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I paid for Spotify playlist placements so you don’t have to
- tjbiddle 6y ago$130 isn't enough to really test most advertising methods, unless you're already really dialed in. I operate e-commerce businesses, and I'd throw at least $500-$2,000 on testing something new before I call it quits.
- giarc 6y agoYou're argument is flawed because someone is going to come along and say "$200 isn't enough to really test most advertising methods...I'd throaw at least $20,000-$100,000 on testing something." Then along comes Procter and Gamble and they say $10m-40m. It's all about scope and market size.
- bawolff 6y agoIs the market for music small? Was he testing in some specific genere, geographic region or other targeted group to justify the smaller budget? There comes a point where you need a minimum amount of money before you can tell if something is working. If you spent 10 cents on advertising, that would be pretty meaningless.
- nxpnsv 6y agoThis is different, roi is different. You comparing apples and non apples.
- darkwizard42 6y agoReally liked the article and am curious what would happen with some of these numbers if you 10x the budget... Based on the effort required even after submitting and getting approved on some of these sites (I also didn't know these sites even existed! very cool to learn about that), the author had to do some sifting and understanding of what they were getting into (ex. getting into a playlist of 500 songs and being #500 seems like crap). Sounds like investing more and getting on more lists might help with your odds of getting good placement/good playlists but ultimately requires a linear scale of time invested. It also seems like the author got exposure to labels for what I think feels like a low price (especially if you aren't well connected in the industry already).
- hamburglar 6y agoI think it’s also important to keep in mind that the results you get are probably going to be highly influenced by whether or not people actually like your music. We really have no way to control for that in these experiments. I obviously can’t just fart into a microphone and promote it on these platforms and conclude that they don’t work.
- darkwizard42 6y agoI did get that especially given how the author fared in some of the Hot or Not and label outreach pieces. At the end of the day, crappy music ain't gonna sell no matter how much you pay for streams. A hit will rise to the top and it seems like it is the biggest factor in if influencers/playlist makers will pick it up!
- wodenokoto 6y agoI don't know who the audience this article was aimed at, but it would have been nice if it talked a little bit more about what a curator is.
- newsclues 6y agoCollecting, selecting and presenting something. Like art in a gallery
- bombcar 6y agoTo expand on this - a museum is just a pile of stuff without a curator who selects and organizes it to tell a cohesive story - a well curated exhibit is a wonder.
- thetanil 6y agoIn this case, someone who made a playlist. Reputation of the knowledge and tastes of the playlist maker would normally matter, but since this is purely a numbers game at this point the only thing that matters is the number of followers on the list made. "Curator" makes a list of popular songs, gets a bunch of followers on the playlist, then sells placement on the list. "Curator" has really lost it's meaning here.
- moolcool 6y agoPayola laws should be extended to include Spotify pay-to-play IMO
- thaumasiotes 6y agoExtended? Why do we want them at all? How is it better for a radio station to monetize by airing commercials than to monetize by airing music?
- p1necone 6y agoThe music probably ends up being better when it's not just highest bidder first.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cortesoft 6y agoMaybe? But I am not sure if that is a priori true. I would imagine record labels would pay to promote the artists they think are the best, and most likely to generate good returns for their advertising investment. That might end up with better music on the radio. Or it might end up with worse. I would be curious how you could test this.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoI had to look that up: Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing this information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola I'm not a big fan of how tech companies have and continue to ignore existing regulations and legislation simply because "on the internet" or "it's an app" is somehow perceived by them as different. By analogy: like we have analogue drug laws that deem substances prohibited even before they're invented, we should have analogue services law where a fucking taxi company is a fucking taxi company regardless of what technology underlies it, and a radio service is a streaming service etc. You don't get to ignore broadcasting rules just because the delivery tech is Internet Protocol based rather than radio. Whether or not one agrees with the existing legislation on either of those particular matters is beside my point here, so let's skip straight past that distrsction please.
- throwaway13337 6y agoAll these market places are finding new ways to extract money from the market. There is no incentive to stop until it only makes just enough sense for the content creators to not stop making content. As they are monopolies (mostly), there is no moving. All extra profits, efficiently, to them. This is happening with Airbnb, Amazon, Shopify, and now Spotify? We pay a cut to be in the platform, then we pay for marketing on the platform. It's obvious who holds the cards. Our feudal lords now have catchy names.
- teej 6y agoNone of this money goes to Spotify.
- zwkrt 6y agoThe point still stands. Spotify is providing a platform to further enhance the grip of capital.
- texasbigdata 6y agoBut it’s not clear the activity is not net beneficial to them.
- satyrnein 6y agoEverything can always be better, but this is the best it's ever been for content creators.
- motohagiography 6y agoTried submithub, it says you have 2 "credits," when I uploaded a song and it takes you through a bunch of commitment steps and then asks you to pay to submit to the reviewers because you don't have enough "credits" to spend. If you want to try submithub out, be ready to pay with a card, regardless of what the UX seems to imply. It seemed like a good service, but now I don't see myself dealing with them.
- jasongrishkoff 6y agoHey, SubmitHub founder here. Sorry for the confusion. You get two types of credits: standard (the 2 you saw) and premium (which you have to buy). Your standard credits refresh every 4 hours (assuming you use them). When going through the submission process you'll see it prompts you whether you want to use your standard (free) credits or premium credits. If you don't have any premium ones -- and don't want to buy them -- make sure you stick to the 'standard' path. The core idea behind SubmitHub's "model" is that for decades it's been near-impossible to catch the attention of bloggers/playlisters/curators/whatever. Our system dangles a carrot (~$1) in front of them to guarantee a response+feedback about your song (with the ideal outcome of course being that they share your song - no additional costs involved).
- motohagiography 6y agoAnd I appreciate you are matching musicians with audiences, super valuable service. This particular credits ambiguity registered as a pretty grey pattern. My expectation was just say "$10 to put this in front of an audience of x," or "share a song with our network and then buy premium features," instead of breadcrumbing the incremental commitment screens before the hard upsell to complete it. I'm sure your mixpanel or other metrics show your abandoned carts data and if this pattern is working, it's working. For pro musicians who are committed to your product as a promotion path, perhaps they don't care about that credits ambiguity because they go in with a marketing budget and know what they're going in for. For me, I will stick with making music for fun. I wish your team success at their mission.
- bambax 6y ago
- dawnerd 6y agoCan we stop calling people influencers or curators if they’re just taking money to promote stuff?
- GhostVII 6y agoCan you really call someone an influencer if they aren't promoting something? It's in the name, they are influencing people. Just making content people enjoy without trying to change how they behave isn't influencing.
- scubbo 6y ago> Can we stop calling people influencers [...] if they’re just taking money to promote stuff? That is literally my understanding of the term "influencer". What is your definition?
- detaro 6y agoIn the older definition, having a following that puts some stock into your opinions or recommendations is what makes you an influencer. (i.e. you don't become an influencer by being paid, being an influencer makes you interesting for companies to pay you to advertise)
- kortilla 6y agoAn “influencer” is supposed to be someone who has the ability to influence people to do things. Whether they sell that ability or not has little to do with it. Anyone with a big following of people who want trust them in some way is an influencer.
- shalmanese 6y agoI mean, we don't call the Pope an influencer but we do Joel Osteen, we don't call Xi Jinping an influencer but we do Donald Trump, we don't call Satya Nadella an influencer but we do Elon Musk. It seems to be the dividing line between influencers is that they're using their influence for financial gain and that it's their primary asset. It doesn't have to be direct monetization but it has to be something where the motivation for them to influence is financial.
- sickcodebruh 6y agoThis was very interesting, I had no idea these services existed. I really enjoyed reading it. It wouldn’t hurt to provide more context about the artist, genre, and scene the artist is operating in. Is it a band getting some hype that listeners might recognize by name or someone totally unknown to listeners? Related to that, what about the playlists themselves? Did the author of this blog post feel that they were grouped with artists of a similar enough genre the audience would appreciate them? Were those playlists all new/upcoming artists sourced from services like this, primarily popular/established artists with a few select artists mixed in, or a mix of both? The psychology of what music people choose to pursue is fascinating and brutally frustrating. Details like the ones above could tell some very different stories about the author’s experience. It’s possible that a different artist would have a vastly different experience on these services. Of course, having said that, I would have been blown away if this experiment yielded any significantly positive results. This is the newest face of pay to play events and compilation CDs run by labels and marketing companies. There are no shortage of people eager to exploit the enthusiasm of artists.
- dannyw 6y agoAt the end of the day, attention is a resource, and resources have monetary value. There will always be things like this.
- reilly3000 6y agoYep, and always have been. See payola scandals of the 1950’s radio era for an early example, though probably not the earliest.
- wyxuan 6y agoWas this experiment conducted before, or after the purge from playlisting services botting the streams[0]. Also Spotify should have some way of distinguishing services that have paid playlisting and not - the same way youtubers(or any other influencer) has to disclose if they're doing a sponsored spot. It feels a little scummy that they're doing this. [0]https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/01/spotify-just-purged-tens-of-thousands-of-tracks-for-fraudulent-streams.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/01/spotify-just-purged-...
- sevencolors 6y agoI think that purge was related to services that will get you plays. Where by they have a farm of phones that will play the song for 30 seconds (the minimum for it to count as a play) This is just paying to get added to playlists with high followers. Plays are not guaranteed.
- jasongrishkoff 6y agoSubmitHub is not paying to get added to playlists. It's paying to guarantee that your song is considered by the playlister - with no promises that it's actually shared. If they do decide to share it, no additional money is required. You're basically saying: "Hey, if you give me 3 minutes of your time to listen to my song and let me know what you think I'll give you $1." For reference, roughly 1 in 5 submissions end up getting shared. So if you send to 100 playlisters, 80 of them will say "thanks but no thanks" and roughly 20 of them will add it to their playlist for no additional cost.
- wombatmobile 6y agoWhat does the music sound like? Link?
- bbellini 6y agoThey link the track in the article.
- giarc 6y agoIt's actually pretty good. Kind of chill beats for background music.
- tda 6y agoJust looked it up, not sure what to make of it yet. At the very least it is passable as background music. https://open.spotify.com/artist/4FbZyaSZ5QaZES4I251OQU https://open.spotify.com/artist/4FbZyaSZ5QaZES4I251OQU
- carstenhag 6y agoI had it playing in the background while reading the article. Was sad when I closed the tab.
- happyconcepts 6y agoDid you target JP or EN language audience? Or else can you target by geolocation?
- giarc 6y agoYou have to go meta and publish a blog post about what getting to the front page of HN does to your plays?
- bawolff 6y agoThe authors conclusion is "Paying for Spotify playlist promotion does not relate to an increase in followers. Do not use it if this is your goal." And in the end, the author spent $130 on sketchy marketing and got 10 followers. But honestly, $130 doesn't really sound like that much money, it doesn't really sound like this was exactly super targeted, and it was super short term (repeated exposure is important in marketing). Maybe the conclusion is that this was just a poorly done marketing campaign, which unsurprisingly got poor results.
- frabjoused 6y agoA much more effective way to get listeners is to write about it and trend on HN.
- thetanil 6y agoif you pay people to listen to your music and they still hate it, maybe writing is what you should be doing anyway
- unnamed76ri 6y agohttps://open.spotify.com/artist/3BYSJ9i8xIlXO9ebJO9Yv9?si=2yN68cTdTouksXdji9LFgA https://open.spotify.com/artist/3BYSJ9i8xIlXO9ebJO9Yv9?si=2y... I’m going to try submithub with my music starting tomorrow. I currently sit at 3 listeners this month. So we will see what happens.
- jasongrishkoff 6y agoHey, SubmitHub founder here. Top tip is to do a bit of research before jumping into it - it will dramatically improve what you get out of it. Here's a really good recent podcast by an artist who managed a 68% approval rate: https://pod.co/bandhive/submithub-success-strategies-steve-martin-of-ascending-everest https://pod.co/bandhive/submithub-success-strategies-steve-m...
- unnamed76ri 6y agoThank you I appreciate the link. I will definitely listen and research before I start submitting music.
- midasuni 6y agoThis suddenly all makes sense. I’ve been listening to a “mamma Mia 1+2” playlist as I couldn’t see the albums immediately. The all of a sudden some awful explicit song starts playing, nothing to do with ABBA, not even in the same genre. Reported the playlist for being deceptive. I note today it has a different song in there now. Spotify need a setting to avoid this stuff otherwise they’ll start losing passive customers like myself who pay £15pcm to listen to music that we want to listen to without thinking about it. Give me a setting to avoid all “social” things like public playlists or watch as your revenue goes to Apple or amazon.
- thetanil 6y agoJust don't use public playlists. You can already disable explicit. Disable "autoplay similar songs when your music ends". This is Spotify itself selling playlist placement though, not public playlists being manipulated for payola. No one can stop payola on a public list, just don't use public lists.
- cik 6y agoUnfortunately there's a long history of Spotify re-toggling this setting. It's quite frustrating.
- driverdan 6y agoI've been a paying user of Spotify for years and I think that happened maybe once. It is not a pervasive problem. I believe this option is controlled at the app level, not the account level, and is enabled by default in the app. So you have to disable it when you first install the app but after that it isn't re-enabled.
- corobo 6y agoWithout public playlists I have no reason to use Spotify haha, literally any other service would do.
- thetanil 6y ago
- kjakm 6y agoThe title here is deceiving. The author did not pay for playlist placements. The services they used allow you to submit your song to multiple blogs to be reviewed. If they like the song they may write about it and some may include it on playlists (e.g of songs they’ve reviewed this month). The money paid is for the convenience of contacting these bloggers, I don’t believe they get a cut of it. Also, it’s mostly a flat rate. You can’t pay an arbitrary amount of money to guarantee anything other than the blogger giving your song a fair listen.
- Lorin 6y agoThere are a ton of playlists named after songs / albums that are not on Spotify with unrelated songs, pretty deceiving.
- nocredits_org 6y agoThis made me consider paying for promotion. Although, I don't see what would be the end goal with a limited budget. Have my ego stroked for 100$? I wonder how much would you need to invest for a decent chance to snowball into breaking even.