Another week, another major announcement from Spotify.
Just a few short months after announcing a beta launch, Spotify has officially released its playlist submission feature. The new tool allows artists, labels, and teams to share new music directly with the company’s editorial team for playlist consideration.
In an announcement made through the company’s official blog, Spotify claims more than 67,000 artists and labels submitted music since the feature started being tested in July. They also say that their official playlists have added more than 10,000 artists for the first time thanks to the move.
Taking those numbers into consideration, it appears that artists who submitted content during the beta testing period had (roughly) a 1 in 7 chance of being added to a playlist. With the official release upon us, not to mention a fresh wave of promotion for the feature, it’s likely those odds will change as the number of daily/weekly submissions begin to rise.
To access the playlist submission feature, artists and their teams must first join Spotify For Artists, which offers musicians the ability to track their plays, view analytics, see fan base demographics, and most recently, the ability to upload music directly. The company suggests adding pre-release music as early as possible, preferably weeks before its set to go public, but not later than seven days before its street date. From there, artists select one song they believe in and fill out a submission form. Artists will need to choose several relevant genre and thematic tags, as well as offer insight into the story behind their music. A full description of the submission process, as explained by the Spotify editorial staff, can be found below:
Spotify also released several case studies to show the effects of successful playlist submissions. For example, 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.
How the streaming revenue of the artists studied changed after inclusion in the company’s playlists was not included in the Spotify case studies, but each undoubtedly saw an increase. The rise in total listeners also helps Spotify’s larger narrative regarding how its platform can raise an artist’s overall profile, which in turn should lead to more (or more significant) touring opportunities.
Spotify added that even when songs aren’t selected for playlists before their official release, 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.
In short, it’s worth the effort for artists to try their luck with playlist submissions.
A video promoting the new tool was also released alongside the official announcement. You can view it below:
