Finding the perfect playlists for your music on Spotify is important for growing that song’s streams, gaining new fans, and reaching a wider audience as an artist.
With thousands and thousands of playlists available (and not all playlists being made equal), this process can quickly become overwhelming and frustrating for us artists.
That’s why it’s essential to use best practices, effective strategies, and cutting-edge tools like PlaylistSupply to identify lots (and lots) of high-quality playlists without wasting any of our very limited time.
In this guide, we will be going into detail for the first 2 steps of the proven 3-part process of getting your music on the right Spotify playlists:
- Finding the right playlists & legit playlist curators for your playlisting campaign
- Making sure the playlists you’ve chosen are high quality (& worth your time)
- Reaching out to the best playlist curators using modern automation AND traditional networking
By putting into practice what you’ll learn here, you can maximize your chances of success on Spotify and get your music on the playlists you need to get your music the attention it deserves.
Step 1: Find The Right Playlists & Curators For Your Playlisting Campaign Using PlaylistSupply
Finding the right playlists and good playlist curators to feature your music is crucial, but with thousands and thousands of playlists to choose from, the process can be overwhelming and even frustrating.
By focusing on the right playlists, using tools like PlaylistSupply, and some good ol’ fashioned thinking outside the box, you can identify Spotify playlists that will actually place your music and get you the results you want.
Here are 4 key tips for finding the right playlists for your Spotify playlist campaign:
1. Focus on playlists with 1-15k followers
It can be tempting to focus on large playlists, but you can dramatically increase your chances of getting your music placed by reaching out to playlists with a modest follower count between 1,000 and 15,000.
The 1-15K follower count is the sweet spot where you’ll find playlists that are more open to discovering new music but will still get your music streamed enough to move the needle.
By targeting a greater number of smaller playlists, you can reach several more engaged and niche audiences as well as diversify your streaming sources at the same time.
2. Look for playlists that have featured similar artists to you
One of the best playlists to reach out to are playlists that are already featuring music that is similar to yours (since they will be more likely to want to add your music to their playlist).
You can even save precious time scanning through artist profiles and looking up playlist curator contact info by using PlaylistSupply’s “Similar Artist” function.
This powerful tool allows you to effortlessly create a list of playlists that have featured music from any artist you type in with the curator’s contact info right there for you.
3. Filter your results with Playlist Supply’s Second Search Bar:
To refine your search further, PlaylistSupply has a second search bar you can use to narrow down your initial search and make sure you are only looking at the most relevant and useful playlists.
For example, if you’re a hip-hop artist, enter “Hip Hop” in the main search bar and use terms like “Jazz,” “Workout,” or “Lofi” in the second search bar to filter the results for your sub-genre or niche.
By experimenting with different keywords or phrases that relate to your music, you can be hyper-specific in finding playlists with specific vibes or themes that match your unique sound.
4. Think outside the box
It’s also important to go beyond the obvious genre-specific playlists to make all your bases are covered and no potentially game-changing playlists are left behind in your search.
While searching for playlists, consider using keywords related to:
- Languages
- Cities
- Venues
- Activities
- Instruments
- TikTok Trends
- Hashtags
- Emotions / Moods
Take a look at some of the playlists you personally follow for inspiration – you’ll quickly notice how many are named after moods or activities as opposed to flat-out labeling the genre of the playlist!
Step 2: Make Sure You’re Reaching Quality Playlists By Using PlaylistSupply
Not all playlists are created equal and as an artist with limited time, money, and energy, there is no way you can spend all of your days reaching out to every playlist curator under the sun.
This is exactly why it’s so essential to make sure that you only spend your precious time targeting playlists that are high-quality, relevant to the music you make, and have an active, engaged, and growing audience.
Let’s explore my 3 favorite strategies that will help you identify the highest-quality Spotify playlists that are actually worth your time reaching out to.
1. Choose playlists that are current and frequently updated
When you find a playlist that has been updated recently it is (usually) a positive sign that the curator is actively managing their playlist and adding fresh content.
This is often a good signal that the followers of that playlist are also active and are likely to engage with any new song added to that playlist (aka the song you’re pitching to ‘em!).
The most straightforward way to find out if a playlist has been updated recently is by scanning the playlist to see how long ago the most recent song(s) was added.
To save time, you can look for a recent “Last Modified” date when using a tool like Playlist Supply so that you can efficiently increase your chances of connecting your music with an engaged audience.
This is important because outdated playlists may be an indicator that the curator won’t get back to your pitch or that the followers of that playlist aren’t listening to that playlist anymore.
Either way, this can (but not always) be a red flag that you’re wasting your time on reaching out to that playlist curator or that your song may not get the exposure you’re hoping for if it does get added.
2. Choose playlists with high Popularity Scores
You may be aware that individual songs get assigned “Popularity Scores” by Spotify, but did you know that each playlist gets assigned one of these scores as well?
Normally this stat is hidden but you can use PlaylistSupply’s “Popularity Score” metric when evaluating playlists and building your own playlist database:
By reviewing a playlist’s Popularity Score, you’ll be able to gain valuable insight into a playlist’s overall appeal, how niche or mainstream a playlist is, and what your chances of getting added to that playlist are.
Most importantly, having your song added to playlists with higher scores can increase your chances of that song triggering algorithmic playlists like Release Radar, Discover Weekly, and Radio.
3. Keep track of playlist activity over time
One of the most reliable ways to determine the quality and activity of a playlist is to track changes in followers, track count, and overall updates to that playlist over time.
You can either do this manually by tracking these changes per playlist in a spreadsheet or you can do this with a single button by using the “Update” function in PlaylistSupply’s Playlist Directory:
A playlist that consistently adds new tracks and gains followers is a positive signal that the curator is actively growing their playlist and keeping their followers active and engaged.
On the other hand, a stagnant or declining playlist may indicate a lack of engagement or curator interest.
By using the Update function, you can make informed decisions about which playlists to target and ensure that you’re investing your time and effort in playlists that are actually worth getting added to.
Bonus Tip: How To Find Spotify “Discovered On” Playlist Curators With PlaylistSupply’s Organic Search
You can also use the “Organic Search” feature in PlaylistSupply to automatically track down playlist data from any artist’s “Discovered On” section.
Discovered On is a section of any Spotify artist profile that lists the most popular playlists that the artist has been on in the last 28 days. These playlists are driving the most streams and monthly listeners for the artist and are ranked from most streams to least.
This can save you hours of work hunting down playlists and playlistters that are actually high quality and relevant to your music without spending an arm and a leg on dedicated Spotify promotion services.
To learn how you can hack any artist’s “Discovered On” Spotify playlists in a few simple steps, check out this article called Spotify’s Discovered On Section & Playlists Explained.
Step 3: How To Use Modern Automation AND Traditional Networking To Reach Out To Playlist Curators In 2023
Once you’ve found the right playlists to reach out to and have taken the additional step of making sure that they are high-quality playlists that are worth your time…
The next step is to actually reach out to those playlist curators and make sure you get your song placed!
The best way to do this is to combine 3 powerful tricks:
- Use modern automation tools to automatically reach out to all of the playlist curators on your list at once.
- Use those same tools to automate the follow-up of your outreach to make sure your pitch doesn’t go unnoticed.
- Use good old traditional networking techniques to make real connections with these curators and build long-lasting relationships with them.
In particular, you can use a free tool like GMass to automate not only the first reach out to your database of Spotify playlist curators but also the follow-up as well.
GMass allows you to connect a Google Sheet to your Gmail account so that you can send emails in bulk in just a few steps as opposed to manually reaching out to each curator.
Beyond that, you can also explore using modern AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, or Jasper to help you quickly write the emails that you send to the curators.
How To Get Started Automating Your Spotify Playlist Strategy Using PlaylistSupply
There are ultimately 3 different ways you can get on Spotify playlists:
- Directly reaching out to the playlist curator by getting their contact info
- Using pay-for-play tools that get your music in front of curators
- Paying for a company to get your music on these types of playlists for you
A tool like PlaylistSupply allows you to get your music on these playlists by streamlining and speeding up the process of finding a playlist curator’s contact info.
PlaylistSupply uses an algorithmic AI to allow you to track down Spotify playlists that are highly specific or relevant to your music and only show the playlists that have contact information like an email address or social media profile available.
To make sure the playlist you are looking at is worth getting on to, you can actually view when it was last updated in addition to its popularity (based on the Spotify Popularity Index), # of followers, and what tracks are currently playlisted.
If you want to save precious time building up your very own database of playlist curator’s contact information, click here to check out PlaylistSupply.
And if you want to learn more before diving in, be sure to check out my big juicy PlaylistSupply Review to learn even more about ‘em. 🙂
