Training the Algorithm to Find Your Fans
These guidelines are built to tap into smaller artists whose fans are most likely to like you -- artists with fans who are hungry to discover new music in your genre. This trains the algorithm to recommend you to those artists' fans in algorithm-generated playlists or radio. This strategy gets your songs into various algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly and Daily Mix if people are repeatedly playing your tracks in your curated playlist.
If we design this playlist well, it'll become a destination for people who like that micro-genre, leading them to continually play your music since you're always featured in this playlist. They'll become fans while you're simultaneously building algorithmic connections to other songs, which gets you recommended to people who don't even listen to the playlist but are likely to enjoy your music.
Title
Titles that evoke a specific genre ("Alt Rock Core") or vibe ("Indie Drive") do really well.
Cover Art
This is a good place to use a band promo photo. Something that's a little abstract does well.
Tracklist
Length
Between 50-100 songs (~1-4 hours).
Your songs
Place your most popular track at the top of the playlist. Include 4-5 of your songs in the top 25, and then sprinkle the rest in throughout.
Target Artists Just Above Your Level
About 1/3 of the tracks should be songs from artists just slightly bigger than you in audience size. If you have 0 monthly listeners, target artists with 10-20k monthly listeners. If you've grown to 20k monthly listeners, artists up to 60k work great. Once you've crossed 100k, you can even include artists smaller than you while also adding some that are up to four times your size. The more relevant artists you can find with listenable tracks, the better -- these create algorithmic connections that get your music recommended to their listeners.
Larger Artists/Tracks
About 1/3 of the tracks should be by larger/well-known artists that new fans are likely to know. Songs that are currently doing well can be mixed in every 3rd or 4th song. Unchartify is a great tool for finding songs that are doing well in your niche right now.
Cohesive Genre/Vibe
Focus on maintaining a cohesive, streamlined sound. While you may have excellent, eclectic taste in music, it's going to be easier to find fans that'll devour a folk rock playlist vs. a jazz/folk/dubstep/hip hop/lo-fi playlist.
Keep an Update Schedule
You'll need to keep the playlist fresh to keep people coming back to listen. This doesn't take a lot of work.
Every 2-4 weeks:
- Swap out some of the larger artists/tracks.
- Check if the smaller artists have released new material or have other good songs you can add. You can also explore those artists' "Fans Also Like" sections for other ideas.
- As your monthly listeners grow, you can start adding smaller artists in the next tier.
For each playlist, I like to keep a private "candidates" playlist that I put new potential tracks into. That makes it really easy to take a few minutes every couple weeks to make updates.