These are playlists made by real human beings that don’t work at Spotify.
It will definitely be easier to get into one of these than into the Spotify-owned ones. And, it will be cheaper if not free. There are some tools I will talk about later in the guide, but basically, you need to do some research and some self-PR here to contact and submit your tracks to those curating these playlists.
Finding playlists is extremely easy with our included directories. We’ve already located the contact info for thousands of playlists. If you want to find even more playlists, here’s an easy method.
Paying for playlist exposure is generally frowned upon just as paying for radio exposure was 20 years ago. There is even a specific term for it, "payola". The reality is that paying for exposure is a common practice in the industry. People deserve to be compensated for advertising a product whether it's your song or a new fancy toothbrush.
Generally, the best playlists charge a fee and it can be expensive because the top spots in the playlist are limited.
Rates tend to decrease below the top 5 and anything below 20 is all going to get the same amount of exposure. Most listeners below spot #20 are coming from shuffle or they've just left the playlist running.
How much should you pay? From our experience, we've found that buying placements towards the bottom of a playlist that lasts for an extended time, in a playlist that fits our song, have the most algorithmic benefit in the long term. That being said, if you want a quick boost of streams on release day, that #1 spot is going to be most effective. A quick boost on release can also be effective for the algorithm. Experiment with it! Release a couple of singles and try a few different approaches, see what works for you!
We've paid between $25 and $750 for single playlist placements. If you've worked with the playlist before and you know their playlist is extremely active, that #1 spot might be worthwhile on your release day. You definitely won't earn $500 worth of streams from it, but if the playlist listeners match your target audience, their engagement with your song can tell the algorithm to show your song to thousands of similar listeners. Many curators will charge a varying rate based on how high up the playlist you want to be. Spots #20 to #1 are increasingly worthwhile. Any number below 20 is equally valuable because most of the listeners at this point are just letting the playlist run or using shuffle. Spot #35 is not really worse than Spot #22. You will get similar results.
Start with a few small paid placements and see how it goes, the results might surprise you!
Finding legitimate playlists has actually become very difficult because playlisters are incentivized to fake their numbers so they can charge more money per placement.
The simple way to tell if a playlist is legit would be to go to the profiles of artists on the playlist and see if the playlist in question appears in their “Discovered On” section. The artist might need to be in the playlist for several days before enough data is populated for it to show up. The “Discovered On” section displays which playlists the artist received the most unique listeners from in the last 28 days. To do this automatically, use this free service. This is the only way to tell if a playlist is actively being listened to without first having a song on the playlist yourself. Keep in mind, this can still be manipulated by playlists pumping fake streams into the playlist.
To further protect yourself, look at the playlist’s growth on Chartmetric or SpotonTrack. They’re fairly affordable and I believe both provide free trials. These platforms track playlists and on them, you see whether a playlist’s growth is steady and organic. If the growth is stalling out or drastically decreasing, this means the playlist likely has fake followers. On Spotify, you can also view the followers of the playlist owner’s profile. Do they look like real people? Or fake profiles?