How To Get On Spotify Editorial Playlists

Spotify Editorial Playlists

Spotify Editorial Playlists are by far the most wanted Spotify playlists to be on and likely the most difficult to get on too.

So why are they so popular and hard to get on?

Well, let's take a look at a real example by searching for "chill out" music on Spotify and then we'll talk about 2 reasons why Spotify editorial playlists are so valuable. Here's the type of playlists we get in our search:

Reason 1

You'll notice that there are two Spotify curated playlists that show up. All other playlists are either listener or user generated playlists. In all cases but one Spotify curated playlists have the most followers.

This is hugely valuable for an artist to get on one of the Spotify editorial playlist because of their massive followings.

Reason 2

Not only do these playlist have huge followings but the quality of their followers is high as well. We know this because they are Spotify owned and so therefore we can assume Spotify is not doing any shady marketing or running any bots to increase their followers just for image sake.

So now that we know why they're so valuable, why are they so hard to get on?

Why are they so hard to get on?

Course we can go on and stipulate all the various reasons why it's so difficult to get your music playlist on Spotify editorial playlists, however, there's really only one reason why it's so difficult:

The Spotify curators are somewhat mysterious and therefore are very difficult to contact directly. However, there are some secrets to find these Spotify curators though and we'll talk about this later.

They are specifically curated in house by Official Spotify curators. So there are actual humans inside Spotify office buildings listening to your songs and deciding if they are worthy for their editorial playlists.

Recently though, Spotify has made it available for artists to submit their music to editorial playlist in advance of their launch. Here's a great video that shows you how to get playlisted on your Spotify for artist profile but we will also talk about this approach below.

Enough of the hard stuff though, let's get into the good stuff!

There are 2 approaches to getting on Spotify editorial playlists:

Approach 1

This approach is easily accessible to everyone and it does not require much work. It involves pitching your song to official Spotify curators on the back end of the Spotify for artists profile.

Note that, if you do not have a Spotify for artists profile yet, you can set one up by easily watching this video. It's about 5 minutes.

Step 1

We recommend uploading you're single or album, whatever song you'd like to pitch, in advance of at least 3 or 4 weeks before launch.

Why?

This gives the Spotify curators enough time to listen to your song before it goes live. Can you imagine them trying to give you an answer if you upload the song the day before launch?

Most of our artists use Tunecore or DistroKid to distribute their music and once uploaded on these sites it takes about 3 or 4 days to show up on the Spotify for artists profile.

This is where you would see your music on Spotify after you wait a few days from uploading on your music distributor.

Step 2

Once your music is available on Spotify for artists profile then you can submit to the official curators.

Click the pitch a song link and go through the next series of questions that Spotify asks you.

Be specific and give us much context as you can, we don't know for sure if this will help your submission but it definitely can't hurt.

Sit tight and wait to hear if your song has been added to an official Spotify editorial playlist. Some of our artists at Neon Collective receive a notification from Spotify that their song has been added to an editorial playlist however some were never notified.

Either way, you'll be able to see all the playlist that your songs have been added to in your Spotify for artists profile.

Don't get your hopes up considering Spotify editorial playlists. The competition is intense so think nothing of it if but we do recommend pitching all your songs. You never know!

But at Neon Collective, we're always happy to hear new music, so submit to us at anytime.

Approach 2

This approach provides no guarantee either but it skips any sort of middleman on the communication channel to the Spotify curators.

How do we do this?

We need to find the contact information to the official Spotify curators and you can do this through a variety of ways.

There are some sites that offer contact information for Spotify curators but in return you need to pay for this. We've had experience paying for some of these sites and recommend against it. We think these sites are still valuable to get the contact information for user-generated or Spotify listener playlists, like our own below:

So what's another way to get contact information?

You can guess the email.

Did I hear that correctly?

Yes you did.

What we mean by this is make an educated guess based on the company they work for, Spotify. Most companies follow the same naming convention for the company email addresses. For instance, first_name.last_name@companyname.com. This would be a standard naming convention for any company.

Here are the other popular naming conventions:

last name @companyname.com

first name @companyname.com

first last_initial @companyname.com

first_initial last name @companyname.com

last name first_initial @companyname.com

Keep in mind though, when you guess someone's email and reach out to them, it is a cold reach out. Therefore, if your email is not courteous and respectful then it will likely be ignored and archived.

OK, but let's get back on track.

How are you supposed to know their first and or last name?

Think outside the box here. Use sites like LinkedIn or any other social media site to find employees that work at Spotify who have their title listed as "editor" or "curator".

We've had some success with this but we were always very respectful with the messaging in our reach outs.

This second approach is also not a guarantee to get on Spotify editorial playlists, however, it could give you an opportunity to build a relationship with the Spotify editorial curators for your future releases.

We're always happen to listen to new music at Neon Collective and you can submit to us at any time.

What are some other ways that you can get on Spotify editorial playlists? The first comment will get a free feedback listening session from us. 🎧