You’ve finished your dope track and it’s live, but now it’s time to figure out how to get your song onto Spotify playlists.

Releasing music as an independent artist has never been easier. So, easy, in fact, that thousands of people are doing it. This makes it much harder to get your music noticed. One method to get your music noticed by the masses is to get your songs featured in Spotify playlists.

Getting your music on Spotify playlists is one step to achieving your music dream. Whether it’s a commercial success or you’re just happy for as many people as possible to enjoy your music, Spotify playlists are a great way to get you there.

So many people find new music through the streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Playlists curated on these platforms, whether by in-house staff or other users with tastemaker status, generate massive followings and thereby get promoted by the platforms.

So, shall we talk about how you can get your music featured in these gigantic mixes?

Claim Your Professional Spotify Profile

Your first step should be to make sure that your profile looks professionally sound. Pun intended.

Make sure that you look like the real deal. To do this, verify your Spotify account by claiming your artist profile on Spotify for Artists (after you’ve released at least one song). That blue tick Spotify give you goes a long way in solidifying your online presence.

To cement the professionalism of your profile, get an artist bio in there. Be as authentic as possible and let your fans read about you for who you really are. People love to feel connected to other people, so use your bio to tell your story and what inspires you to do what you do.

In order to stay active and be present, you will find it beneficial to be beneficial to curate playlists of your own!

Reach Out to Playlist Curators

As we mentioned, there is Spotify staff who curate playlists, but there are also tastemakers – who are, essentially, Spotify’s version of YouTube/TikTok/Instagram Influencers. Reach out to tastemakers!

RouteNote has put together a fantastic list of tastemakers for those who don’t know where to look. But don’t just jump right in without a plan. Make sure you pick the right tastemakers that suit the genre you write within. Find out the right email as well as the real name of the curator. Research what music they promote, and actually follow their playlists.

For more information on how to contact influencers effectively, click here.

Make the Info About Your Music as Clear as Possible

The more information about your song that Spotify can access, it’s far more likely that Spotify will feature it in an official playlist.

Information such as what mood, location, or genre your music is best suited to is important. This tells them what playlists your music will best fit inside.

More importantly, they want to know that you’re a genuine artist and not a fraud streamer.

It’s also crucial to protect your rights via featuring all of the correct metadata. To understand why this is, check out our music publishing article!

Including the right metadata embeds your details into the track, and this traces the file right back to you.

This ensures all featuring artists, such as yourself and collaborators, gets the royalties owed to them per stream.

Music file metadata: artist, featuring artist, genre, year of recording, Source: LANDR Blog

Things you should include:

  • Track name
  • Artist name
  • Album name
  • Genre
  • Recording or release date

We recommend adding your email address in the “comments” or “additional information” section to fully secure yourself in that file. What can go wrong then, ay?

Market Your Music with Content Marketing

How you share your music outside of the Spotify app is equally as important as in the app. You need to make sure you’re noticeable.

Content marketing is the best way of doing just this.

Here are some quick tips:

Image Content

  • Shots of your studio
  • Shots of you with a fan or multiple fans
  • Shots of your latest live show
  • Any images of you partaking in another of your hobbies and interests
  • Posts of your upcoming release artwork

Video Content (Long Form)

  • “How I made this” tutorials
  • “Behind the scenes”/”day in the life of” videos
  • Recordings of your live shows & live streams

Specific Content (Short Form)

  • Amount of streams your new song has gained
  • Clips of any completed songs
  • Polls for your fans to vote on whihc songs you should release next

Competition Ideas (with exclusive content or show tickets as a prize)

  • “Like, Share and Comment This Post/Page” competitions
  • “Best fan photo”

Conclusion

The most important thing for you to be is active and present, Spotify and tastemakers are far more likely to feature your music if they can see you and can verify that you’re a real person without having to work too hard.

Content marketing is a great way to stay active online. In fact, it’s the most low-cost form of marketing there is because you can turn virtually anything into content. Just make sure it’s the right content for your brand.

Including the right metadata is important for a multitude of reasons, not least because it better protects your rights. The right metadata tells Spotify everything they need to know about the song. Both about you and what the character of the song is too.

Last, but not least, reach out to tastemakers! With the right method of communication, you can put yourself in a playlist – the tastemaker is just the gatekeeper. Contacting influencers is important, but there is also a particular way to go about it as we have linked above.

So, are you going to do the same old thing or are you going to get yourself in a playlist?

There are many factors when it comes to Spotify playlists, but one of them is simple: you need to make good music. The first step to making good music is using top quality samples!

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