Why Every Artist Should Curate Their Own Playlists

Playlists are a crucial asset for reaching listeners, finding fans and refining an artist’s positioning on Spotify. By curating their own playlists, artists gain a set of dedicated channels allowing them to extend their own brand, add to their own artistic story and also (arguably) more importantly, create a key strategic asset for their releases,

Starting a playlist, growing it through advertising and optimizing for cost effectiveness requires time, effort, and digital marketing know-how. That’s where SymphonyOS steps in, providing an all-in-one platform that empowers artists to grow playlists effortlessly. 

If you want to directly learn why you should curate your own playlists as an artist and how to use Symphony to grow it, sign in to our next webinar - to be hosted on Thursday 21st of November by Bo from Symphony and Harry from DailyPlaylists.

Why curating playlists is essential in modern digital music marketing

Algorithmic Boosts and Spotify Recommender Positioning

The Spotify algorithm is also referred to as a recommender system. It's nothing more than a ‘user experience’ tool for all of the listeners who use Spotify. In an extremely short and simplified explanation, it is designed to enhance user experience by suggesting music that listeners are likely to enjoy based on theirs and other users' behavior and listening data. 

Playlists act as containers that group an artist with others they want to be associated with. By driving traffic to playlists through social media ads managed via Symphony, artists can trigger Spotify’s algorithm to link them with the artists in the list, potentially leading to increased plays through algorithmic playlists or personal radio stations. This effect is amplified if listeners of the playlist add an artist’s music to their personal playlists or save songs to their library. 

You can go extremely deep into the world of analyzing which artists you want to be associated with, this is often referred to as ‘targeting a cluster’ - we would 100% suggest spending some time diving into this. Symphony has an amazing ad set up process  (which we will get into later) that simplifies interest targeting on social media, allowing all users to select target audiences based on artists they see fit!

With consistent engagement, playlists can appear in Spotify’s recommendations, discovery sections, and even genre-based radio feeds, expanding the artist’s reach without direct ad spend. In time, curated playlists can also influence algorithmic playlists like Release Radar or Discover Weekly.

Data for Marketing & Monetization

Digital Marketing is all about utilizing data in creative ways. As an artist, when running social media ads promoting a new release, you tend to have a ‘one shot’ approach. If someone doesn’t like your creative, or you’ve selected the wrong section of the song, you can easily lose a potential fan. Also, if you’re a small artist, it could be that the targeted audience do not recognise you when first seeing the ad, and simply swipe past before you even have a chance to make an impact.

Running ads to promote playlists allow you to widen the top of your marketing funnel. You are no longer trying to only appeal to potential fans of just your music, but you are appealing to a specific scene, community, fans of other artists where the aim is to listen and save the playlist to their personal Spotify libraries. When listening to the playlist, they may discover your music and also listen multiple times to the list.

Utilizing Meta Pixels for lookalikes and retargeting adds depth to this approach, creating a strong, sustainable marketing funnel for your playlists and also releases.

Once your playlists grow to a certain level (1,000 followers minimum), you then can sign up to DailyPlaylists and apply for our Premium program - allowing you to monetize the submissions to your playlists. Once you start earning revenue, you can then re-invest this into the advertisements which cancels out any additional marketing spend - in essence, it becomes free advertising while helping other artists you include on the list!

Building a Direct Connection with Artists and Fans

When artists curate their own playlists, they’re offering fans a unique look into their musical tastes and creative influences - also introducing them to artists that have a similar sound and concept. By crafting playlists that blend their songs with those of like-minded artists, an artist-curator can introduce listeners to a cohesive sound that embodies a specific music scene or cultural vibe. 

This approach not only highlights the artist-curator’s work but also nurtures a growing network of artists and fans who share an interest in that scene, whether it’s local indie pop, an underground techno movement, or a regional folk revival.

This strategy fosters a sense of authenticity and discovery, while positioning the artist-curator as a tastemaker within the scene and creating a meaningful bridge between their work and the music culture they’re helping to build.

Artist-curators can further amplify this connection by engaging with followers and fellow artists - through social media, playlist updates, or listener polls. These interactions make fans feel part of the music journey, while also helping the artist gain feedback and insights. 

Over time, the playlist itself becomes a dynamic, evolving space that not only supports the artist-curator’s growth but also actively builds up the entire scene, amplifying exposure for both themselves and the artists they include.

Common Challenges Artists Face in Growing Their Playlists

While curating playlists offers many advantages, it also presents challenges. Consistently updating playlists, creative high quality assets, attracting new followers, and finding time to promote them requires a mix of dedication, revenue and strategy. Fortunately, with platforms such as Symphony the process becomes a lot more transparent and easier. 

How Symphony Supports Artists in Growing Their Playlists

Symphony provides a powerful solution for artists looking to grow their playlists without investing countless hours into promotion and management. With a streamlined, user-friendly interface, Symphony enables artists to maximize their playlist’s potential through several key features.

Grow Playlist Followers Playbook

Symphony offers an automated marketing playbook specifically designed to drive playlist growth.

In 5 simple steps, any artist can set up a marketing campaign designed to grow their playlist follower base. The playbook approach gives a structured and intuitive guide to start promoting the playlist smoothly.

1. Select a playlist to promote

Symphony will automatically detect any playlists you have created on Spotify; if not, you can also paste the URL in the search bar.

2. Select a song for the autoplay

You can select a song from your playlist to autoplay when someone clicks on your ad, making it extremely easier for listeners to directly stream your music!

3. Create a landing page

Symphony gives you the ability to create a personalized landing page for free, giving you more control over the listeners’ journey and the chance to gather more valuable data.

4. Set up Symphony Conversions

This step is vital for leveraging Symphony's AI-powered ad targeting to reach audiences who will resonate more with your playlist - it has a 4-6x better conversion rate! 

5. Follow the playbook steps

Finally, set up the creative assets, audience targeting and budget within the playbook guidelines.

The Grow Playlist Follower playbook offers an easy-to-use process to start your playlist growth campaign - including flexible budget allocation, easy demographic targeting and a simplified system to reach similar artists audiences.

Insights and Analytics 

Symphony provides robust analytics to help artists understand their playlist performance and audience demographics. Insights into who is following the playlist, the songs fans engage with most, and when engagement spikes help artists refine their playlists for maximum appeal. 

Symphony’s data-driven recommendations allow artists to make informed decisions about which tracks to include, update schedules, and ideal targeting strategies for promotion.

Bonus: Sign up to Symphony Pro trial to enter a raffle to win 3 months of Symphony Pro for free!

Best Practices for Artists Using Symphony to Grow Their Playlists

For artists new to playlist curation or SymphonyOS, here are a few tips to maximize growth:

• Use compelling content: Engagement usually starts with an eye-catching visual, make sure that it is branded correctly so it’s coherent with your artist & playlist branding.

• Performance metrics: Aim for a cost-per-click goal under 50 cents. Your cost-per-conversion should be no more than double your cost-per-click.

• Campaign duration: Run your campaign for at least 3-4 days for Facebook’s optimization period to kick in. Expect stable results afterward.

• Track impact stats: Monitor metrics such as the increase in streams to your anchor song, playlist follows, Spotify artist follows, Instagram follows, and Shazam counts (if connected).

Conclusion

Curating a playlist is a powerful way for artists to connect with fans, establish their sound, and increase visibility on streaming platforms. However, without the right tools, growing a playlist can be challenging. Symphony offers an artist-centric solution, simplifying playlist management, promotion, and analytics, so artists can focus on what they do best: creating music. 

Ready to take your playlist game to the next level? Explore Symphony with the exclusive promo for the DailyPlaylists’ community! Symphony is offering a 25% discount on their yearly Pro subscription, as well as 2 weeks of free trial.

Start curating your own path to success with Symphony and DailyPlaylists!

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