3 reasons Spotify playlist promoters are probably not the answer

Lucking into the right Spotify placement has certainly been known to rocket a career to success, but is sinking a bunch of time and money into playlist services really the best use of your marketing efforts?

Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

We’ve all seen how just one placement on the right Spotify playlist can take an unknown track and boost its streams into the millions. As a result, there’s now an entire business built around helping artists get placed on playlists. Officially, Spotify says that there’s no way that any of these playlist promoters are influential in getting placement on its own playlists, but there a many not directly connected with the platform that are just as powerful, so a playlist promoter might be beneficial there.

That said, you have to treat these services with caution since many break Spotify’s rules and could result in doing more harm than good, as many artists found that out the hard way when the platform purged thousands of songs at the beginning of the year. Paul Resnikoff of Digital Music News recently laid out some rules for getting on Spotify playlists, and I’ll provide my abridged version of them here.

1. Stay away from playlist services that use bots.

They may be cheap but the problem is that they’re easy for Spotify to spot. You risk spending your hard-earned money on empty streams that might threaten your long-term relationship with the platform.

2. If there’s even a chance that the playlist service isn’t legit, stay away.

You might think that you’re not making much money from Spotify right now anyway so there’s nothing to lose. The problem is that you never know when, where and how that next viral hit might come in the future. You can cost yourself substantial money if your account is banned because you used a scam service that Spotify identifies.

3. Maybe there’s a reason if the song isn’t gaining traction.

This one is my favorite. Your audience has a way of telling you what it likes and doesn’t like and sometimes we don’t listen. If a song isn’t taking off the way you think it should, maybe the reason is it’s just not resonating with your audience. Pouring money into promoting it via playlist promotion might not be the best strategy.

One of the leading indicators that something is amiss is if Spotify sees a large number of streams that appear out of nowhere overnight, and this is what many playlist promoters promise. Remember that Spotify may choose to take down all your music, not just the song in question. You have to ask yourself – is this really worth it?