Spotify Playlist Promotion: How to Get on Playlists, and Do You Need to Pay?

There's no official product on Spotify you can buy as a "playlist ad." The legitimate ways onto Spotify playlists are clear: free pitching through Spotify for Artists for editorial playlists, real listener response for algorithmic playlists, and reaching the right people for user and curator playlists. Services that promise playlist placement for money violate Spotify's rules. If you have a budget, the place to put it isn't playlist sellers but Spotify's own advertising and promotion tools.

Artists who just released a new song ask me this most often: "Do I need to pay to get on a playlist?" My answer is short: no, and if you do, you could lose more than money. Below I explain why and what you can do instead.

There are three types of playlists on Spotify

Before talking about getting on playlists, we need to separate which playlist we mean, because the path to each one is different.

Playlist type	Who creates it	How to get on
Editorial playlists	Spotify's editorial team	Free pitching through Spotify for Artists
Algorithmic playlists	Spotify's recommendation system, personalized for each listener	Real listeners saving, replaying and adding to playlists
User and curator playlists	Individual users, brands, independent curators	Direct relationships, reaching the right audience

How do you get on editorial playlists?

The only official way onto editorial playlists is the pitching tool in Spotify for Artists, and it's free. According to Spotify, you need to pitch an unreleased song at least 7 days before release, you can only pitch one song at a time, and pitching doesn't guarantee placement. But if you pitch on time, the song gets added to your followers' Release Radar, which is a significant win on its own.

Pick a realistic release date when pitching. Songs delivered at the last minute miss both the editorial pitch and the Release Radar opportunity, which is why delivering to your distributor a few weeks ahead is the cheapest promotion step there is.

The pitch form asks about genre, mood, instruments, the story behind the song and your promotion plan. Filling these out carelessly is the most common mistake. I cover what you can do to catch editors' attention separately in my post on getting the attention of music platform editors.

Release Radar, Discover Weekly and Radio

Algorithmic playlists are built separately for each listener. Release Radar brings new songs from artists you follow; Discover Weekly offers new recommendations based on your listening habits; Radio and autoplay start from a song or artist and play similar ones.

Nobody can put you on these playlists for money, because the decision isn't made by one person but by the behavior of millions of listeners. The signals the algorithm pays attention to are generally these:

• The song being listened to all the way through, not skipped in the first few seconds
• Being saved and added to personal playlists
• Being replayed, and the artist profile being visited and followed
• Those listeners overlapping with other listeners who have similar taste

The key point here: fake or irrelevant streams corrupt these signals. When bots or random people listen to your song, the algorithm gets confused about who to recommend it to, and reaching your real audience gets harder.

User and curator playlists

The vast majority of playlists on Spotify are created by users themselves. Some belong to independent curators who have built large followings. Reaching out to these curators is legitimate; the problem starts when money enters the picture "in exchange for placement."

My advice is to find playlists that genuinely fit your genre and send the curator a short, personal message, create your own playlist and share your song there alongside similar artists, and encourage your fans to add the song to their own playlists. Stay away from accounts with lots of followers but inactive listeners that throw songs of every genre into the same playlist. I explain why these playlists can do damage in my post on Spotify playlists and their pitfalls.

How should you write to a curator?

Keep it short. Introduce yourself in one sentence, explain in a sentence or two why you follow their playlist and why your song fits it, and add the listening link. A long bio, five different songs and a "please listen urgently" tone don't work. If you don't hear back, don't push; you can write to the same person again with your next release.

How can you spot a suspicious playlist?

• The follower count is very high, but the stream counts of the songs on the playlist are out of proportion to it.
• The playlist mixes songs of every genre in random order, with no clear theme or mood.
• The curator asks for a fee in exchange for placement or uses the word "guaranteed."
• After your song is added, streams go up, but saves and followers stay flat.

Why is paying to get on a playlist risky?

Spotify's support pages for artists spell this out very clearly. In my own words, based on what they say:

• Third-party promotion services that promise streams for money violate Spotify's terms of use and aren't legitimate.
• Services claiming to offer guaranteed placement on Spotify playlists for money also break the rules and shouldn't be used.
• You should also be very skeptical of services that charge a fee for a playlist "consideration" but give no guarantee.

The same pages list the penalties Spotify can apply when artificial streams are detected: withholding the related royalties, correcting stream counts, removing the song from playlists and, in repeated or serious cases, removing the content from the platform. Spotify also says it charges labels and distributors a per-track fee for songs where it detects significant artificial streaming. Distributors can then warn the artist based on these reports and, in serious cases, suspend the account.

So it's not just about wasting money. A service that uses bots without your knowledge can put your catalog and your relationship with your distributor at risk. One of the patterns Spotify flags as suspicious is a sudden spike in streams for no clear reason followed by a drop, which is exactly what cheap playlist packages typically produce.

If you have a budget, where should you put it?

Spotify has its own paid tools that follow the rules and are measurable. Since I work with Spotify Ads and Amazon Ads, I use these in practice:

1. Spotify Ads: You reach listeners on Spotify's free tier with audio, video or display ads. You set the targeting, and Spotify provides the reporting. I go into detail on the Spotify advertising page.
2. Marquee: Shows a new release as a full-screen recommendation to listeners who've played your music before or might be interested. You can see how it works on the Spotify Marquee ads page.
3. Discovery Mode: A Spotify tool for giving the songs you choose more visibility in personalized spaces like Radio and autoplay. In return, you accept a lower royalty rate on streams from those spaces. Details are on the Spotify Discovery Mode page.

What these tools have in common is that they reach real listeners and the results show up in Spotify's own dashboards. If someone is selling you a "playlist ad," always ask whether they're actually managing one of these or selling playlist placement.

Getting on a playlist isn't enough on its own

A common misconception among artists is thinking that getting on one playlist will solve everything. But even when you land on a big editorial playlist, your song stays there for a limited time, and what determines whether it sticks is how listeners respond during that window. If save and follow rates are low, the song drops off the playlist and doesn't carry over into algorithmic recommendations either.

So see the playlist as a door, not a destination. Make a plan to move the listeners who walk through that door to your profile, your other songs and your social media accounts. I explain what you can do to turn monthly listeners into a lasting audience in my post on how to grow your Spotify monthly listeners.

Checklist for getting on Spotify playlists

• Deliver the song to your distributor early and pitch it to editors at least 7 days before release.
• Keep your Spotify for Artists profile, photos and bio up to date.
• On release day, send your followers straight to Spotify and ask them to save the song.
• Get the song in front of real people with short videos.
• Approach curators one by one, only those that fit your genre, and don't offer money for placement.
• Put your budget into official tools like Spotify Ads, Marquee or Discovery Mode.
• Watch for sudden, unexplained spikes in streams, and be suspicious of traffic whose source you don't know.

Lasting growth on Spotify doesn't come from getting on a playlist once, it comes from the algorithm recommending you to the right listeners again and again. And that only happens with real listeners.