Can you pay to get into Spotify playlists?
As part of my ongoing mission to throw money into thin air I decided to promote some of Corserines songs on Spotify. Objectives: increase monthly streams on my Spotify artist page so I can get picked up by Spotify algorithms better. Which in turn means I get on even bigger playlists which in turn means.er profit? Did it work? Getting your music onto playlists There are folks on Fiverr who will get your music onto 1934828 playlists for $$$ but I didnt choose this route as I feared they were crazy high risk. I used three pitching services: Soundcampaign, Groover and Submithub. The differences in the pitching services Groover and Submithub work much the same way: you pay about $2 or $3 to submit to an individual playlist curator. Soundcampaign works very differently: you select a genre(s) and declare a budget and the system comes up with a shortlist of curators for you which it then sends your track. But its much more expensive at about $9 per submission. You cannot target individual playlists with Soundcampaign which makes for a lucky dip experience (which I actually quite enjoyed truth be told). Relative success on each platform The cost per stream is my key metric and for that we observe Soundcampaign is the clear winner. How many streams you get depends on a few things
This is a red flag. Avoid these playlists. Some playlists tick all the boxes and some tick none On Submithub an approval went into a playlist which had over 2000 songs and 44 likes. I went in at position 200+ for only a few days. That playlist referred zero. The caveat here is that some approvals on Submithub are called Shout-outs and they are like the curator saying we really liked your track but we have no more room on our main playlist or somesuch a bit like baby Jesus. So you need to watch out for that. All my Submithub approvals were shoutouts. On Groover one of the approvals never got added to a playlist. So again, that playlist referred zero. An approval on Soundcampaign went in at position 50 of a 50 track playlist and was removed a day later. That referred 17 streams. My best success came with a playlist that had 69k likes and I went in at number 2. This was referring 100 streams per day. Important update March 14 >>>>>>>>>>>> Launched: Feb 21 2021 The reason Im updating the blog post is because of the 7 playlists the track was accepted, the song has since been removed from 4. Of the other 3, only one has referred any streams yet (3 Streams FML). To add hilarity, one playlist not only referred zero streams but has since removed the track too! Utterly fuck all use. So Id steer a wide berth round Soundcampaign; you just cant trust the integrity of the playlisters. The elephant in the room For all these streams the end goal is more followers and at the very least some saves of your track. I cant pick apart all the data because I dont have access to it all on Spotify. What I can say is that the big playlist of 69k likes and 100 streams per day I mentioned earlier has unusually poor user retention (23 saves for another song I was promoting) which complicates things yet further: is this a robot playlist I was added to?
And the number of followers I picked up? Maybe 10. Key finding Record labels I also ran into a few labels on my travels on Submithubs Hot or Not feature. More on that later. Pitching to blogs Pitching to Instagram influencers In praise of Submithub and its Hot or Not feature If you use the Hot Or Not function be prepared for a lot of potentially hurtful comments as the feedback is often anonymous (with thanks to the Submithub community for some of these):
So fair warning. But its also a way of forging new contacts since some reviewers let you get in touch with them. Ive gained a few followers this way. Another tangential benefit of the Hot or Not function are interactions with labels. Often times youll see a label favourably reviewing your track. And sometimes a label will flat out ask you for a track they like (before saying yes, make sure youre happy with what they offer). The Hot or Not function also has a chart where the best in the website are listed. Ive had a track go top 5 before but I wouldnt hang your coat on it as nothing happened: no labels knocking on my door, no world fame, not even a change in my social media stats. PS dont try and figure out how the chart is worked out: its baffling. All I do know is downvotes kill any chance you have of making the charts. La fin. So there you have my somewhat lengthy discussion on more adventures through music promotion. If this has been an interesting read, maybe you can follow Corserine on Spotify and make this experiment a totally 360 degree recursive loop of artist promotional weirdness? Part two Instagram adverts Share this:Related
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