Spotify launches its playlist submission feature to all artists

Spotify is making its playlist submission feature available to all artists on its platform, starting today. The feature, which was first introduced into beta this summer, offers musicians and labels a way to reach Spotify’s playlist editors – the increasingly important tastemakers who can make or break a new track or help an emerging artist reach an expanded audience.

For years, artists and labels had been playing a game of trying to get intros to the correct playlist editor – believing that if you could just reach the right person, you could sway them to get a new song selected for playlist inclusion.

The playlist submission tool aims to give artists a different means of reaching Spotify’s editors. Through the Spotify for Artists dashboard – the place where musicians can track their plays, view analytics, see fan base demographics, and now, upload music directly – they can now also send in songs for consideration.

Spotify says that over 75,000 artists are featured on editorial playlists every week, plus another 150,000 on its flagship playlist, Discover Weekly.

The company claims that it’s not quite as simple as throwing money around in exchange for being playlisted, of course. (But that insane Drake promotion led many to wonder if that’s true.)

All the new playlist submissions aren’t just going to a black hole, it seems. The company says that since the feature became available in July, more than 67,000 artists and labels have submitted music, and over 10,000 artists have been added to playlists for the first time.

The company didn’t say how many total submissions were included, however.

It offered a few examples of how being “playlisted” impacted streams, noting for example that when Gustavo Bertoni’s song “Be Here Now” was selected to appear on the Acoustic Morning and Fresh Folk playlists, his monthly listeners jumped from 7,000 to 617,000.

Alt-rock band Yonaka saw their numbers increase from 82,000 to 290,000 when they were added to New Music Friday, and the Dutch rapper Bryan Mg went from 4,600 to 33,000 monthly listeners after ending up on the La Vida Loca playlist.

The company also said that, even when songs aren’t immediately selected for playlists, having tracks submitted through the uploading feature with all their metadata included means they’re ready for inclusion on future playlists, if that comes to pass.

The robust set of features for artists through the Spotify for Artists platform – which will soon have a cross-platform music distribution tool as well, thanks to its recent DistroKid investment – is helping to differentiate Spotify from its competitors, including Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, and others.

Alongside the public availability of the playlist feature, Spotify released a couple new episodes of its original series, The Game Plan, which discusses how playlists work.

 

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