Why Music Artists Should Never Work With a Marketing Agency That Playlists Their Songs

Recently, I came across a post on Reddit about an artist getting his music taken off of Tunecore and Spotify.

That's because he said he partnered with an agency that promised them Playlisting. Now, as has been noted, Spotify and DSPs are starting to take botting and playlisting very seriously. Many of these playlists that these fake marketers use are full of bots, just to juice numbers to make it look like they're successful and know what they're doing.

In the past, it might have worked because Spotify and other DSPs weren't really doing much about it, and this went on from small artists to even big artists. However, Spotify is now taking action, and you, as an artist, will pay the price. So if you ever talked to a marketing agency and they say they'll playlist your music, do not walk or run away.

That is not how you market your music. Playlisting happens organically, the real organic way, or it gets discovered through the algorithm, and therefore, people will then add your music to their playlist if they like it. That also exists in a gray area called payola, which means essentially paying for streams. So, the way you want to do it is to promote your music on social media.

And you can also use ads to do that because you're just promoting discovery to a landing page. From that landing page, people can choose to listen to your music or not listen to your music. It's up to them. But if you target the right way, they should. And then, through that targeting and those clicks, your music starts getting a little bump in the organic algorithm.

And from there, people discover your music. So once again, if you ever come across an agency that says they're playlisting your music, run away quickly.