Wendy Day of Rap Coalition explains that curated playlists are assembled by DJs, influencers, and brands outside Spotify's editorial teams. Placement can expose songs to thousands of listeners. Artists should research curators, verify promoters' track records, and pitch when a song is gaining momentum, not declining.
Chapters
Hi guys, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition here, and today's topic is a suggestion from Bo Money. He's a radio program director out of Houston, and I love me some Bo Money. So, um, Bo, I posted something on Instagram about playlists and curated playlists, and Bo was kind enough to go into my comments and say, hey, you should break this down, like, what do you mean by curated playlists? Not everybody knows what that means. And I love that he said that because sometimes I forget, you know, I do this all day every day, so I sometimes forget that what is a normal phrase to me may be, um, something that's not the norm. So a curate— curated playlist is a playlist that a person— and that could be a person like me or you or a DJ an influencer or a recording artist or an actor or a website or a restaurant. A curated playlist is just a playlist that somebody who likes music puts together. And right now there is a huge influx of artists trying to get on playlists, especially at Spotify, because when you get on a playlist however many people are subscribed to that playlist can potentially hear your song. So if you get on a playlist— and I don't mean the big ones that Spotify curates, they call them editorial playlists— I don't mean like Rap Caviar and Discover Weekly and the ones that are in-house. I mean the smaller Spotify playlists that are being curated by people outside of Spotify Spotify. So you could get on a playlist that has, you know, 10,000 subscribers or 100,000 subscribers, and your song can potentially be heard by those people. Because people that listen to playlists— and there's quite a few people that do, like half of the people on Spotify are checking out playlists, right? So the people that are listening to a playlist, they kind of let it play in the background, and they don't necessarily fast forward through every song. They might be doing something else, like working out. Home or working on the computer or driving, or, you know, they may be doing another task where they're listening to the music, but it's not their primary focus listening to the music. That might be cooking dinner and the music is playing in the background. But the great thing about getting on one of those curated playlists is that if they don't fast forward through your song, it's a great way for them to get familiar with your music. And if they like it, they'll go back into that playlist to see, you know, who's the artist that made that song that they really like. And they might go on to your Spotify page, or they might Google you, or they might find your Instagram page to find out more about you and see if you're an artist that they'd want to get to know a little bit better. Now, there are, um, some distributors will help you get on playlists. There are playlist promoters, people that you can pay. Be very careful if you're going to do that. Make sure the person is legit. Make sure that they actually have have access to the playlist and that they're working with people that they've got playlisted before. Like, really do your research. Make sure you're not just paying somebody $2,500 to get you on playlists and they only end up getting you on one or two that, that, you know, are inconsequential playlists. Um, you can go on and do the research. You can find out how many, um, how many, uh, subscribers they have, how many listeners they have, right there on Spotify, when you pull up the playlist, it'll tell you right at the top how many followers it has. You can even do a little bit of research to find out who the curator is, and you can reach out directly to that person if you don't want to pay a middleman to get you on that playlist. You can reach out directly to that person and build a relationship and see if you can get your song on the playlist. Bear in mind that the folks who run playlists, these curators, have like hundreds and hundreds of artists reaching out to them every day to get on one playlist where they may only have one or two slots that are changing. If your song does well on a playlist, it's going to stay there. If your song is getting a, a lot of skips, they're going to pull it off the playlist because they don't want music on their list that the fans aren't embracing, right? So again, you're gonna have to do a little bit of research to find out who these people are. That are curating. You're gonna have to do research if you want to hire somebody as a middleman to go to the, the curators that they have relationships with. Whatever you do in the music industry, you're going to have to do the research, find out who's legit and who's not. And in order to do that, you're going to need to be actively engaged in the music industry. You're going to have to find people that are doing this successfully and start building with them so that you can ask them, hey, is this person legit? Hey, have you ever utilized this person? Have you ever paid them to do a service for you? Were they good? Were they not good? What were your results? Um, if you can get to the in-house Spotify people, that's ideal because a lot of them know who the, the legit playlist promoters are because they're the people that are coming to them respectfully um, every week or every couple of days to pitch. Find out who they are. Talk to distributors. A lot of distributors will hire a playlist promoter if you have a song that has a little bit of movement behind it and they can get on a playlist. It's not easy to get on playlists. It should not be your first thing that you do. You should build a little bit of a buzz on your song. You should make sure your song is growing legs. And then get on, on the playlist once you've got a little bit of movement. It shouldn't be your first effort at promotion, getting on playlists, right? Um, if you're inside of Spotify getting on playlists, they've got algorithms that if your song is not on incline for 2 weeks in a row, it'll just automatically pull you out of the playlist no matter who the curator is. They can add you back in manually, but they can only do that 1 or 2 times. Again, if your song is on a decline, it's going to automatically get pulled out by the algorithm. So you want to go for playlisting when your song is growing and when it's on an incline, not when it's first starting and it's going through, you know, um, dips as to its popularity. So, um, that's— I just threw a lot at you. And thank you, Bow Money, for suggesting this. Um, I think this was a really important topic. And guys, this is not the end of you studying playlists, right? This is just like a 7-minute fucking video to whet your appetite. Now go do the real research. Go find out who the playlist curators are. Find out how people get on playlists. Find out who the playlist promoters are. Go do the research. This is just a 101 basic level. Here's what curation means. Here's what a playlist is. So now go do the hard work, and good luck with your career.
