You've finished the track. The mix is signed off, the master is uploaded, and your distributor wants everything three weeks before release. Somewhere in that list of jobs is a form in Spotify for Artists that takes ten minutes to complete — and most artists either ignore it or fill it in the night before their release goes live. Both amount to the same thing: a missed opportunity.
What the editorial pitch actually is
The pitch tool is free and lives inside Spotify for Artists. You can pitch one track per release, and you have to do it before the release date — the form disappears once the track is live. Spotify asks for at least seven days' notice. More is better, because editors work weeks ahead.
Two things are worth understanding. You're pitching a specific track, not your career. And while the pitch goes to Spotify's editorial team, plenty of the playlists your track might land on are algorithmic — Release Radar, Discover Weekly, radio — and those respond to how listeners behave. The pitch helps; the response does the heavy lifting.
Claim your artist profile before any of this. Verify it, add a bio and a photo, and check that your releases are linked to the right profile. If your track lands on a duplicate artist page, no amount of good pitching will rescue it.
Set the release up before you pitch
Your distributor needs the track well ahead of the release date — a few weeks is normal, and some take longer. When you upload, get these right:
- Release date: at least two to three weeks out, not a Friday you picked yesterday.
- Metadata: correct spelling of names, no stray capitals, no production credits crammed into the title.
- Artwork: square, high resolution, and no logos you don't own.
- Versions: a clean edit if there's swearing, and an accurate explicit flag.
- Credits and ISRC: check them. Errors here quietly cost you money later.
If you're releasing a single ahead of an EP or album, the date you pitch is the one that counts, so pick it carefully.
Writing a pitch an editor can use
Editors read fast. Your pitch is a few short paragraphs, and the useful ones read like a note from someone who knows the scene rather than a press release.
Say what the track is: genre, tempo, mood, where it sits in your catalogue. Name a couple of honest reference points — "somewhere between early Four Tet and a slower Joy Orbison" tells an editor far more than "genre-defying". Mention your city and any genuine context: a support slot, local radio play, a playlist that picked you up last time. If there's nothing yet, say less rather than padding it out.
Fill in the mood and instrumentation tags properly. They aren't decoration — they help route the track to the right editor.
Your back catalogue is part of the pitch
If an earlier track was playlisted and performed well, say so. If it was skipped into oblivion, that's information too: it tells you the track, the timing or the audience wasn't right. Either way, an editor can see your history, so don't pretend it doesn't exist.
How to spot a dodgy playlist service
Search "playlist promotion" and you'll find hundreds of services promising placement. Some are legitimate companies with real relationships and a track record you can check. Many are not. Watch for these:
- Guaranteed placement. Nobody can guarantee an editorial add. Anyone who does is selling something else.
- Payment for a specific playlist slot. Money changing hands for placement is a red flag, and the streams that follow are exactly what Spotify's fraud detection is built to catch.
- Big follower counts with no engagement. Check the playlist page: are the artists a mismatched jumble? Are the same twenty tracks recycled? Does the curator have a real profile?
- Requests for your login. No legitimate service needs your password.
- Pressure and deadlines. "Only two slots left today" is a sales tactic, not a curation process.
- Offers to buy a share of your royalties in exchange for promotion. Walk away, and take proper legal advice before signing anything.
If you're unsure, look at the listener-to-follower ratio and ask whether real people are listening. Then check who else the curator has worked with and whether those artists saw any lasting growth. A wall of silence tells you plenty.
Track what actually happens
Spotify for Artists gives you the numbers, and they're more useful in combination than on their own:
- Streams and unique listeners across the first 7 and 28 days.
- Saves — the clearest sign someone wants the track again.
- Playlist adds, and which playlists they came from.
- Sources of streams: your profile, your followers, algorithmic playlists, editorial, other listeners' playlists.
- Skip rate and average listen time.
Keep a spreadsheet, one row per release, and compare like for like. A track with fewer streams but a much higher save rate is often the more promising one. The source breakdown tells you whether your own promotion or the algorithm did the work, which should shape where you spend effort next time — a strong response to a self-made playlist campaign is a better sign than a spike from somewhere you can't explain.
Next release, do this
Set the release date three weeks out. Upload early, check the metadata twice, claim your profile, and pitch on the day you upload rather than the day before release. Write two short paragraphs describing the track honestly, fill in the tags, and leave the rest alone. Ignore anything that charges for guaranteed placement. Then, once the track is out, spend twenty minutes in Spotify for Artists working out what happened and use that to plan the next one. Ten minutes of pitching, done properly and done early, is worth more than a month of chasing curator contacts on social media.
Photo: StockSnap / Pixabay
