In this streaming era, let’s be honest - you can’t ignore the importance of getting on playlists - because ultimately, you need the exposure! You want people to listen to your music - you’ve already invested time and money into creating it right? In the last blog, I looked at services that charge - in this one I am looking at free options. Yes it’s time intensive but it can pay off. I’ve focused on services that will work for Black music.
Soundplate
This is a service run by an independent record label and music tech company (they also do smart links for releases). You don’t need to sign up or sign in or anything, which is great as it makes it more accessible. Use the filters to select your genres and the relevant playlists show up. You need to submit one at a time, which is the time consuming part! You can analyse the playlists and check if they are a good fit for your track, which is handy. There are a fair few clicks to submit - which slows things down, but all you need is the Spotify link.
It’s a free service so there are no updates on what is happening with your submission. It’s best to keep an eye on your Spotify for Artists to see if your track has been listed. Of course it’s 50/50 but I’ve had a track picked up by playlists via Soundplate and generated around 3k streams - so it’s worth doing! Definitely a thumbs up for this one!
Daily Playlists
This is definitely the easiest service to use. You need to sign in with your Spotify for Artists as it picks up your profile from there. When you submit the link it reads the file for you. Once you have confirmed, you need to set your filters by genre, which then brings up all the relevant playlists in order of followers. You can submit to up to 20 playlists each time. Simply select your 20 and press submit - it’s simple as that! You can even see the progress of your tracks and you do get a notification email when your track is declined or approved.
The downside is that your track can be pending for months on end. I’m not sure if some of the playlisters are even active! However, out of the 20, you will get a notifiication on around 5 playlists. I’ve not had great results on this to be honest and it is a long game. Every two weeks or so you can submit to 20 new playlists so if you have the patience, you can literally keep going!
Indiemono
These playlists are run by an independent record label (of sorts) and serve a variety of genres. It’s pretty easy to use, filter by genre, select which playlist you want to submit to, check out the description and submit if you’re happy with it. You do have to submit one by one, which can be time consuming but hey, it’s free!
The downside is there are no updates provided on whether your music has been accepted or not, just keep an eye on your Spotify for Artists to see if it has been placed. The playlists in the ‘Urban’ category are also a bit questionable. There are so many genres and sub genres that can come under the category Urban, that it becomes too random when they aren’t categorised properly. There are playlists called Sad Trap, New Rap, Today’s Hip Hop etc that are quite ambiguous. So it may take some time to do some digging around how effective they really are.
Ditto
They have an open submission - they run 10 playlists, with genres ranging from Afrobeat to Drill. It’s free and easy to submit - you will be asked to follow their playlist (which is fair enough!) and socials to unlock the submission form. The Rap and Drill playlist has over 14k likes and currently has 92 songs (from my observation mainly from well known artists.) I’ve not had a track picked up by Ditto yet and I’ve submitted a fair few - but it’s always worth a shot because you never know!
The downside is like some of the others, you don’t get notified as to whether or not your track has been picked up, you just have to keep an eye on your Spotify for Artists. Here is the link to try your luck.
Finding independent curators
This is worth doing if they reply! Some of them may want money though. It’s kinda up to you to figure out if their playlist is worth a charge. If it’s full of sub standard music that people have paid to be in - naaaah! Do some searches on Spotify - UK Trap playlists, UK Drill playlists etc and see what comes up.
Look at the amount of tracks in the playlist
Look at the follower count
Go to the artists profile and check the plays on the track
Note the playlist owners name and look them up on socials
This is a good way of building up a direct relationship with playlist curators. What can you offer them in return? Think about how you can help them. Make it transactional - can you get them more followers? If you want to build up a longer term relationship, you’ll need to come up with ways of keeping the interaction going in between releasing music. The obvious downside of this is the time it takes to find the playlists and track down the curators - then they may or may not reply! Can you get a friend to help out? In the longer term it will definitely pay off! Having a group of curators that will sort your releases, is very valuable.
Good luck with your submissions and let me know how it goes.
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