The Allure of the Playlist

In today's music industry, Spotify playlists are often touted as the holy grail of success and discovery. Landing a spot on a popular editorial or algorithmic playlist can undoubtedly lead to more streams and listeners.

This promise draws in dozens of artists and labels who pay for playlist pitching software, PR firms, and aggressive outreach in hopes of landing the aforementioned magical placement. Is this focus sustainable, however, or possibly a trap?

The Hidden Costs of Chasing Placements

While the potential to be tapped is clear, excessive third-party playlist dependence has significant, long-term, and often underappreciated drawbacks:

• Paying For Somebody Else's Ecosystem : In reality, instead of having your own engaged ecosystem of playlists, listeners, platform profiles, and ways of getting in direct contact with fans.
  
  You end up paying for somebody else's ecosystem. What most artists do not know is playlist curators use the funds they get from playlist submissions on advertisements to grow the playlist. They use websites that use "Tokens" as a way to get around Spotify Terms Of Service like Submithub, Groover, Playlist Push, and others that are used as loop holes to allow spotify curators to accept payments for placements.

  
  At it's heart there is nothing wrong with this, but it's far from sustainable or profitable in the longer term for artists, managers and labels looking to grow & scale.

  
  

• Transient Outcomes: Getting put on a top playlist can be a short-term fix, but it does not typically lead to long-term fan base expansion. Listeners use the playlist, not necessarily the specific artists included in it. As soon as your song is taken off, the streams vanish.

  
  

• Lack of Data & Control: When your song gains momentum on someone else's playlist, you don't have much data on who those listeners are. You don't own the audience relationship or the data, so it's basically impossible to retarget them or make a direct connection.
  
  

• The Payola Problem & Bot Risks: The pay-for-play wild west of paid playlist placement is fraught with risk. All but a few of the services guarantee placement but offer streams from bots, not humans. This not only squanders your cash, but it also gets your account flagged on Spotify, damaging your reputation on the platform. Authentic "pay-for-play" breaks Spotify's terms of service.
  
  

• Resource Drain: Time, effort, and money spent in constantly searching for the next placement can leach resources away from more sustainable, long-term growth initiatives.

The Strategic Alternative: Building Your Owned Ecosystem

Rather than constantly pursuing other people's evasive placements, the emphasis should be placed on creating assets that you own and control. This is where real growth happens.

This allows you to grow on the platforms users love, all while planning to move off of them in the long term by utilizing email, phone and other forms of opt-in functions. Allowing you to bypass the third parties & platforms whose algorithms make it so difficult to reach those who already expressed interest. Retargeting users who become listeners, and you know are engaged and interested in your brand, style, etc.

What does that look like?

• Owned Playlists: Creating and continuously promoting your own branded playlists makes you a host, not a guest. It allows you to set a mood, speak directly to listeners, and, most importantly, gather important audience data.
  
  

• Strategic Promotion: Utilizing focused ads and content strategies to get your listeners to your music and to your playlists, as compared to standard third-party ones.
  
  

• Data Leverage: Taking advantage of the data from your owned assets and focused efforts to understand your people, build lookalike audiences, and retarget engaged listeners with new music releases, merchandise, or show news.

Pushing Past A Placement: Focusing on Real Growth

It's easy to get streams. Genuinely. But it requires planning to get streams from real listeners who turn into long-term fans. As much as featured playlists are pleasant, they can't be your marketing anchor. The only thing they can live on is largely out of your hands.

The future of the music industry isn't just ownership of your royalties, media & IP.
It's in owning your own promotion. Having in-house first party data and being able to grow and scale your ecosystem on your terms.

Whether it's your first release, or your 50th it's never too late to start building your own.