Playlist Promotion Red Flags: Read This Before You Pay 🚩 🚩🚩
In the past few years, more and more “companies” have popped up in the Spotify promotion space. While a few are genuinely out to help artists succeed in their careers, the vast majority are simply a money-grab. In this article, we will highlight some red flags we have been sent by customers in order to help you determine which companies to steer clear of.
To make this article easier to understand, each section will be ranked on a 1-4 ranked red flag scale. 1 “🚩” is a little fishy and 4 “🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩“ is probably a total scam.
- Stream Guarantees or Stream Range: 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩
If a company offers you a certain amount of streams for a paid dollar amount it is not legit. They might technically be able to make the stream count go up on your track but these methods will damage how the Spotify algorithm reacts to your profile. Why? These streams signal to Spotify that no one is actually listening to your song. These “streams” can also have your song taken down for fraud. If a company offers you a stream range for a dollar amount it is obvious that they have complete control over how many streams they can generate. A big red flag to watch out for!
2. Over-use of the term “Organic”: 🚩 🚩
There are really only two kinds of promotion on Spotify: real or fake. Organic is a term used for farming and food labeling, which means the food was produced naturally and without the use of pesticides. This word has no meaning in the music promotion world, but some companies use it in a weak attempt to cover up their fake operation.
3. Cold Emails/Direct Messages: 🚩 🚩 🚩
Any moderately busy or successful music promotion company does not send outbound cold emails or spam emails. There are hundreds of scams out there that will even make their emails appear as if they came from Spotify directly. These companies will say anything to get your business and offer very little value in return. Stay away and mark these emails as spam.
4. Country Company is located in: 🚩
This one can be tricky, but some countries that have been known for running music promotion scams have been prolific in Eastern European countries as well as in Latin America. If you cannot easily find the country the company is located in, that right there should be a red flag.
5. Subscription based promotion: 🚩 🚩 🚩
There are more and more of these companies popping up and it seems to be one of the newest scams in music promotion. The company will have you pay them a monthly fee to keep feeding fake followers and streams to your Spotify account. These streams and followers will usually disappear instantly as soon as you stop paying them, leaving you with a few streams but an obtuse looking amount of monthly listeners.
6. Timed playlist placement methods: 🚩 🚩 🚩
Some companies will have you pay a fixed amount to be featured on a playlist for a fixed amount of time. This method seems nice and somewhat fair, but once you are removed from those lists your monthly listeners (one of the most important metrics to measure your career) will drop extremely fast. It's always best to stick to curators who genuinely like and care about your song. At Playlist Push we have artists who have been on playlists for years. It really just depends on how well your music fits into certain lists.
7. Playlists your music ends up on: 🚩 🚩
Few promotion companies have a strict vetting process like Playlist Push. We only let in the very best playlists with an active audience and real streams. Other promo companies will place your song on decades playlists, movie soundtrack playlists, and even playlists titled after a popular song. This will destroy your chances of getting on larger editorial playlists because if people are listening to the Marvel soundtrack and they hear your song, which obviously was not in the movie, they will quickly skip your song. This sends a negative message to Spotify on where your song would end up.
8. Publications that have mentioned the company: 🚩 🚩
In a world of paid media it can be easy to get your company on publications like PR newswire or Yahoo Finance but larger more established companies will have some type of media coverage (good or bad). Go to google and type in the company name then click on news to see if there are any relevant articles about the company from reputable sources. Playlist Push has been featured in the following publications: LA Times, Rolling Stone and Fortune.
9. Helpful content for artists?: 🚩
Is the company you are interested in posting and blogging about useful tips and promotion trends for artists? Or is the site just a weak designed mess with a BUY NOW button? The only thing more popular than our Spotify promotion is our music marketing blog. We post weekly to keep our customers and artists ahead of the curve.
10. No case studies/Testimonials/Reviews on social media (Reddit)/Trustpilot: 🚩
Reviews of service are not always 100% accurate and dont always paint a complete picture BUT they can be very helpful to at least see if people are using a service. Reddit and YouTube are great places to hear from people that have used certain services.
11. Curator sign up 🚩🚩🚩
There are plenty of companies out there that claim to have curators and to plug your song to these curators. Many of these websites don’t even have a place where potential curators could sign up. Therefore, it is obvious they have complete control over the lists they work with which are usually fake.
In conclusion:
The best way to find a reputable promotion company is word of mouth. Network with other artists that have used different services and get details from them on how each service works. Playlist Push has been in service for almost 5 years for one reason: word of mouth. We do not run ads on Facebook and rely solely on making sure the artists we are working with experience long term success.