Many artists who release their own music with independent distributors run into the same problem every time the release day of a new single or album approaches. Spotify provides a page for artists where each artist can submit a song before its release date to be considered for official Spotify playlists. Some fields are filled in about the style of your music, the elements present in it, etc. One of the last steps is to write a short description about this song that we are submitting for consideration by the Spotify team. This last step of the request is, from our point of view and experience, one of the most important and to which, unfortunately, most artists or record labels do not pay adequate attention. With which, after dozens of times pitching for new versions, the same thing always happens in the end. The song was very good but it seems that Spotify is not interested in the slightest and as always it is not added to any official editorial list.
We have been sending dozens of requests for several years so that every time we release a new song under our label, it is considered to be added to official Spotify lists. After many unsuccessful requests we have learned to optimize our description over time to get the best chance of being considered (yes, this is from our experience what counts the most in any Spotify submission for a new song). From our current point of view, your description for a new song that you want to present should follow at least these three key points so that it has the best chance of being considered:
Target Audience
Try first of all to be direct by describing a specific audience that you think is especially favorable to your song. For example: “Ideal for a male audience interested in hard electronic music festivals in the Skrillex style” or “The song will appeal to an audience interested in romantic series and pop music with singers like Ed Sheeran”
Matching Playlists
The next thing you have to do is put exact examples of official Spotify playlists in which you know (Because you listened to that playlists) that your song would fit perfectly. Try searching through the hundreds of official Spotify playlists for playlists that are not the largest in followers (for example below 100,000 followers). Examples: “Fits perfectly with the following official Spotify playlists: Motivational, Soft Summer Music, EDM Famous Cover Songs.” If you can’t find small playlists, add the big ones. It’s better to have some playlists than none, but yes. Always make sure that your song really hits that list 100%. There is nothing worse than making a Spotify editor see that you have no idea what songs are on that playlist (since your song would never fit there)
Planned Promotion
The last point, also very important, is to make the publishers see that you are putting everything you can of your means to promote that song. So describe as broadly as you can what kind of promotion or publicity you’ll be using to get the song out there when it’s released. For example “It will be promoted through live performances at parties in my city.” “Supported by local publications as such and such” “Paid promotion on YouTube and following websites…” “It will be promoted with paid advertising on social networks such as Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook.” Logically, the more innovative and interesting or the more noise the strategy can generate, it will have a much better chance of being considered.
Try using those three points as a guide to create your own pitch to Spotify the next time you have a new song to present to the world and let us know how the results are. From here we wish you all the luck in the world so that this time your song is chosen. And if they don’t choose your song, you will always the possibility to present it to us to be added to one of our playlists. Although they are not the official Spotify playlists, also have a good legion of followers behind them and will help you increase your fan base.
