My journey to building a community-minded playlist ecosystem (That doesn’t suck)
There are 3 types of playlists:
Editorial
Algorithmic
Third Party
As a Label Manager I've been privy to all 3 of the above help and hinder artists. As we enter 2024 I want to try and pull some levers on the Third Party playlist dynamic in order to build greater equity in discovery, algorithmic activation and creative communities at minimal to no cost to the emerging artist.
For example, The Australian Music Scene Playlist is an open submission with minimal curation, which is an admirable playlist with organic listener growth, but it's generates low streams and it's mix of genre's is likely to slow the algorithmic engine's ability to refine it's recommendations. How to build on this and strive for the best of both worlds; open, organic yet focused and fertile?
I've been talking with some established artists and media curators who like my motivations but I thought it important that I talk directly with emerging and independent artists first on their experience with this ecosystem.
The majority of the 131 responses (58.3%) listen to Third Party Playlists “Sometimes” - There are whole music businesses built out of paying for “sometimes”.
~80% of them prefer genre over vibe. Even then, these genre playlists are too broad, the main drawback appears to be that you want sub-genre specialists to curate and update often. Generalists suck!
If the above characteristics are met then they would become loyal - they’d become fans of the curation.
Agreement on enhancements in experience appear to mainly meet on local content and collaboration.
The divide in features that would improve lies between using AI or having the curator carefully select song and listening order - so Metadata vs Storytelling/Vibe.
So I talked with The A&R Dept Massive.
In my 5 year tenure as Label Manager of The A&R Dept, I’ve worked and come into contact with a large of number independent Australian artists - For the most part, I’ve been able to develop and maintain a decent relationship, even by mere email.
I rounded up all the emails of all the artists that have had a somewhat positive experience and sent them a questionnaire about their experience engaging with Third Party Playlists.
Out of 512 artists, on average 280 are watching this process and 131 responded to the initial questionnaire i sent them - Their key takeaways are below:
A Co-opeartive Playlist for lovers of the niche.
I thought and tinkered and now a tentative system for further developing an ecosystem, which can remain adaptable and co-operational.
First step, is to “open up this pit” and take on every and any submission. I’ve set up this General Australian Music Playlist: Share Australian Music (The primary submission playlist)
This playlist is designed to capture the leading genre niches from which specialist playlists will be populated.
There’s only 2 rules: Submit 2 (no more, no less) of your favourite songs (by Australian artists)
These 2 songs need to have a minimum of 20k streams. BUT, Ideally, the choices will have closer to 1 milly.
The plan being that once the playlist has collected a respectable number of songs, say approx. 30. I’ll scrape the playlist for its metadata. Ideally, I want to find 3 sets of complementary niches to build 3 different playlists for the varying interested parties to work on.
For Example - Out of 30 songs - we might collect: 5 songs tagged with Synthpunk, 2 tagged with Eggpunk 8 tagged with Australian Garage Punk - Giving me enough data to form a Punk sentiment.
3 tagged with Dreamo, 6 tagged with Nugaze, 6 tagged with Neo-psychedelic - Giving me enough data to form a strong Washed-out Rock sentiment.
2 tagged with Phonk, 7 tagged with Melbourne Trap, 5 tagged with Glitchore - Giving me enough data to form a hard Hip Hop sentiment
Second Step, These niche playlists will be created on both Spotify and Youtube and be curated to help with flow in energy, texture, story etc. within which I’ll use an AI recommendation function (on Spotify) to select 5 additional songs (which i’m thinking will be the point for leniency for INTL artist additions). I’ll share with you adjacent submission playlists for you to add additional songs to the primary niche playlists, this time it can be your own music or your mates - whatever you think is advantageous for the vibe.
Hopefully, this is the rinse and repeat process. In time we'll build playlists of small but highly engaged co-ops; Indie-pop, sad-boi-folk, melbourne-bounce-international.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND: A key aspect of these niche cooperative playlists will be everyone's role in maintaining the interest and engagement, I'll need constant feedback on which songs stick out like bollocks on a bobcat - for good and bad reasons. I'll need you share these playlists with the folks at the bus-stop who are carrying a Laneway tote, the boss who is tryin' to keep up with the kids - you get me? Share the niche, share the submission process. Share my email if they have unanswerable questions.