Playlist Push, New and Improved?
Playlist Push is a platform that connects independent artists to Spotify playlist curators, boasting over 4000 playlists. It’s a premium service at a premium price, basically a rich man’s SubmitHub or Groover.
I first reviewed Playlist Push back in November of 2017 and my results were pretty meh. I gave them another shot in May of 2018 and came to a slightly more nuanced conclusion. In both instances, my niche genre held me back.
CEO George Goodrich reached out to me in February to chat about recent updates to the platform. We caught up on a call and he explained that he was hitting up many of the “OG reviewers” to see if they’d give it another shot.
Two months later, here we are!
This time George picked the track from three options I provided. He also reviewed my targeting before the campaign went live. I was feeling quite optimistic!
Was that optimism justified? Read on!
Launching a Playlist Push Campaign
Here’s the track we went with:
It’s upbeat, lovey-dovey, and slightly over the top in an 80s sort of way. It generated 6.28 streams per listener on Spotify Marquee with a 25% intent rate, so it seemed like a promising choice.
I did a little preliminary research on Musiio Tag to inform my targeting:
I didn’t have a strong feel for what indietronica was, so I looked it up:
Yeah, that seems about right. I’ve often been compared to The Postal Service and Owl City.
Armed with some objective knowledge about my track, I logged in to Playlist Push to create the campaign.
Hard to believe it’s been five years.
Here’s where things get interesting:
Playlist Push streamlines the process of identifying your track’s genre by doing it for you, based on the similar artists you choose. To begin, it offers artist suggestions from the “Fans Also Like” section of your Spotify profile, assuming you’ve got one.
It suggested 30 genres based on the artists I selected:
I wasn’t intimately familiar with many of them, and some were completely new to me, like indie poptimism and metropopolis.
Spotify had me covered though! In most cases, a search for the genre brought up a corresponding playlist:
I couldn’t be sure I was getting an objective take on the genre though, as all of the artists listed above except Say Lou Lou are ones I actually listen to. Heck, I’ve collaborated with three of them!
I suppose the playlist description does say “picked just for you.” But does that mean that the selections aren’t representative of the genre?
Here’s what I ended up going with:
When I said that Playlist Push is a premium service, I wasn’t kidding. A max budget campaign costs as much as a 2012 Toyota Prius.
Up until this point, I was pumped. The process of selecting genres felt scientific and precise, so I figured my track would only go out to the best possible candidates.
Having extensively scoured the Spotify landscape, there’s no way there are 2734 playlists appropriate for my music, and zero chance that any given curator has more than one playlist that my music would fit on.
Doing some basic math, that’s $11 per submission, roughly 5x the cost of SubmitHub and Groover.
George gave me a $100 discount code. That wasn’t enough to give the platform a fair shake, so against my better judgment, I chipped in $310 of my own money.
That slider is super finicky! It took several attempts to even get it in the $300-500 range.
It must normally cost extra to launch the campaign right away, but in my case Priority Launch was free. I assume that’s because I’m an Amazon Prime member.
The whole process is streamlined and polished until your payment is processed. I was expecting a thank you page with animated fireworks but instead, I got this:
Clicking through to the hyperlinked page allows you to track the progress of the campaign:
I also received an email asking me to grant permissions to my Spotify for Artists account, which I did.
My Playlist Push Campaign Results
Curators have two weeks to respond. You receive an email for each playlist add:
You can view the responses page at any time, where you’re encouraged to rate the reviews from 1-5 stars:
On the whole, the quality of reviews is on par with SubmitHub and Groover. Historically I like to cherry-pick a few for their comedic value, but there were no obvious knee-slappers this time.
These four are so weak that they don’t even meet SubmitHub’s minimum requirements:
Nice work but Need better work on mix mastering keep it up!
The energy of this is incredible! It’s not right for my playlists, but keep going!
I love the vocal so much but the I am not a fan of the drums, too monotonous for me
Not good enough, the voice needs work, not catchy, need a more organic sound and more production
Note to self: next time, more production.
You can download a PDF of my complete results including the full text of every review here.
You may have already caught the recurring theme of “not right for my playlists.” Quite a disappointment after such a rigorous targeting process!
“Not a fit” was the top reason provided for rejecting the track. Some examples:
unfortunately its not a right genre fit for our indie playlists
we’re looking for tracks that implement a fuller pop-band experience and fewer electronic elements
unfortunately I don’t have a playlist in that style yet to accept your music
this indie pop/electro pop genre doesn’t fit my chill house playlist
I don’t have a place a song like this would fit on my playlist
I don’t have a playlist with a well enough matching mood/genre
Super frustrating! It would be one thing if we could choose which curators to submit to, but we’re completely at the mercy of the “new and improved” targeting.
On the plus side, I received 66 reviews even though I paid for an estimated 49 curators.
Here’s a summary of my final results:
At first blush, it looks pretty good! All the numbers went up.
Did that have anything to do with the campaign? No. It didn’t.
Here are the playlists my track was added to:
You can tell from their names that these playlists have little potential to reach fans of my genre, with the exception of my friends at indie alt pop (who had already added the track via SubmitHub).
Here are my Spotify for Artist stats for the song from the launch of the campaign through the final report:
Sure, it looks bad, but imagine how much worse it would’ve been if not for Playlist Push!
Kidding aside, the playlists did generate some streams:
I crossed out my own playlist, but the others are all from the campaign.
In total, Playlist Push is responsible for about 900 streams to date. To put that in context, the song got 2075 streams from Release Radar and 1706 from Electronic Pulse, courtesy of Rise.
Playlist Push Conclusion, 2023 Edition
As a rule, I don’t like to write negative posts. Like Mom always said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
In this case, not saying anything at all isn’t an option. I agreed to write a review and sunk $310 of my own money into it.
My stance used to be that if you’ve got more money than time, it might make sense to opt for Playlist Push over SubmitHub.
Today SubmitHub can automatically select curators for you too, and it does a much better job of it. You can see exactly who you’re submitting to, what playlists they curate, how often they accept tracks in your selected genres, and how many streams you’re likely to get if added. And you can deselect the ones you don’t want!
Bottom line, you’ll reach many of the same curators on SubmitHub for a fraction of the cost.
With that in mind, I can only in good conscience recommend Playlist Push if you’ve already exhausted your opportunities at SubmitHub. Arguably, Groover should be your next stop, assuming you can dedicate a few hours to researching the curators there.
Should you decide to give Playlist Push a try, please support the site by using my referral link. Use coupon code KNNX437 for a 7.5% discount on your first campaign. Curators can sign up here.
Have you tried Playlist Push? Another Spotify playlist pitching service? Share your thoughts and results in the comments!
The most honest reviewer in 2023. Keep up the good work!
I appreciate your trust in me Nick!
Nice one!
Thanks Jason!
Love reading your reviews. You always provide great insight, a wealth of information, and introduce tools I haven’t come across before (that Musiio Tag). Thank you for sharing!
I appreciate that Jared! Yeah, Musiio Tag is a pretty handy tool.
I had a similar experience with Playlist Push. I would not recommend it.
Sorry to hear that! Obviously it works for many, but I struck out again.
Hi Brian,
I used PLAYLIST PUSH exactly one time…they did nothing as far as letting me know if I had chosen a track they could effectively promote, they didn’t suggest a different track, they failed to get my track placed and they took the $500 (or whatever the exact amount was) without even a “sorry” at the end of the process.
No refund. No nothing. No comment. Take the money and run basically.
That same track was later accepted by many playlists on Spotify and now has tens of thousands of streams. This is a 1000% true story which was very unpleasant to go through.
I felt their arrogance literally. It was a very mechanical experience…sign up…fill out the form…nobody really on the other end acting like an actual human…and the No Refund thing is a deal breaker as far as I’m concerned now. These days when I consider a new promotion company the REFUND thing must be there. If they can’t get me a playlist that works then I want my money back so I can go find somebody who can get the job done.
A business in today’s world that doesn’t offer your money back if they fail to deliver their service or product doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.
I basically just gave PlaylistPush $500. “Here! Enjoy!”
“Don’t worry about getting the track on a playlist…”
It was exactly like that.
I think right after that I used IMA, You Grow, Moonstrive, Rise, and some others…all of whom performed far and away better than Playlist Push. Just my two cents.
Ryan and his team at Indie Music Academy probably got me the most streams and biggest audience numbers per month than any other company. I was at one time around 18,000 monthly listeners. I’m right now in a momentary lull between releases…but holding around 12,000 monthly listeners and those OTHER companies are the reason for those numbers. Playlist Push didn’t push anywhere but hundreds of dollars poorer!
Arlin Godwin
arlingodwin.com
Ouch. It makes me wonder if the entire system is automated. It very well could be!
I imagine they’d argue that they did their job in getting your music in front of their curators and that they can’t guarantee streams, which would be a violation of Spotify’s TOS.
Still, they could at least jump in, refine the targeting, and try reaching out to different curators.
Thanks for a great, objective, unbiased review. I was not surprised by your review as I’ve had mediocre experiences with PlaylistPush before, so I stopped using them. I was surprised that their CEO reached out and encouraged your review based on his false perception that things have dramatically improved. I think this backfired. My three main issues with PlaylistPush: i) you don’t get to select the curators, only the music genres; ii) the curator responses are often arrogant and ignorant; iii) the most common playlist listing denial is that the music doesn’t fit the playlist genre. All three of these issues are in PlaylistPush’s control, yet they do nothing.
Thanks for sharing your experience Anton!
I emailed George before I published the post but haven’t heard back yet. I expect him to be less than thrilled, but I don’t see any way to sugarcoat my results.
Don’t use this site, period. Very short and coming from someone who spent a lot.
I only had 1 campaign going well, done several others and if you wanna throw money in the trash , then pay them. I don’t even understand how didn’t they fail yet, could almost call it a scam. Stay away.
I think their roster of big playlists is second-to-none, which makes it a high-risk, high-reward venture. I’m still waiting on the reward part.
Great work! Very informative! As a newbie takin hmm on the marketing there is so much to learn and you really cover how your cost is being affected!
Seems like SubmitHub may be the way to go for me.
Thanks Melissa
I find SubmitHub to be indispensable, as both an artist and a playlist curator. For $20 you can get a strong sense of whether or not your track resonates with listeners. If not, it’s probably best to save your money for the next one!
If I only I took my own advice! Instead I adopt a “go big or go home” approach. 😉
Again, Thanks for all you do, Brian! I’ve probably tried as many places as you, maybe even more, but didn’t have the nerve to review.
Ok. We also tried playlist push a few years back, and I was super disappointed at how I paid so much money and would only be in a playlist for a few days or get the craziest feedback about a song.
I thought about trying again recently, but after reading this, I probably won’t. This might be small, but a huge turnoff is how they did a full campaign against another promotion company ( omari mc). It kind of felt like instead of seeing how they could improve, they decided to attack another company instead.
I didn’t catch that head-to-head Jay! Google surfaced it for me though. You gotta love the conclusion:
Omari MC is good if you don’t have explicit lyrics in your music. If you are looking for a finite number of plays and virtually nothing organic it could be a good fit for your music for those with limited budgets.
It just so happens that I’m looking for virtually nothing organic! 😉
Seems they’ve got one versus SubmitHub too. I think they’re both pretty old though, for what it’s worth.
Great review. I gave them a try on two occasions…probably around the same time you did both of your previous ones. In my opinion, each update is just a more and more elaborate and techie way to do…nothing special for an artist. Or at least nothing Submithub doesn’t already do.
I’d like to further elaborate on my previous post for those who may be new to this whole world of playlisting.
To be fair, Playlist Push’s system is great for what it does. The only issue is, there’s very little value in what it does. This whole play-list craze came about when people thought that getting on a big time Spotify playlist meant instant success and it was published that the best way to get on the big playlist was to get on a bunch of the smaller playlists first. If you do a bit of research on Spotify, you’ll learn that it’s not quite that simple and that – thanks to over-saturation caused by the playlist boom – MOST of these sub-playlists are just noise. Very few of them have any active listeners and very few of them will gain you any clout in the “eyes” of the Spotify algorithms – let alone faithful listners.
While there IS SOME value in getting into any playlists at all, it’s not $11 per submission valuable (and MOST CERTAINLY not worth a Toyota!!).
It’s time for people to accept that there’s no magic train to Today’s Top Hits and no amount of Playlist Pushing is gonna get you there. The best thing to do is listen to people like Brian who teach you how to grow and engage listeners. It’s a slow road for most of us and that’s how it’s always been. As always, your chances of overnight success is about the same as your chances of winning the lottery. It does happen but do you really want to stake your finances in it?
Be careful out there!
Great to hear from you Montrell!
I hope people take your advice to heart. After a campaign like this, we expect that our monthly listeners will get a sustained boost, but that’s not always the case.
If you’re not reaching true potential fans, you risk confusing the algorithm as to who your real fans are. A bad playlist campaign can be worse than none at all if it amounts to fewer streams on Radio and Release Radar.
The best one was by Daniel complaining about the reverb on the vocals being too loud!!! I swear these reviewers are using ChatGPT to write a whole load of nonsense haha. I would NEVER use Playlist Push. They are far too expensive and have an inflated sense of their importance. To be honest I would rather use YouGrow or similar to push for playlists and Submithub for influencers on Tiktok etc.
Good catch Kenny! If only the reverb were a couple of dB softer, it definitely would’ve been an add for Daniel. So you’re telling me YouGrow isn’t a male enhancement product? 😉
I’ll throw in my slightly different take. While Playlist Push has given me a pretty wide range of results, when it hits, it does tend to hit pretty big (Brian mentioned this likelihood in one of his comments above). I’ve actually had less success with Submithub, if only because I don’t seem to be very good at handpicking the curators most likely to give me an add; that being the case, I’ve appreciated (so far) being able to zero in on genres instead and letting PP take it from there.
A few quick thoughts: you CAN handpick curators on PP, but only those who have added you in the past. Useful-ish if you’ve already gotten some decent placements.
Also, the one of my three campaigns that did good numbers (as opposed to okay numbers – I wouldn’t call any of them failures) was for the song that was the most easily classifiable in a genre. The ones that were harder to pigeonhole had way more trouble getting traction.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It’s nice to hear that you’ve gotten some decent results. You could always let SubmitHub pick for you too and reach more curators for less money, but probably not the ones with the biggest playlists. I suppose once you’ve had success with Playlist Push, it makes sense to go back to hit up those playlists again.
Hi Brian, do you have or recommend a service for Facebook/IG ads?
I do indeed! It’s Andrew Southworth’s company, Forbid Media. Just provide some info on your track here (referral link) and they’ll hit you back with some options.
Ok great! Yes, I am familiar with him. Thanks Brian for the recommendation. I will use the referral link.
I appreciate it!