of Spotify, the whole Spotify ecosystem is built around playlists. Independent Playlists are playlists owned by users and some of them have a huge following. Try to land your song on smaller Independently curated playlists relevant to your song’s genre/niche. Relevance is key here, you don’t want your EDM song on a Techno playlist, this would lead to lower save rates.

Run Facebook Ads - Facebook and Instagram Ads could be a great tool to boost your next release. Driving traffic from Facebook or Instagram helps you in two ways - the first would be you are driving outside traffic to the Spotify platform and in today’s attention economy these platforms love user attention and traffic. The second would be if you're doing the Facebook ads the right way and reaching the right audience then there are high chances they will end up saving the song in their library or playlist.

Artist Playlist - These are playlist owned and curated by the artists themselves, so don’t forget to add your song to your playlist. Try to promote this playlist and grow the following.

How to Lower your Skip Rates ?

There is no metric provided by Spotify to know whether someone is skipping your song in the first 30 seconds of it being played. Although there are some ways you can ensure lower skip rates.

Avoid Irrelevant Playlists - At all times you would want to avoid irrelevant playlists, you don’t want your EDM song on a Bollywood or a Hip Hop playlist.

First 15 Seconds is the holy grail - The user attention span is getting lower everyday, why do you think Short Video platforms like Tik Tok and Reels are doing so well. Your song needs to grab the attention of the user in the first 15 seconds, here is a research on Spotify user Skip Rates -

24.14 percent likelihood of skipping to the next song in the first 5 seconds.

28.97 percent in the first 10 seconds

35.05 percent in the first 30 seconds

48.6 percent skip before the song finishes

Increase your Song’s Engagement Rate

Dope Artwork - A artwork is the first and only visual touch point between a user and a song. A well designed and thought out artwork could lead to higher engagement rates for your song.

Blog Coverage - Blog coverage could help a song get more engagement on the song, Spotify embeds on blogs not only helps in discovery but also could lead to higher engagement rates for a song.

Use Spotify Canvas - Spotify Canvas is vertical video format content which can be attributed to a song. Canvas is a new video tool introduced by Spotify, it's usually 3-8 seconds long with a 9:16 ratio. Well, according to Spotify, artists who use Canvas see significantly higher engagement from listeners, quoting stats like “track shares are up by as much as 145 percent on average, playlist adds are up by 20 percent, streams increase by five percent, and artist profile visits are up by nine percent.”

Encourage your Fans - Encourage your fans to share your song on social platforms.

So guys these are some of the ways you can try and get your song to land on the Discover Weekly playlist. The Spotify Ecosystem is an ever evolving ecosystem. These methods I talked about have helped in the past but it is speculative. The key is to have a 360 plan to push your song with full force through all available channels you have at your disposal. Be persistent and creative, there is no shortcut and don’t hesitate to experiment.