How to monetize your niche Spotify playlist, the TikToker turned pop star + the future of clothing is rentals

I am surprised more creators are not utilizing public Spotify playlists. Here's why!

Did you know that there are 8-billion user generated playlists on Spotify, according to the CEO Daniel Ek?! Playlists on Spotify are one of the most untapped potentials for creators to connect with their fans and potentially monetize one thing that creators are great at doing: growing their audience because of their specific taste and curation.

In the past, if you were a budding artist you would have to hope you got radio play to have any chance of breaking mainstream. When Taylor Swift was starting out in Nashville, she packaged and shipped copies of her CD singles to country radio stations. She even went on a radio tour, showing up to the local radio stations through out the south to meet with their team and win over some radio play for her music.

While radio play is still an important factor, especially for country artists and to reach the older demographic — it is no longer the be all, end all.

Instead, when I have conversations with artists — big and small — their number one priority when coming out with music is how to get it on playlists at Spotify like “New Music Friday” or “Pop Rising”. Getting a placement on a playlist like this is like getting Ryan Seacrest to play your new song at 8 am on KISS.FM in 2007. It is a trampoline that catapults you to the big leagues.

While those bigger playlists are Spotify curated, there is still a lucrative world of smaller, user-run playlists that have so much untapped potential. Record labels are foaming at the mouth to get their artists on even the smallest playlist created by a teenager in a small town titled something like, “driving with friends late at night” if it has a couple thousand listeners.

So how do you, as a creator, lean into this potential?

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