The 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 review

The 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.