I had a friend hit me up, crushed that her new single was still “<1000” on Spotify after a week. She poured her soul into it, shared it on her socials, researched and hit up playlisters… and nothing.
She was tired of doing all the work herself and decided to run a playlist campaign, but she didn’t know where to start. “How much do they cost? Are there different types?”
All good questions. Here’s my basic rundown of 3 different tiers of playlist campaigns and what you might expect to spend on them. (Yeah, I cleaned it up to read a little better ;)
Hey bud,
I think it’s smart that you’re leveraging your own money to hire someone to help you. With some investment, you can buy back your time and be an artist.
To answer your question, campaigns come in multiple budget tiers…
Econo: good music can typically get multiple playlist adds for $20-$80 from places like SubmitHub. Most playlists that accept you through a platform like this will have low follower counts. You might not see tons of spins from this option, but you’ll certainly be building the perception of momentum to your fan base every time you give a shout out the playlist curators on your socials and thank them for adding you.
Mid Budget: good music can typically get multiple playlist adds for around $350-$400 per single with places like PlaylistPush. You can also increase your budget for beefier campaigns. Playlists that accept you through a platform like this come in a spectrum sizes. I’ve received adds from lists with 1k followers, and lists with 80k followers, and everywhere in between. The number of spins you receive will depend on the size of the lists that add you.
High Roller: hire big dog streaming strategists like Venture to create customized plans for your growth. They’ll typically want to run campaigns for multiple months (usually about three months) at $800-$1.5k per month. The reason being is that they are creating a longer term strategy to get you picked up Spotify’s editorial playlists (jackpot.) That strategy includes landing multiple high follower count playlist adds, resulting in tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of spins. Tracks with resulting buzz will have a better chance of being selected for editorial playlists.
Before you run out and invest your hard earned cash, I just want to share a thought about streaming strategy: a single campaign can get you a temporary boost in spins, but sustained streaming growth and editorial playlist love usually happens to those who consistently release music frequently (new singles every four to eight weeks) and run playlist campaigns for each of them. I encourage you to adopt a long term mindset for your streaming strategy rather that throwing a Hail Mary once every six months.
I’ll share more thoughts on streaming strategy, and other ways to build your stats in subsequent blog posts. In the mean time, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to hit me up: james@forestparkdiy.com or leave me a comment or question in the comments below.
Take care, create lots, be heard.
// James
