Associate Member Spotlight: Spotify

Share New Music for Playlist Consideration

View the original post on Spotify’s website here.


Our new beta feature gives artists, labels and teams an easy way to submit unreleased music directly to our editorial team for playlist consideration.

At Spotify, our goal is to match every listener with the perfect music for them. That’s why we have a team of over 100 editors around the world — music experts and cultural ambassadors whose job is to spread the joy of music discovery everywhere from Brazil to Japan to Turkey. Today, we’re introducing a beta feature as part of Spotify for Artists and Spotify Analytics designed to make it easier for artists and labels to share unreleased music with this team — so our editors can create better playlists and artists have a better shot at landing on one.

Everyone, whether you’re an artist, label, manager or part of an artist’s team, can try out this feature. Simply log into your Spotify for Artists account or, if you work at a label, head over to Spotify Analytics. There, you’ll have the option of selecting one unreleased song for playlist consideration and submitting it to our team.

It’s important to give us as much information about the track as possible — genre, mood, and other data points all help us make decisions about where it may fit. You can note the instruments on it, whether it’s a cover, and the cultures you or the song belong to. The data you share will be complemented by what we already know about you — what else your fans listen to, what other playlists you’ve appeared on, etc.

Editors will be searching through submissions based on the information you share to find unreleased music to consider for their playlists. The song and all the info you add about it will also impact our personalized recommendations. For example, as long as you tag and submit your track seven days in advance, the song you select will automatically appear in every one of your followers’ Release Radar playlists. This way you have control over which single you’re promoting to your fans.

We want to make something crystal clear: no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists. Our editors pick tracks with listeners in mind. They make these decisions using data about what’s resonating most with their community of listeners.

Beta means this is the first step. With more than 75,000 artists featured on editorial playlists each week, and another 150,000 on Discover Weekly, we know how important it is to get this right. We’ll continue evolving this feature based on your feedback, so artists, labels, managers and partners can all help us create better playlists for Spotify listeners.

About A2IM:
A2IM is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit trade organization headquartered in New York City that exists to support and strengthen the independent recorded music sector. Membership currently includes a broad coalition of more than 700 Independently-owned American music labels. A2IM represents these independently owned small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) interests in the marketplace, in the media, on Capitol Hill, and as part of the global music community. In doing so, it supports a key segment of America’s creative class that represents America’s diverse musical cultural heritage. Billboard Magazine identified the Independent music label sector as 37.32 percent of the music industry’s U.S. recorded music sales market in 2016 based on copyright ownership, making Independent labels collectively the largest music industry sector.

Learn more about A2IM here.
For information about how to join our community, see here.