“It’s insane.” The buzz allowed the DJ to launch his first headlining tour. “I saw the song go from 8 million streams to over 100 million streams,” says Lauv. It did so well that the track eventually made its way to Today’s Top Hits. At the end of 2016, Spotify added it to a lower-tier dance playlist. Electro-pop singer Lauv, who currently has a Spotify smash with his single “The Other,” first released the song two years ago. For smaller names, the journey takes longer. “Then you go back to Spotify and say, ‘Have we gotten to a point yet where we’ve earned a spot in a playlist?’ Release week – sometimes it’s not gonna happen.”īig names like Ed Sheeran are almost guaranteed space on prominent playlists. “Hopefully, you’re seeing a bunch of good play counts and save ratios,” says Zack Gershen, executive vice president of mtheory. “Radio stations picked up on that – ‘If RapCaviar can play it, then I can.'” To achieve this kind of placement, managers employ consultants like mtheory to meet with execs, present data and make their case. “Tuma Basa is like an artist,” says Daniel Glass, president of Glassnote Records, who saw his client Childish Gambino get a huge bump when Basa added his song “Redbone” to the playlist.
It’s curated by Tuma Basa, a former programmer at MTV and BET, who became the service’s head of hip-hop in 2015. Spotify’s top hip-hop play list is RapCaviar, with more than 7 million listeners.
As playlists become the new radio, here are some of the music industry’s new rules. “Labels obsess over that,” says Ben Swanson, co-owner of indie label Secretly Group, which represents rockers like the War on Drugs. For artists, getting placed on a prominent playlist has become nearly as important as radio play. Streaming revenue has jumped from $1.8 billion to $3.8 billion in two years, and its users like being turned on to new music: More than half of Spotify users listen to the service’s constantly updated playlists, like Today’s Top Hits, which has more than 16 million subscribers. Last month, Spotify reported that it has 60 million subscribers – a 100 percent jump from last year (its closest competitor, Apple Music, has 27 million).
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