As a musician, getting on Spotify editorial playlists can pretty much make or break a release. Getting a bunch of plays on a single won't necessarily translate into real-world fans, but looking at your stats and seeing that thousands of people from around the globe listened to your music feels pretty good. I'm a music producer myself, and a few weeks ago I got added to a big Spotify playlist. Until that point, it seemed unachievable, so I thought I might as well share my experience with you guys, and give you my "secret sauce" (yep, it felt gross writting that) and give you a step-by-step of how I got there.

A Clear Goal

I guess I should go back to 2019, that's when I started making chill lo-fi beats. At the time, I noticed that genre was pretty popular, I had some free time on my hands and, after honing my craft as a music producer for a couple of years, I thought I could probably knock some chill vibes to study to or whatever pretty quickly.

I got myself the right plugins and a bunch of Splice samples, I made a couple of beats and I uploaded my first track to Spotify. I wanted to make a coherent music project, so I gave some thought to what my album covers should look like, the format of my track titles, the level of humor I'd want to bring, etc.

I think this part is important because, the clearer you are on the identity of a project, the easier it is to cut through the noise. Spotify appears to use a lot of algorithms and AI business to pigeonhole artists. I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing, it's just something to consider.

I thought about my goals: the main thing I wanted was to get on editorial playlists one day. Because I knew what my goal was, all I had to do was look at people who were already there, consider what they did and replicate their method while having fun and doing my own thing.

Feeding the Machine

In my opinion, there's this misconception in the music industry that you absolutely need to create social media content to get somewhere. Don't get me wrong, connecting with people online is always a good way to get your music out there, but it comes with some drawbacks as well. It can sometimes feel transactional, and the people that will like your funny Instagram stories won't necessarily stick around to listen to your tracks.

There's a big but here though, I think creating content for a producer is essential, but that content should be singles and albums over memes.

With that in mind, starting a new project, I decided on a release calendar. I knew I could make a decent beat in a few days, so I could probably release at least a beat a month if I'm not too perfectionist about it. I got this idea looking at the producer Wun Two who releases a lot of music and, as a result, constantly shows up on my Release Radar playlist.

Like any other digital platform, Spotify is hungry for new content and if you can help feed the beast with cool, quality music, it will pay off.

Generating Buzz

“You've thrown a couple of tracks out there, now what?”

That's what I asked myself after having released a few singles.

The next step for me was getting my music heard. In general, I don't have a large following, and this was a brand new project, so no one knew it existed. I could ask my close friends to stream my tracks, but I needed a little push beyond that.

For that, I used Submit Hub, a cool website that lets you pitch your music to different influencers for a few bucks. This isn't one of those pay-for-bots scams, SubHub is actually a legit platform where you can connect with people that are passionate about curating good music.

It's easy to target playlisters in your exact niche and sort them by the metrics that are important to you. I'll let you find out more by yourself before this starts sounding like a paid advertisement (which it isn't).

For every track I release, I set aside about 40$ to pay for pitches. From what I've read on forums, not every musician manages to find placements through Submit Hub, but since I knew my music sounded OK and I was targeting a very specific niche, I was confident I'd get some results…

And I did.

I got placed on many playlists and, depending on the single, I got anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand plays. It wasn't much, but it felt very encouraging.

Consistency Is Key

I did this for about 2 years, pitching every release to Spotify through my Spotify for Artists profile. It always felt a little like throwing a penny in a wishing well, but my releases were getting more and more plays from one to the next. In the low thousands, but still enough to make me think I was probably starting to make a blip on the Spotify algorithm.

At the end of the summer, I released a track I especially liked. As usual, I pitched it to a few SubHub playlists and moved on with my life. I didn't look at my stats or my plays because I imagined it was doing pretty much the same as my other singles.

Of course, one day I opened my Spotify for Artists app and did a double-take. Instead of having a few hundred monthly listeners, I had tens of thousands!

That's when I realized I had been added to the editorial playlist Chill Lofi Study Beats, which has almost a million followers. From this playlist, I was eventually featured on another smaller Spotify playlist and a bunch of other independent ones.

The Aftermath

It's been a real thrill to see thousands of plays come in every day. It's always a special, very validating moment when I open my app around noon to see the previous day's numbers.

All this being said, I didn't really get more fans, social media followers or even Spotify followers. I know a lot of people saved my track to one of their personal playlists, which is encouraging, but I'm not exactly a star over here.

I think people listen to playlists the way they used to listen to albums. Just from my personal experience, there are some songs I've absolutely loved in recent years, and I don't know anything about the person who made them.

The singles I've released since the other popped have not performed exceptionally well, same as usual. I hope to get more singles on editorial playlists, and having one on there already probably doesn't hurt my chances, but there’s still no guarantee, which I'm OK with.

I just want to make the music I want to make. If it gets playlisted, I'll be happy, if it doesn't, who cares.

And before you asked, yes I made some cash, no it's not a fortune. So far I've made about 1000$, money that I didn't expect and that I'll probably reinvest in SubHub credits and Splice samples, but not nearly enough scratch to get me that mansion next to Drake's house… yet. (*sigh*)

Calculating

Maybe this can sound a little calculating. I did sort of start a musical project with the goal to get on Spotify playlists after all.

The thing I didn't get a chance to mention in this post so far is just how much fun I had making lo-fi beats in the past few years, and how long I had been listening to chill beats before I decided to make my own.

While one part of my brain was in business mode, the rest was focused on making music I'd want to listen to, which is what really matters to me.

If your make lofi or hip hop and you’re looking for some fresh plugin, check out my post about my favorite VST at the moment

If you’d like to check out my music and encourage me, you can do this here

COVER : Imtiyaz Ali