What is DailyPlaylists and why is it important for you as an artist?

DailyPlaylists started back in 2017 as a solution for curators to easily organize their submissions and for artists to easily find curators to submit to. Back then, the playlisting space was still nascent - most curators were getting requests from artists via email, google form, facebook dms or other means! There was an opportunity to integrate Spotify to make a very simple and easy to use flow that suited both artists and curators.

DailyPlaylists is still small, but we are about to hit 10 people working on the platform. The work is done in different setups : a mix of full time, part time, freelance etc.! We’ve been a distributed team from the get go and individually tailor the setups to the team to give them as much flexibility as we can. The team spreads across NA and Europe, however I'm based in Berlin with a couple other of our employees. The development team is the biggest and handles the day to day responsibilities which helps us move the platform forward at a healthy pace. We understand ourselves as a software based music platform: we are all deeply invested in music (and partly artists) but our job is to create the possible software platform for curators and artists.

We currently have 3,800+ curators on the platform which totals to 16,000+ active playlists. The metric I'm most proud of is having over 3 million accepted submissions since we first started.

Andrea is our own in-house curator that takes care of all things curation and playlists. Having a curator as part of the core team is vital for us and a testament to our commitment to the curator space. And he does have his own playlists too!

Andrea:" The process I adopt is pretty straightforward: every week I try to keep updated with some of the newest songs released, especially from majors or well known artists so that we can have a clean selection of hit songs, new songs and popular songs that are in the charts. This has a few beneficial aspects: it drives more traffic to our playlists as a listener definitely wants to hear new music most of the time, and also it helps the algorithms.

Then we try to add some up-coming / independent artists and releases so that we can show love to all those artists that are not signed yet or that have quality music but not a huge platform to showcase it.

So the key is having a mixed balance of Hit songs and Quality "unknown" artists that can exist on the same playlist.

But most definitely research and being updated is on one of the, if not THE, key aspect to curate a playlist.

This is a question we receive a lot, and it's one of my favorite ones to answer. As there's a lot you can do, I'll try and keep it condensed to the key factors.

• Depending on your list, don't be too broad in terms of selection - most listeners are there for one particular reason, having a broad list covering many genres will reduce your chances of finding a specific audience
• Really put yourself in the shoes of your desired audience, be critical and diligent about your track choices
• Don't add hundreds of tracks, try to go for 135 - 150 max to encourage active listenership
• Cater your list to SEO, make sure the top 10 has some names the listeners will recognise, search for or really encapsulate the nature and purpose of your list

• Professional cover photos, logos and content can really help you stand out on the search
• Professional branding also brings a sense of legitimacy to your profile

• Make sure your playlist is SEO friendly in terms of Title, Description and list

• Investing small but consistent amounts on social media advertising can really help get your followers off the ground and drive genuine engagement to your playlists
• Matching this with SEO can see your playlists starting to grow from multiple angles
• Don’t rely 100% on advertising either, turn off the ads from time to time to check the natural growth of your list. You don’t want the engagement to be solely dependent on your budget

• I prefer to update my own lists throughout the week as I find songs, some like to update on a specific date - make it easy for your audience to know when to expect new songs

Personally, I still like using the meta ads suite for paid advertising - in my experience, it's cheaper than Tiktok & Google and can drive reliable results.

TikTok is great for running artist partnerships and can drive great results through this - however, I’ve found that it is harder to create specific content for TikTok to promote playlists due to the difference in the content that works compared to Instagram and Facebook.

My three main bits of advice haven’t changed in years:

Put yourself in the shoes of the curators and be extremely critical while listening through the list. Ask yourself the question - does my music actually fit this playlist? You saw my first bit of advice to aspiring curators is ‘careful curation matters’, for artists ‘careful submissions matter’. On the one hand, this thought process is hugely important as it helps you save budget and spend wisely. On the other hand, it’s important as when you do get on a playlist, you will get the best results and increase your chances of finding genuine fans. Even if a curator places you on a playlist that isn’t a great fit, this can be more detrimental to your campaign than not even submitting in the first place!

A lot of playlisting and promo sites sell the idea that your song could blow up from getting on a few different playlists. While this is technically the truth, the chances are that it's not necessarily going to happen. The average return for streams vs followers is around 2-5%. The idea of playlisting is obviously to help get streams and boost these metrics, however curators who curate their playlists meticulously have the platform to open the door to a whole community of music fans who could become fans of your music. Use the data from these campaigns to help make informed decisions and try your best to convert them to regular listeners.

With DailyPlaylists you get free submissions to use per week, these do not need to be used all in one submission session - submit to a handful of curators at one time and learn from the results! Through learning about what type of playlists seem to be driving the best results can really improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your playlisting campaigns. Also, don’t just submit your latest release, playlist submission can be an amazing way to keep working your entire catalog! As we’ve seen over the past year, catalog still has a huge part to play in aiding your music career!

We have had a huge number of releases this year including Premium Submissions, a number of monetisation incentives for Premium Curators and general improvements to the site, but our biggest release so far has been the release of our brand new subscription plan, ‘Artist Pro’!

The Artist Pro plan includes many new features, upgrades and improvements but the standout ones are:

Pre-saves

You can now include Pre-save URI’s on your playlist and contest gates, allowing Artist Pro subscribers to engage with their own audience before their release and finding new fans from those who submit to their playlists!

Smart Submission

The Smart Submission tool is our automatic submission tool which uses our algorithm to submit to the playlists best suited for your release

We’ve introduced an automatic refunding system for tracks which are removed from playlists within a week

Also we’ve introduced new ‘learning’ mechanics so we can constantly adapt the algorithm based on engagement and quality of placement

Track Explorer

When users submit their track via a Smart Submission, it will automatically be included on the Track Explorer - this is a community editorial page where Artist Pro subscribers get genuine feedback from the community, as well as streams and real saves + playlist additions!

To turn ‘Artist Pro’, simply head to Daily Playlists and sign up to our monthly or annual plan!

I’ve laid out some of the benefits in the question above, but for a quick overview:

• Get free Standard Credits
  • These free credits refresh every week
• Track Explorer Access
• Get listed on our Trending Lists
• Exclusive Partner Deals
• 20 Additional Standard Credits
  • Receive extra 20 standard submissions per month
• Smart Submission Access
  • Up to 10 additional playlist placements per month
• Pre-Save Tool
  • Use the Pre-Save tool on contest and playlist gates

The DailyPlaylists contest tool allows artists to build up excitement, develop data and engage their fanbase before and after their song is even released!

The contest tool is free & extremely simple to set up and use.

With the contest tool, you can give away an experience, exclusive content or even raffle a prize. This allows artists to connect with their fans, getting them energized for your next release or event.

The contest gates act as the terms and conditions of the fans entry, meaning they'll have to perform one of the following actions to successfully enter your contest:

• Save a song on Spotify

• Follow a profile/playlist

• Sign up to a mailing list

• Pre-save your song on Spotify (only available for Artist Pro)

Maybe not particular playlists, but I’ll give three recommendations for curators im loving at the moment:

• Soar Music Group

• AMP

• GreaseRelease