Join The Queue…
Landing a track on one of Spotify’s key first-party playlists has never
been straightforward.
Over
20,000 songs are uploaded to the platform each day – and space on the likes of
RapCaviar, Viva Latino and Hot Country is notoriously limited.
Until
now, the old paradigm of the radio industry has certainly played a role: ie. if
music biz insiders can build relationships with the right Spotify insiders,
they’ll probably have a better shot of influencing which songs are placed
where.
Such
‘it’s who you know’ access to decision-makers feeds a structure which the
largest labels in the world understand and, in many cases, enjoy.
But
it may all be about to change.
Spotify is today (July 19) rolling out a new feature in beta which is
designed to democratize the process of getting playlisted by its 100-strong
team of global editors.
This
new tool allows anyone – whether artist, label or manager – to directly submit
their unreleased track for consideration on a Spotify playlist. (Labels submit
via the Spotify Analytics platform; artists/managers submit via their Spotify
For Artists account.)
The
submission process requires each party to contribute detailed information about
their track, including genre, mood, instruments used and whether it’s a cover
or an original composition.
After
that, the track effectively waits to be discovered; Spotify editors will
search through this new database to locate music which matches what they
require for their playlist selections.
Getting
playlisted, of course, is seen as an essential component of many labels’
release strategies, and it’s easy to see why.
According
to a note in Spotify’s recent financial documents, curated playlists
account for approximately 15% of the platform’s monthly content hours.
Today’s
Top Hits, meanwhile, has 20.8m followers – and a bigger active audience than
any US radio station.
“The
number one question we get from labels, artists and their teams is: who do I
speak to to get on Rap Caviar, Hot Country, Viva Latino, Ultimate Indie or
other Spotify playlists?,” said Nick Holmsten, Vice President of Content
& Global Head of Shows & Editorial, Spotify.
“We’ve
listened to feedback from the creative community, and developed a new feature
that enables them to easily submit unreleased music for playlist consideration
to our entire worldwide team of playlist editors.”
Spotify
says there are other benefits to the new upload process – regardless of whether
an act gets chosen for a playlist.
The
information submitted will contribute to personalized recommendations. And
as long as you tag and submit your track seven days in advance, the song you
select will automatically appear in every one of your followers’ Release Radar
playlists.
In a blog post,
Spotify reiterated that it never accepts commercial benefits in exchange for
playlist inclusion.
It added: “With more than 75,000 artists featured on editorial
playlists each week, and another 150,000 on Discover Weekly, we know how
important it is to get this right.
“We’ll continue evolving this feature based
on your feedback, so artists, labels, managers and partners can all help us
create better playlists for Spotify listeners.”Music Business Worldwide
Article
Attribution: Music Business Worldwide