How to submit to Spotify playlists for free

Placing your songs in playlists has become a vital element in any music marketing strategy, as any artist wants to reach new audiences and grow their projects. However, finding the correct platform to submit to playlists can be challenging, especially when you are just starting out. You will find several websites that will charge you right away to submit to playlists, and others that will “guarantee” streams and engagement. The ladder is an indicator for shady players, as “guaranteeing streams” could mean “pay for streams” (which is often referred to as “payola”) and is against Spotify’s terms & conditions.

So, if you are an independent / emerging artist, how can you send your music to playlists? 

DailyPlaylists has built a platform where artists can easily submit their songs to a host of playlists and curators. We are the only platform that hands out 20 Standard credits every week to each artist using the platform, so they can start to submit and learn the playlisting process at no cost. Let's walk you through the submission process in DailyPlaylists.

To get started you have to connect your Spotify account to DailyPlaylists via the Spotify authenticator. We are built on top of the Spotify API to make the process much smoother and easier for users.

Once you are logged in, you can start using the 20 Standard credits mentioned above. Click ‘Submit a Track’ on the top navigation bar and search for your song in the search bar (you can paste the Spotify URL also). Once you confirm your song, you’ll see the following screen:

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The Standard credits we hand out are used for the free tier, so click the option on the left - if you want to know more about the difference between Premium and Standard credits, check this blog article. 

Once you click on ‘Submit to Playlists’ you access our free marketplace where we host more than 18,000 playlists. Here you will find playlists from all sizes and engagement levels.

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On the left you can filter playlists by the genre that best fits your song, which is usually the starting point to find the right selection. Each playlist shows you the number of followers, tracks and activity status. The number of followers and tracks give you an idea of the size of the playlist (e.g. high number of tracks in a playlist can cause passive listening and less engagement), the activity status shows the last time a curator logged in to manage their submissions.

Once you select the playlists you want to submit to, we recommend listening to the playlist to understand if it really fits your song. For a successful playlisting campaign, understanding the curators intention with the playlist is essential: check out the playlist style and mood  to evaluate if your song fits - If you don’t believe it really does you should anticipate that the curator will most likely feel the same and decline.

After you have selected and clicked on ‘Continue’, a Song Submission Ready tab will pop up. Here you can see the playlist gates picked by the curator for this submission. A gate is basically an action that must take place for the song submission to be processed - this action can be Follow a profile on Spotify, Like a Song, Follow a Playlist or sign up to the curator’s mailing list. Since we work with the Spotify API, we automatically execute the gates when you hit ‘Continue and submit’, so there is no action required from your side. 

Once you finish the submission process, you’ll be taken to your Dashboard, where you can review all your submissions tracking, feedback, declines and total approvals. If you used all the 20 Standard credits we gave you, you can purchase more or wait until next Monday, as that’s when they refresh.


This is a brief overview of the process to submit your music for free to Spotify playlists on DailyPlaylists. If you’re new to playlist submissions, we highly recommend you start by using the free weekly Standard credits - it will give you experience in playlisting. 

Once you understand the space better, you can optimize your playlisting strategy by utilizing different types of credits and submissions. 


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