When artists compare playlist pitching platforms, they mainly look at the surface: the price, other artists’ reviews, and sometimes a YouTube video about someone’s experience with a platform. However, there are several other important factors to consider. The platform you choose plays a big role in the results you achieve. Finding the right platform with motivated curators and an efficient pitching strategy is something many artists tend to overlook. In this guide we’ll explain why these factors matter and introduce PlaylistsForYou, a platform where curators can reinvest up to 80% of their earnings into their playlist activity.
1. Finding motivated curators
Most submission platforms are a good way to connect artists and curators. They can provide value by keeping bad (botted, or low engagement) playlists away. Submission platforms often don’t mention that their curator payout also has a major impact on an artist’s results. If a platform only gives 30% of its revenue to their curator network, at best, that percentage can be invested back into the playlist activity you get from those curated playlists. This LIST shows 19 submission platforms and their curator payout, which found that Playlistsforyou has the best curator payout.
2. Better playlist-matching to prevent wasted budget
An important decision for every playlist submission platform is Editorial Pitching vs Independent Curator Pitching. Some submission platforms allow artists to choose exactly which playlists they want to pitch (curator pitching). While this gives artists full control, it also puts the responsibility for playlist research on artists, who are often unfamiliar with the playlists on a submission platform. If they mis-classify their song as dream pop instead of lo-fi pop, they might waste a lot of budget on the wrong curators. Even if an artist pitches to playlists with the right genre tag, two “Indie Pop” playlists might sound nothing alike, with one being happy and the other more moody, making it easy to submit your music to the wrong curators.
If your songs are pitched by people who have worked with the same curator network for years, the same process becomes smoother and more budget-friendly (editorial pitching). According to PlaylistsForYou, artists typically see acceptance rates between 10% and 25%, depending on genre, production quality, and song fit.
3. Playlist pitching to celebrate a release
Every independent artist tries to promote their music one way or another, and sadly, without marketing, your song is likely to be overshadowed by more than 60,000 tracks being uploaded every day. Due to these staggering numbers, submission platforms tend to forget that your song release is something worth celebrating. The rejection feedback can be useful in specific cases, but only when curators have a lot of experience creating, or analyzing songs. Otherwise, it is just a downer on an otherwise festive day. Most curators also just want to find good playlist additions. PlaylistsForYou tries to make the playlist pitching process more fun, and in their Artist Dashboard the focus is on celebrating your release and highlighting the successes you’ve achieved with your song. You get a list of all the playlists that added your song and display their placement position so you can check out all these playlists yourself, or in your Spotify For Artists dashboard.
Conclusion
There are a lot of playlist pitching platforms, and even more different approaches on how artists pitch your music. We would suggest using a platform that allows high curator investments into their playlists. It’s also important to focus on a pitching strategy that uses your budget most effectively. Finally, don’t forget that it is important to celebrate your new track’s release. In the end most of us are also releasing music because it is a passion, and we want to share our talent with the world.
