“The number one question we get from labels, artists and their teams is: who do I speak to to get on Rap Caviar, Hot Country, ¡Viva Latino!, Ultimate Indie or other Spotify playlists?,” said Nick Holmsten, Vice President of Content & Global Head of Shows & Editorial, Spotify. “We’ve listened to feedback from the creative community, and developed a new feature that enables them to easily submit unreleased music for playlist consideration to our entire worldwide team of playlist editors.”

 

Spotify said there is no guarantee of playlist placement. “We want to make something crystal clear: no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists. Our editors pick tracks with listeners in mind. They make these decisions using data about what’s resonating most with their community of listeners,” the company wrote in a blog post.

 

http://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=312687

 

Sure, Jan. :lol:

The most blatant lie I have ever seen anybody tell.

*cough* Matt Terry *cough* Drake *cough*

Drake's album was just casually the second coming of Jesus and not payola then. Mkay.

Ah glad they've come out and clarified that now, we can all sleep easily from here on!

I can buy that Spotify did the Drake promo of their own accord. He's a massive draw for them, why would they not heavily promote him? And I don't think Drake's people really need to be wasting money on such a thing (especially as it backfired in a fairly obvious way).

 

The real suspicious stuff is artists who have absolutely no profile at all somehow instantly bagging favourable slots on all the Spotify playlists.

They probably call it 'donating'. :P

Isn't he essentially saying that smaller labels can't pay X amount of money and it will guarantee their place on a playlist? That's what I infer, cos obviously it does happen, but also depends on the song as well.

labels make deals with spotify

i.e. drakes label allow the album on spotify

in exchange hes promoted like crazy

might or might not be the same as paying

Yeah, if Drake said "promote my album all over Spotify or I'll make it an Apple Music exclusive" and they agree, then strictly speaking he hasn't paid them.

I knew something was fishy with the drake situation they never done that much promotion for any other artist before seemed way too biased ( he probably would have been successful but not that much straight away)

that probably is what happened. 'Views' was an Apple Music exclusive for its first 2 weeks which would have lost Spotify many millions of streams, they'd do anything to have Drake on their side.

 

one of the big reasons they backtracked on banning XXXTENTACION from their editorial playlists was his label boss threatened to pull all their artists' music from Spotify. even if there's no money being handed over the big labels definitely have a big influence is what I'm saying.

Bullshit

and sure it was the same with Taylor, they make a deal so she puts her music on Spotify in exchange of heavy promo i.e. insta-add as track #1 on all playlists

I think it might just be that labels make deals with Spotify for promo but not necessarily "Put x on Hot Hits UK as #1" or anything like that.

 

"easily submit unreleased music for playlist consideration" might be a cheeky way around that too, so maybe labels pay Spotify to consider an artist to be supported on HH but aren't 100% guaranteed to be added. There's no way Spotify themselves are completely behind it all

sure thats part of the deal, in drake's case it was ilike, you place the MJ duet as track #1 for 3 days then you can take it off

 

but there are many cases of direct payola, like Nina Nesbitt (who?) being moved to track #4 on HH with a song with zero buzz zero chart success nada,

Matt Terry being in the top 10 of every imaginable playlist on the planet months after release

 

 

ACCIDENTALLY the #1 songs on playlists are always by big record labels

There was an interesting article I read about the US music industry once. I can't remember exactly what it was about, but the main gist of the article was that to get around payola rules, some of the higher-ups would invite other higher-ups to a "nice, expensive dinner".

 

There was another story I read once about Katy Perry's record label sending cakes out to loads of radio stations in "celebration" of one of her single releases.

 

My point is, there are loads of creative ways you can do payola without actually doing it. Not to mention, they could simply just be lying.

 

Obviously a lot of the big Spotify playlists aren't natural.

it's not that different from having artist playing at Radio 1's big weekend thingy and then being playlisted, same same