Are playlists the key to success as an artist and songwriter on streaming services?
/ 04/05/2016 / codexText: Kai Lofthus
After P3 was launched in 1993, it was said that the channel would, among other things, play music that listeners didn't know they liked. At that time, it was the competence and judgment of music directors, producers and program managers that was decisive, sometimes influenced by the persuasiveness of record company PR staff. Although in these digital times there is often talk about the importance of human curation, there are also recommendations based on large amounts of data/algorithms; "artists and releases you probably also like."
Both record labels and digital music services now pay people to analyze these data sets and create/update playlists to inspire people to discover new music. Spotify's Discover feature is perhaps the most prominent in this regard, but also playlists created by the companies' digital employees and music fans. In an article in Rolling Stone, Spotify's Steve Savoca summarized the new value chain as follows:
– In the old economy, someone in Philadelphia was influenced by their local radio station. Now it’s about a fan in Germany who can influence an audience in Spain who shares the music with friends in Sweden. With such an ecosystem, and the ongoing Internet of Things revolution, Norwegian music is increasingly flowing across borders unhindered. So what can we expect in the future?
Phonofile's digital marketing specialist, Mona Fimreite, gave a talk in early March about what could happen in the future:
“Digital music services have not yet shown their full potential,” she said.
– Music services will be able to treat each of us as a unique individual, and companies will use metadata even more. Not all of the needs of music consumers are met today. Physical location, for example, has not been widely used yet. The trick is to collect data and use it. Tailor it to the users. So far, all users have been treated relatively equally.
Fimreite predicts that there could be tailored content for each user based on personal music taste, and that we could receive messages/recommendations based on the situations we find ourselves in.
– In the future, there will hopefully be less noise and more focus on our individual needs, she says.
There are now countless fans who regularly create playlists that are followed by thousands of other fans. One of them is Carlos López Casany, a Barcelona-based man who dropped out of medical school to promote other people's music through the Indiemono label. His most popular playlist, Just Cry, Sad Songs, currently has 373,244 followers. A new song on there and on x number of additional playlists, and voila, a new hit could be created. Among the Norwegian artists that Casany personally likes are Aurora, Emilie Nicolas, Highasakite, Synne Sanden, Ontz, Bløsh, Astrid S and CLMD. He has even received press coverage in Rolling Stone for his work.
There is reportedly work being done with a community of independent playlist operators, a tastemaker community, who will work more coordinated to promote music on Spotify. Indiemono will be among them. This will be a counterbalance to the power that Filtr (Sony), Digster (Universal) and Topsify (Warner) have gradually gained. We have interviewed Casany about how he works:
– How have the follower numbers been developed? Have the playlists been included in blogs etc.?
– Some of the playlists have been on various amateur blogs, and have been continuously shared on social networks like Twitter. You can also find them on other streaming services like Deezer, because some have cloned the playlists I made. I hope that playlists, not just my own, can get the same kind of recognition that bloggers have on aggregators like Hype Machine.
– Do you have any examples of songs/artists that started spreading from your playlists?
– It's hard to know without official data, but one of my favorite artists is Aurora. I've had her music on my playlists for over a year, since January 2015. Since then, I've supported her through some of my bigger playlists, like Just Cry or Simply Love. Eventually, I got an interview with her on Skype for my website, indiemono.com. After Half the World Away was released, her music went even more viral, including on Spotify's official playlists, he says, and continues:
– Sometimes my playlists can help people rediscover songs that were released a long time ago, like with the single In the Winter by Swedish Flora Cash. After I included it in my Just Cry playlist, Spotify created a playlist called Life Sucks, with several of the same songs in my playlist, including the one by Flora Cash. The same thing happened with Alice Boman. Her song Waiting was in my playlist for two years. I have been supporting the American band Arizona since last summer, and they are going viral on Spotify now. My playlists are not a 100% guarantee of success, but it is a good place to discover good music before everyone else.
– How do you discover music yourself?
– I use Spotify (“similar artists”), recommendations from friends and contacts, music blogs (Hype Machine) and, for example, Indie Shuffle and Tradiio. Radio has never been a favorite of mine. Streaming allows people to hear more than just a small percentage of the music that has been made. Independent curation is more based on musical criteria than financial interests, and it is the best way to communicate music to people.
Tidal also places great emphasis on playlists, and here a competent editorial team works to create mainly two types of lists: The active ones, which typically cultivate a mood or a genre, and which are regularly updated with new songs – and the static ones, which are created for specific purposes. Both types of lists are widely used by their customers:
– We see that the album format is still important, but playlists not only have a big effect on popularity, but also an additional dimension that can be used to support a new album or artist, revitalize older material or contextualize different content to create new and exciting intersections in music, says Tidal's music editor Bjørn Hammershaug. – On a daily basis, we are concerned with making the presentations relevant and current for a broad majority of our users, spiced up with playlists and content that appeal to niches and that move on the edges of music.
