How to become Spotify famous in 3 steps
I became a viral Spotify playlist curator, and you can too!
A few months ago, I did some digging into playlist curators as part of my journalism capstone. I was a big Spotify fan who loved making quirky concept playlists, and I’d come across a few TikTok creators who talked about how they became playlist curators full time.
Little did I know I’d be here a few months later.
While I’m not exactly a full time curator, nor am I making much money from playlisting, I received my blue check mark from Spotify back in May. At that point, I had 13,000 followers and most of my playlists had anywhere between 100 to over 100,000 saves. So, how did I do it?
First, as you can see in the older post inserted above, I did my homework. The key takeaways I found were SEO and social media promotion.
Basically, it’s hard for a playlist to go viral without promoting it anywhere—my TikTok is absolutely how the vast majority of people have found my playlists. On the other hand, I posted a video about my early 2000s nostalgia playlist recently and had a bunch of people comment that they found the playlist just through Spotify search. The more saves a playlist has already, the more likely it is to appear higher in a Spotify search.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how you can make your playlists a hit:
Write an SEO-friendly title and description
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s basically what makes your content appear higher up in search results.
A creative title is more likely to catch a Spotify user’s eye. Just like writing a headline for a news article, you kind of want as many stand-out words at the beginning as you can. This isn’t an end-all, be-all, but it certainly helps.
Using a popular lyric a title would also draw traffic to your playlist, because the playlist will likely appear in search anytime someone looks up that lyric. Likewise, using a song title or artist name in a playlist title will also help.
Next, stuff your description. I read that the more a playlist has in its description, the higher up it appears in searches. So include as many popular artists from your playlists as you can in the description, and some genres or vibes as well.
And finally, pick an eye-catching cover. I personally love using Unsplash for royalty-free images, or you can never go wrong with a meme.
Adding your songs
The most important step, of course. A playlist is nothing without good music.
I’ve read before that having too many songs by one artist in a playlist decreases its chance of being seen. I haven’t experienced this first hand, but I do make a point to avoid too many songs by one artist, and I definitely like to space them out (I never have two songs by one artist next to each other).
Of course, if a playlist concept requires all songs by one or many songs by few artists, that’s okay, and might work to your benefit. See below a playlist I made including all songs by departed members of Panic! At the Disco:
I personally believe the way you order your songs plays a part in whether the playlist gains attention. Having the most popular or the universal crowd-pleasers (e.g. Tongue Tied, About You) up top is almost guaranteed to catch someone’s eye. But then, about four or five down maybe, I like to throw in a lesser known song.
People who follow playlists tend to love music, which means they also love finding new music. The first five or 10 songs in a playlist are the most important because that’s what people will see first.
Let music lovers get a sense of your music taste, then show them something new. Might they have found an indie song or artist to make their taste appear more niche? Something they can brag to their friends about? Possibly. And they won’t want to lose this opportunity so BOOM, they save your playlist.
How you order the songs on your playlist, also, can tell a story. See one of my recent faves, “to the customer who sent their bacon back five times because it wasn’t crispy enough:”
Promote Promote Promote
This one’s a little tricky. The best platform for blowing up quickly is TikTok, but even then, if you’re not in the music niche, it’s a hit or miss whether your video will see any traction. It definitely took me a few tries to train my algorithm, and even then, I still have a lot of playlist videos that sadly don’t hit.
TikTok is its own beast. One of my favorite playlists I ever made is “Cowgirls at Tiki Bars.” I thought the concept was so fun and aligned well with the coastal cowgirl trend. But the first video I posted promoting it didn’t gain much traction at all. After a few days, though, I noticed the playlist itself was getting more attention than the video—people liked the concept after all. So, I tried another video with a new concept, and it finally hit.
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If you want quick tips for making a viral TikTok, I would say: 1) Make it short, 2) Use on-screen text with lots of key words, and 3) Use lots of tags, and make those tags match your on screen text. Using a trending sound helps, but I’ve also had videos flop with sounds that had over 10,000 videos. The algorithm is an ever-changing enigma.
As someone who’s been in the social media game for a few months, my best advice is just keep trying. Creating content of any form, be it digital or not, is like throwing a glob at the wall again and again until it finally sticks.