Spotify Playlists: Not Just For Best-Selling Artists

Here Morgan Troper outlines what artists can do to get their music on an “official” Spotify playlist, and why these curated lists are actually more accessible to mid and lower tier artists than one might think.

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Guest post by Morgan Troper of Repost

When I worked for an independent music distributor, the bulk of calls I received from our clients concerned playlisting. Everyone wanted to know how to get on Spotify’s most popular playlists.

Just because I got this call a lot doesn’t mean it’s a bad question. In fact, I’d say the opposite is true—the answer to this question can seem almost deliberately obscured, and up until recently, playlisting seemed almost entirely gated off to successful artists, those with industry connections, or label backing.

Though it’s by no means a guarantee that you’ll get your song onto a Spotify playlist, the platform makes it pretty easy these days to at least submit a song to their editorial staff for playlist consideration. (It’s important to note: By “playlists,” I am referring to the official playlists that Spotify’s editorial staff curates, not their user-generated counterparts. Anyone can make those, and you can add any song on Spotify to them.)

In order to submit a song for playlist consideration on Spotify, you will first need distribution through Repost to ensure that the song is on their platform. You’d be surprised at how many artists assume that their songs are automatically on Spotify by virtue of…existing. But if you have an upcoming release and no digital distribution, strongly consider signing up with Repost, who will send your music to Spotify and the rest of our digital partners.

This is where the more nuanced part comes into play—in order to submit a song for Spotify playlist consideration, it needs to also be an upcoming, currently unreleased song, and you need to already have claimed and verified your Spotify For Artists page. Once you’ve done that, you can submit the song for playlist consideration from within your Spotify For Artists dashboard. The song also needs to be submitted to Spotify at least a week in advance, although your chances of landing on a playlist are higher the more time you give Spotify’s editorial staff.

Repost offers additional playlisting services through their platform to help artists break through. If you think you might be a good fit click through to get started!

Morgan Troper is a Portland-based writer, producer, and musician with over 10 years of industry experience. He is the co-founder of the independent record labels Good Cheer Records and Day to Day Records