How to Choose a Niche for Your Spotify Playlist

The right niche for your Spotify playlist is a genre you already love, narrow enough that you can be the best playlist in it, and busy enough that good new music keeps arriving every week. Get this decision right and every later decision gets easier, so it's worth an hour of thought before you add a single track.

Start with what you already listen to

You're going to spend the next year hearing new music in this genre every week. Anything you picked because it looked popular will feel like homework within a few months.

Open your own listening history and pick from the top of it. Enthusiasm is the thing that runs out first, and your existing taste is the only reliable supply of it.

Narrow beats broad, almost always

"Chill" competes with an enormous number of playlists and tells a listener nothing. "Nordic indie folk" competes with a handful and tells a listener exactly what they're getting.

A narrow niche gives you four advantages at once:

• Findability. Someone searching a specific genre has fewer results to scroll through.
• A clear yes or no on every track, which makes you faster and more consistent.
• Artists who know they fit, and who share the playlist when they're on it, because their fans are your listeners.
• Somewhere to be the best. Being the best Nordic indie folk playlist is a job you can actually finish.

The three checks before you commit

Is there enough new music? Your niche needs to produce at least three or four releases a week that you'd consider. Check by finding this month's releases in it. If you struggle to fill one week, the niche is too narrow on its own and needs a wider frame.

Are there artists in it who are still small? A niche made entirely of famous acts gives you nothing to discover and nobody who'll share your playlist. You want a scene with plenty of artists at a few hundred to a few thousand monthly listeners.

Can you name the listener? Say out loud who the playlist is for and when they play it. "People who loved early Bon Iver, on Sunday mornings" is a listener you can picture.

Three ways to cut a niche

Most good playlist niches combine two of these:

• Genre plus mood. Indie folk that stays warm and quiet.
• Genre plus activity. Deep house for running. Ambient for deep work.
• Genre plus scene or place. Nordic, Manchester, or the Nigerian alté scene.

Two dimensions is usually right. One is too broad, and three tends to leave you with four eligible releases a year.

Test it for a month before you commit

Before you build the public playlist, spend four weeks collecting tracks in the niche into a private list. You'll learn three things fast: whether enough music exists, whether you still enjoy it in week four, and whether you can tell good from mediocre inside it.

That last one is what a niche really asks of you. Taste is genre-specific, and being an expert listener in one corner is what makes a playlist worth following.

When to widen and when to stay put

Widen once the playlist has real listeners and you're running short of material, and widen by one step: an adjacent subgenre, or the same genre from a second country. Say so in the description.

Stay narrow while there's still music to find. Most curators widen too early, and a playlist that broadens before it has an audience turns into one more general playlist with a small following.

Once you've chosen, how to build a strong identity for your Spotify playlist turns the niche into a name, a cover, and a sound people recognize.

Your niche decides what reaches you

A clear niche makes you the obvious home for a certain kind of track, and a vague one makes you everybody's second choice.

It also decides how much of your time goes to waste. On the old submission platforms, a narrow niche barely helps: tracks arrive from every genre, you review them for a few dollars each, and most never had a chance of fitting. Those platforms charge artists just to have their track considered, which Spotify's rules don't allow. On Soundmango you set the genres your playlist covers, and you only see campaign opportunities for tracks inside them, with your earnings shown up front. You listen first and take on the campaigns you want. One campaign earns you more than an afternoon of per-review listening, and what goes on your playlist is always your call.

Frequently asked questions

Can a niche be too small?

Yes, and the sign is running out of tracks to add. When you can't find three or four candidates a week, widen by one dimension: the same genre from a nearby country, or an adjacent subgenre.

Should I run several playlists in different niches?

Yes, once the first one is working. A second playlist in an adjacent niche shares your audience, your artists, and your knowledge, so it costs a fraction of the first one. A second playlist in an unrelated genre means starting over.

What if my niche has no big artists in it?

That's an advantage. Listeners tired of the same famous names go looking for exactly this kind of playlist, and the artists in it will actually share yours.

How do I know if a niche is too competitive?

Search it on Spotify. If the first screen is all huge editorial playlists, add a dimension: a mood, an activity, or a place. There's almost always room one level down.

The best music in your niche, brought to you

A narrow niche is a promise to your listeners, and keeping it means finding music inside those lines every week. On Soundmango you pick your genres once, the tracks that reach you already fit, and you're paid every month for the campaigns you take on. Pick your genres and start.