Ever since the popularization of Spotify playlists, record labels and artists alike have been trying to be short-listed by playlist editors. Being included in a playlist can give any artist the push they need into the limelight.
Contrary to what the over the top Drake promotion made people think, playlist entry cannot be bought. However, Spotify has, as of today, given artists an easy way to submit their music for playlist consideration.
Artists can now upload their music directly, view their analytics, track the number of their plays and see their demographics through the Spotify for Artists dashboard. With the dashboard, artists can now send in their tracks for consideration for a playlist.
Since July, over 67,000 record labels and artists have submitted their tracks. Out of which, only about 10,000 artists have been added to any playlists so far.
Some of the examples of the impact of playlist inclusion were given by the company, itself.
The monthly listeners for Gustavo Bertoni increased from 7,000 to 617,000 after his song “Be Here Now” was featured on Fresh Folk and Acoustic Moning playlists.
And another example was,
After being included in the New Music Friday playlist, the monthly listeners of the band Yonaka increased from 82,000 to 290,000.
Also,
The Dutch rapper Bryan Mg found himself a spot on the La Vida Loca playlist and his monthly listeners went from 4,600 to 33,000.
The company claims that even if the tracks are not immediately featured after submission, they will be kept in their data based and possibly included in future playlists.
Spotify has been making many leaps recently. They released new episodes of The Game Play, their original series, and by their DistroKid investment. The DistroKid investment allows Spotify to distribute its music across platforms.
Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Pandora have much to catch up on if they wish to compete with Spotify.