Today’s Top Independent Spotify Playlist Curators: A List

Much is made of official Spotify curated playlists and the importance of getting your music on them, but there are also a number of independent playlists with broad reach and massive followings on the platform worth pitching your music to. Here we look at the top 25.

Guest post by Rutgers Ansley Rosenborg of Chartmetric

Here are 25 of today’s top independent Spotify playlist curators. While we can’t tell you how to contact Spotify playlist curators, we can help you investigate for yourself.

For many artists, landing on a big Spotify playlist like Today’s Top Hits or RapCaviar is a dream. But getting there usually means finding success elsewhere first, whether it’s on the TikTok charts or on influential Spotify playlists that aren’t curated by Spotify or major record labels.

Today’s playlist ecosystem is actually quite similar to the structure of the music industry writ large, with a handful of influential corporations at the top and a diverse array of independent companies and individuals filling in the rest.

Generally speaking, any curator who generates Spotify playlists will fit into one of three distinct categories.

1) Editorial: Spotify employees, algorithms, and proprietary recommender systems

2) Major Label: Filtr (Sony Music Entertainment), Digster (Universal Music Group), and Topsify (Warner Music Group)

3) Non-Editorial: independent Spotify playlist curators like the 25 companies or individuals you’ll find in the table below, plus brands, artists, and everyday users

For emerging artists, getting added to editorial playlists is likely the ultimate goal, but non-editorial playlist adds can be a very important — and usually more achievable — step toward that goal. It’s also important to note, however, that many independently curated non-editorial playlists can be just as important for an artist’s career as a contextual editorial playlist like Beast Mode or Songs to Sing in the Shower is.

Just remember: Always avoid playlist payola, and do your own research on curators and their playlists before reaching out. Not only will they respect you more and be more likely to add your track, but you’ll also be saving yourself from a lot of rejection and wasted time!

With that in mind, here are 25 of today’s top independent Spotify playlist curators, filtered by most playlist followers gained in the last 28 days, as of mid-June 2020.

We’ll continue to update this list every month, but in the meantime, while we can’t necessarily tell you how to contact Spotify playlist curators or provide you with a direct line to these curators, we do provide a filter that allows you to see which curators have social URLs. From there, you can investigate for yourself on their Chartmetric curator profiles.

We also have a Playlist Journeys feature that gives you an idea of the smaller playlists that tend to feed into larger playlists — and what non-editorial adds might get you onto that editorial playlist you’ve always dreamed about.

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