How to Submit Your Music to Spotify Playlists?

Artists and labels can now directly submit their music to Spotify’s directorial team for playlist consideration, offering an easier path to be visible on the platform.

Spotify is the most popular music streaming platform in the digital world, with more than 600 million monthly listeners. It is also the only audio-streaming platform with the biggest share in the market. This means that if an artist gets enough recognition from Spotify, making it big in the music industry will be much easier for them. At the same time, it also increases competition among artists, especially independent artists. Now to stay on the top, or even to get a decent amount of attention from Spotify listeners, making good music is not enough. Artists would need to promote their work on social media and apply other techniques so that they can make sure they are reaching out to the maximum audience. One such way is submitting music directly to Spotify playlists. 

For artists, especially independent artists, submitting a song to Spotify playlists can easily bring you more exposure and boost engagement with listeners. With the rise of streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music getting the music into playlists can be an absolute game changer for aspiring and emerging artists. Despite popular belief, editorial playlists of these streaming services including Spotify are not only secured for popular music and what is trending around the world. Especially on Spotify, the feature for playlist submission is meant to give everyone a fair chance. So let's see how you can take advantage of this system and get your music on the right track! 

    • Submit the song to Spotify editorial playlists:

    a) Signing up - 

The first step toward submitting your music to Spotify editorial playlists is signing up for Spotify for Artists profile- which every artist gets on the platform. Remember, on the platform, you will not be able to pitch for Spotify playlist submission if you do not have access, and you will not have access if you don't have a Spotify For Artists account. To get started, all you need to do is visit the official website and create an account that will be linked to your Spotify for Artists platform. Once you get this access, you will get your dashboard, and you will be able to see demographic data and streaming analytics. Most importantly, with this, you will be able to pitch your music for playlist submissions directly! Here you will find the music section under upcoming releases, where you will be able to pitch unreleased tracks even before they come out to the platform. 

    b) Crafting a pretty accurate pitch 

No playlist submission is ever done without pitching for it so you need to make sure that the pitch is highly accurate. This pitch needs to be sent out to the editorial team of Spotify, which already receives hundreds of pitches almost every day. So it is even harder for your pitch to stand out among the crowd. Most importantly, you only have 500 characters to convince them to listen to your submitted tracks. So let's be accurate, catchy, and efficient. Here, you would want the pitch to be clear and concise where you are clear about the song's style and genre. This is where the metadata is important as you will need to select details such as the mood of the track or what instruments are used in the composition. In the pitch, you can also add further exciting details about the story of the composition which might catch the attention of the editors. 

    c) The right time to pitch 

The right time to pitch your music to Spotify's editorial playlists is over 7 days before the actual release of the music. This means you need to set up the distribution of the track or the album even before. Only this will make your track available in the "Upcoming Releases" of Spotify for Artists. An important note to remember is that you cannot pitch for a track that has already been released on the platform - even if it gets re-released through an album after being released as a single. 

How do you get into Spotify's algorithmic playlists? 

    a) Data generation 

Unlike Spotify's editorial playlists, you cannot pitch directly to the algorithmic playlists. For these kinds of playlists, you cannot enter through Spotify Playlist Submission. To get into these, you need to generate data and get the attention of Spotify's algorithm. So when does this happen? The answer is when lots of people listen to your track, add it to different playlists, or share it on different platforms. This is when the algorithms notice and give your music priority. The more streams your music has, the more streams you will get. It is almost like a snowball effect. If your song is generating lots of data and streams, Spotify's algorithm will pick it up and target new audiences consisting of people who may like your music. To put it simply, you must have seen the "Fans Also Like" on Spotify's artist profile. If a new artist releases music, it will not be featured in this section. The reason is there has not been enough data collected on the track and how it is performing on the platform. 

    b) Ask people to follow your profile on Spotify 

In addition to generating lots of data on your new release, it is equally important to have followers on your Spotify profile. So start asking people, especially your followers on social media to follow you on the platform. At the same time reach out to your communities to ask them for a subscription on Spotify. When people follow you on Spotify, your new releases will automatically show up on their feed, increasing your streaming data. 

How do you get access to Spotify user-generated playlists? 

Not just submit your music to Spotify's editorial playlists, you also need to submit to user-generated playlists to get the maximum streams on your musical release. This is all part of the promotion which impacts the artist's reach of audiences. 

    a) Similar artists 

There are so many playlists on Spotify that are not editorial but user-generated. You don't need to just land on an editorial playlist to get the streams on the platform, a user-generated playlist with a big following number can boost your career like no other! But how to find big user-generated playlists of songs that fit your music style? You can do so by doing some of your research for similar artists in your genre or music style. When you go on Spotify and look for an artist, you will see which kinds of playlists feature their songs. Let's say you make EDM music. Now let's get into Spotify and search for artists who make EDM music. Then you will see what kinds of user-generated playlists have their music featured. Look these playlists up online and see if they accept playlist submissions. Now don't hesitate to reach out to them or send an email to them to feature your song. 

    b) Take help from The Tunes Club 

Upon research, you will also find several websites that add your music to similar user-generated playlists. The Tunes Club is one such website that will take your Spotify tracks add them to specially curated playlists and give you increased streams, all for free! The website has a huge variety of playlists, so it does not matter which style or genre you choose, they will have it listed for you. These specially curated Spotify playlists have hundreds and thousands of listeners and followers so adding your musical release to them would give it much more exposure. The website has been around in the industry for several years and has been helping aspiring new artists along with artists who are looking for more recognition in the industry get to their destination. The most amazing thing about The Tunes Club is that you can easily get into some of the most followed and listened-to playlists for free. 

    c) Pitching your song to other playlist curators

When you pitch your song to user-generated playlists, your logic should be the same as when you did the pitching for editorial playlists. So be specific and concise and make sure you are including any and every detail that might entice the reader to listen to your submission. While you are in it, make sure you are taking a personal approach. Industry professionals are pretty used to receiving generic mass emails. So you will increase the chances of getting a response if you take a different, more personal approach. 

    d) The right time for the pitch 

We would highly recommend you pitch your song to independent Spotify playlist curators on the day of the release or just after. This will allow the curators to have direct access to the Spotify URL release, which now exists, all thanks to the official release. Otherwise, you are taking the risk of them not considering your request as they cannot instantly add the track to their playlist when they like it. Independent Spotify playlist curators tend to have an easy and quick turnaround to add their tracks to curated playlists once they listen and appreciate it. 

How can you increase your chances of getting into Spotify playlists? 

One of the best things you can do to increase your chances of getting into playlists is to keep the platform's algorithm active. The more often you will release your music, the more engagement you will have in your profile. You can also use the Waterfall Strategy which means releasing successful singles before the album comes out to keep up the momentum. However, at the same time do not take your focus off of the quality of music that you are producing. None of these strategies or submissions will ever work out if you do not make quality music. 

Make sure you give quality music and promote it - equal importance. So happy playlist hunting!