Why Your Playlist Pitches Aren't Getting Placements

Most playlist pitches get stopped at one of four points: the curator never opens it, they open it and skip the track, they like the track but it doesn't suit their playlist, or it suits the playlist and there's no room that week. Only one of those four is about your music. The other three are built into how pitching works, and when you pay per pitch, you pay for every one of them.

The four points where a pitch gets stopped

1. The curator never opens it

Curators get far more pitches than they can read. Pitching platforms charge per curator, which rewards artists for sending more, so every inbox fills with music that was never going to fit. Your pitch is one line in that pile. Plenty of pitches are never opened at all, and you usually can't tell which ones.

2. They open it and skip the track

Curators decide fast, and three things end a listen early: a long, slow intro, a mix that sounds unfinished next to released tracks in the same genre, and a track that sits between two genres, so the curator can't tell where it would go.

This is the one point that's about the track, and it's worth fixing whatever route you take to playlists. Is your track ready for playlist promotion walks through the checks.

3. They like it, but it doesn't suit their playlist

A curator who runs a warm acoustic playlist can enjoy your indie rock track and still decline it, because adding it would break what their listeners followed the playlist for. To you it reads as a mysterious rejection.

Pitching puts the whole job of avoiding this on you. You have to find playlists in your exact corner of the genre, listen to each one, and check it's active and has real listeners, for every release. A genre label on a submission platform is a rough filter, so a lot of what you pay for lands on playlists that play something next door to your sound.

4. It suits the playlist, but there's no room

Curators add a handful of tracks at a time, and a good track can arrive in a full week. You can't see this from the outside, and neither can the platform you paid. The pitch simply goes unanswered.

The traps that make it worse

Some of the most common pitching mistakes come from the model itself:

• Choosing playlists by follower count. Big numbers look like opportunity, but the count tells you nothing about how many people listen now or whether they'd like your sound. There's more on this in do Spotify playlist followers matter.
• Trusting audiences you can't check. Some impressive-looking playlists are padded with fake followers and bot streams, and a placement there can hurt your release. How to spot fake Spotify playlists shows what to look for.
• Paying for a guarantee. Spotify's own help pages say any service offering guaranteed playlist placement for money breaks its terms. The risks of buying Spotify playlist placements covers what can happen to your track.
• Treating volume as the fix. When pitches don't land, the pitching platforms' answer is to send more.

Why sending more pitches doesn't help

More pitches only raise reach, the number of curators who hear your track. Whether it suits their playlist, and whether the recording holds up, decide far more placements, and they stay exactly where they were.

The extra pitches also get worse as you go. Your first twenty playlists are the ones that suit you. Numbers 100 to 200 come from broader searches, and those curators decline a track they liked because it doesn't fit. If the intro is too slow, two hundred curators hear the same slow intro, and two hundred silent declines tell you what twenty would have, at ten times the cost. How many Spotify playlists should you submit to goes into the numbers.

Work out what pitching actually cost you

Your acceptance rate is the share of pitches that turned into placements. Pitching platforms rarely show it to you, so work it out from your last release: count the pitches you paid for, count the playlists that added you, and divide. Then divide what you spent by the number of placements.

On a typical pitching platform, $150 buys submissions to about fifteen curators, and many charge more. Say two of them add the track: that's $75 per placement, before you count the evenings spent picking playlists and writing notes. And if the two playlists that added you sent almost nobody, the real cost is higher still.

To check that last part, open Spotify for Artists and go to Music, then Playlists. It lists the playlists your music is on and how many listeners each one sent. According to Spotify's own guide to it, a playlist only shows up there once it has sent at least 3 listeners, so a placement that never appears has almost nobody listening.

What you're paying for on pitching platforms

Most pitching platforms charge you to pitch. You pay per curator, often with a minimum spend, and the service is done once your track lands in their queue. Whether anyone listens properly, writes something useful, or adds the track is up to them. Plenty of artists spend a few hundred dollars this way and get back a stack of generic declines, some of which read as if nobody pressed play. The model also breaks Spotify's rules, which don't allow charging for a placement, or even for considering a track for placement, and it's the artist who carries the risk.

Curators on those platforms have it bad too. They get a few dollars per review and spend whole afternoons on tracks that mostly don't suit their playlists, which is part of why so many of the declines read as rushed.

The better way: one campaign and no pitching

Soundmango drops pitching altogether. You start a campaign, set the genres and the minimum follower count you want, see the price, and pay once. Your track only goes to curators who run vetted playlists that fit. When one passes, it goes to the next fitting curator, and that keeps happening until one takes on your campaign.

If no curator takes it on, you get every cent back. Because every track only reaches curators whose playlists it fits, approved tracks have an estimated 99% chance of landing on at least one playlist.

Curators decide for themselves what goes on their playlists, which keeps all of it within Spotify's rules. And since every track they hear already suits their playlist, their time goes on music worth their attention. You get your evenings back, and your money only stays spent once a curator takes on your campaign.

Frequently asked questions

Why do curators ignore my pitches?

Mostly because their inboxes are overloaded. Pay-per-pitch platforms reward volume, so curators receive far more music than they can play, much of it outside their genre. Your pitch can be good and still never get opened.

How many pitches does it take to get one placement?

Nobody knows a reliable number, because no one publishes one and it swings a lot by genre. Your own acceptance rate is the number that matters, and the section above shows how to work it out.

What is a good playlist acceptance rate?

There's no published benchmark worth quoting. What you can compare is your cost per placement across releases, and how many listeners each placement actually sent.

Is guaranteed playlist placement legit?

No. Spotify's own help pages say any service offering guaranteed playlist placement for money breaks its terms, and bought placements often come with fake listeners.

Can I get on playlists without pitching?

Yes. On Soundmango you set the kind of playlist you want and pay once. Your track goes to fitting curators until one takes on your campaign, and approved tracks have an estimated 99% chance of landing on at least one playlist.

Stop paying for pitches

Your track goes to curators who run real playlists in your genre, one after another, until one of them takes on your campaign. Approved tracks have an estimated 99% chance of landing on a playlist along the way, and you get your money back if no curator takes it on. Start a campaign for your next release.