Happy to say I can talk about this opportunity. My track Zoom Noir was featured in a video for Porsche displaying their Arthur Kar 968 Concept car. The video was directed by Pennacky out of Tokyo, who has directed music videos for musical artists like Phoenix, Balming Tiger, Atarashii GakKo! and more.

I am happy how this turned out and it was a HUGE opportunity that I never thought I would have been offered ever in my time as an artist.

You can check out the video on the official Porsche YouTube Channel below.

If you like my stuff, feel free to follow me on Newgrounds.

You can also check out my stuff at the following socials:

Spotify

Instagram.

YouTube

TikTok

SoundCloud

I pulled data from 300 user generated Spotify Playlists to determine the ideal playlists size, if more followers equal more streams, and what playlists are best to pitch to. Here is what I’ve learned.

When it comes to growing on Spotify, getting on popular playlists is a key strategy that every growing artist needs to know. I personally have gained a good number of monthly streams and followers by simply getting on a few playlists in my niche, as have many other artists I know.

While services like Submithub, Groover, PlaylistPush and more offer playlist pitching services, (which you can review my ranking of them in a previous blog post), there are a good number of playlists that aren’t on these services.

Instead, artists looking to grow on user created playlists will have to pitch their song directly through email, DM, or even filling out forms. However, that can take a lot of time and a lot of work.

Because of this, you don’t want to take the time to pitch to playlists only to have unrealistic expectations. And while services like is it a good playlist can offer some insight, often times you won’t get a complete picture and will only get estimates. You might not even get any information at all if the data they have on the playlist is not sufficient.

In this article I will attempt to answer the following

·      What is the minimum/lowest number of streams and listeners an average playlist should generate per month?

·      What is the minimum number of streams and listeners a top playlist should generate per month?

·      Do more followers on a playlist equal more streams on average per month?

·      What are some verified playlists that accept submissions I can easily pitch to?

What does the data gathering process look like?

To solve this problem, I pulled data from over 300 playlists of varying sizes that were provided by a variety of artists in different genres. All data pulled is based off 28 days of streaming. Additionally, this data comes directly from their Spotify for Artists page, meaning these data points are not estimates but are in fact hard data points.

All playlist data is directly from user generated playlists, this does not include algorithmic playlists such as discover weekly or Spotify Radio. This will lead to more accurate answers vs estimates and will focus solely on playlists that are picked by users.

Finally, some playlist data contains multiple songs from the same artist, however this is rare. To maintain accuracy, these playlists were not averaged out per song and instead were counted as if they were one song as it is ideal for an artist to get multiple songs on top playlists if they can (and the difference when calculating this out was negligible).

This data also does not factor in the position of the song, but instead takes the numbers as is in order to get the best overall average of simply being placed on a playlist, not necessarily negotiating also being put in a top spot on the playlist.

How many listeners and streams should a Spotify playlist generate?

Of the 300 playlists, I went through and eliminated playlists that had some “questionable” metrics (one playlist for instance had 1 listener but generated over 100 plays a month). I did this to get the most accurate representation of real playlists and avoid possible bot playlists. Here are the numbers from those playlists.

Average from all playlists

Total Playlists: 288

Total Average Listeners: 50

Total Average Streams: 87.5

Total Average followers: 5994

Total Average Songs: 303

Based off the above numbers, we can conclude a few things:

• The overall follower to listener ratio for any sized playlist should be at least .8%

• The overall streams to listener ratio for any sized playlist should be at least 1.5%

Using these metrics, whether you are pitching or growing your own playlists, you should be able to determine a minimum number of streams and listeners that a playlist will generate within 28 days based on their follower count. This means if you are hitting these ratios while growing your playlist, you are on the right track.

Example

• You pitch to a playlist that has 1000 followers.
• Using the numbers above, you should expect to receive a minimum of 8 monthly listeners and 15 streams from this playlist.

Those numbers might be surprising (and small), which is why it’s so important as an artist to do your research and realistically manage your expectations when it comes to playlists.

Additionally, this may give the idea that you need a large number of followers on a playlist to generate noteworthy streams. However, you will see that, while more followers does tend to lead to more streams and listeners, there is a cutoff point where an increase in followers has a diminishing return.

What does a Spotify Playlist that generates decent streams look like?

While the overall averages above gives somewhat of a picture, this total data alone isn’t enough to give us an answer of what an ideal playlist to pitch to would look like. Instead, we need to dive into playlists that provide enough streams to warrant pitching to.

To find this out, I looked at playlists that generated at least 100 unique listeners a month. I used unique listeners vs streams as listeners as having more listeners is more likely to lead to building a fan base vs having more streams but fewer listeners. Of my data set I was able to pull 35 playlists that matched these criteria.

Additionally, the 35 playlists that generated at least 100 unique listeners a month varied in size. The smallest being 335 followers and the largest being 142179 followers. Here is what that data looks like:

All Spotify playlists with over 100 listeners a month

Total Playlists: 35

Average Monthly Listeners: 304

Average Total Streams: 526

Average Playlist Follow Count: 20134

Average number of songs: 183

Taking the top playlists for each artist (For artists that had multiple playlists that had at least 100 listeners a month the top 5 were taken, for artists that had under 5 all were taken) came out to 15 playlists. Of these playlists here are the stats:

Top 15 playlists with at least 100 listeners among the contributing artists

Total Playlists: 15

Average Monthly Listeners: 434

Average Total Streams: 771

Average Playlist Follow Count: 27854

Average number of songs: 170

What do these Spotify Playlist numbers mean?

Based off these numbers above, an “ideal top playlist” that generates a decent number of listeners is going to have at least 20k followers, have under 200 songs, and should generate anywhere from 500 to 800 streams per month.

When looking at playlists to pitch to, playlists that fit these criteria should be your top priority for pitching. Additionally, if you are currently building a playlist and you meet these numbers congratulations, you are meeting the threshold for a top playlist!

Do more Spotify Playlist followers equal more listeners and streams?

Looking at this data, this might lead to the conclusion that “more followers = more streams.” However, as mentioned earlier, that’s not always the case and the answer is more complicated than that.

For instance, in the case of the top 15 playlists, the difference in follower count of the largest playlist and smallest playlist is astronomical. The largest being 142179 followers and the smallest being 335 followers. With our averages, you would expect the playlist with nearly 150k followers to be extremely high in both listeners and streams.

However, while the smaller playlist generated an impressive 344 listeners a month and 562 streams per month, the largest playlist generated similar numbers of 479 listeners a month and 583 streams per month.  

Why is this? Looking at the numbers, the main difference between the two playlists other than followers came down to the number of songs. While the larger playlist has 410 songs, the smaller playlist has only 27.

Here are what those numbers look like.

·      The smaller playlist generated a song count to listener ratio of 12.7 and a song to stream ratio of 20.8.

·      The larger playlist generated a song count to listener ratio of 1.2 and a song to stream ratio of 1.4.

Looking at these ratios, this means that you are nearly 13 times more likely to get a significant number of streams on a smaller playlist with fewer songs than being on a larger playlist with a significantly larger number of songs.

In fact, the playlist with the largest number of monthly streams had 11,000 followers with 157 songs and generated 2408 streams per month.

While this number is impressive, the largest number of streams coming from one of the smaller playlists instead of the largest one was unexpected. This would indicate that the impact of followers on a Spotify playlist is diminished significantly as the number of songs on a playlist increases.

This aligns with other data showing that 50-200 songs is ideal for a Spotify Playlist. This also aligns with my own data found in this article. So while the number of followers can be a good indicator of streams, you also need to factor in the total number of songs on a playlist as well.

It should be noted, that being toward the top of the playlist has been shown to generate more streams. However, this data set looks at average as a whole and when pitching to playlists it is much easier to pitch simply being added to the playlist as opposed to also asking to be put in a certain spot on the playlist.

However, I would still recommend looking at follower count and as long as this is growing it could indicate the smaller playlist is a good playlist to pitch to.

So while you should still be focusing on getting on playlists that have a larger follower count, a playlist with a lower follower count but also a lower number of songs could still be a good playlist to pitch to. This is especially true if the playlist has been growing in followers while the number of songs stays consistent.

What key points can we take away from this study?

Based off the information and data calculated through this study, here are the key points to take away when it comes to Spotify playlists:

Key metrics regarding Spotify playlists:

·      An “ideal top playlist” that generates a decent number of listeners is going to have at least 20k followers, have under 200 songs, and should generate anywhere from 500 to 800 streams per month.

·      Playlists with more followers tend to generate more listeners but there are diminishing returns based on number of songs and other factors.

·      The number of monthly listeners decreases significantly as the number of songs on a playlist goes up.

·      Playlists with fewer followers but also fewer number of songs can generate as many streams and listeners as larger playlists with a large number of songs as long as the follower count of those playlists is consistently rising.

How can I find playlists to pitch to and what are examples of good Spotify user generated playlists?

If you are looking for ways to find and pitch to playlists don’t worry, I have already written an article with a good number of techniques for doing so. You can read that here:

I reached out to 100 Spotify playlist curators. Here’s what I learned.

Looking at the data, here are a few examples of awesome playlists to pitch to that get real listeners and decent traffic:

Verified top ideal Spotify playlists that easily accept submissions

·      Chillwave / Dreamwave

·      Jungle/Breakcore/DnB

·      Breakcore / DnB

·      Synthwave Cyberpunk

·      New Retro Wave

·      Abao In Tokyo ~ Study With Me

·      Late Night Nostalgia 🌙 lofi for sleep, sadness, depression and bad moods

·      Best Vocal Drum & Bass

This article could not be possible without help from the following artists:

·      Damaggge

·      i9incher

·      Philp J loaf-eye

·      Ryahu

·      Shadowrunner

·      Shinyflvre

If you like my content, feel free to follow me and check me out on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok.

I increased my Spotify follower count by over 20% in a month by posting every day on TikTok. Here is what I learned.

When it comes to music promotion on social media, TikTok has been the go to place for musicians and artists to be heard. With the recent pulling of over 3 million songs by UMG in February, it has never been a better time for smaller and independent artists to promote themselves on the app. For my own experience, I posted every single day on TikTok from January 1st to February 1st and measured my results.

My Goal when posting on TikTok and how to measure success

My goal for growth had to be easily measurable. I wasn’t trying to grow my TikTok account as much as I was trying to grow my Spotify listeners. To do this, I decided my main focus would be to get more followers on Spotify.

To start, on January 1st I had 185 followers, and on February 1st I had increased my follower count to 224. That is a 21% increase of 39 followers! I’ll also mention at the time of writing this (Feb 5th) I am currently sitting at 233 followers total on Spotify (screenshot below).

Here is also a post of my stats from January 1st to February 1st as well.

·       Total post views 26K (an increase of almost 5000%)

·       679 profile views (an increase of 770.5%)

·       1922 likes (an increase of over 38000%)

·       178 comments (and increase of nearly 3500%)

·       19000 unique viewers (and increase of nearly 5000%)

·       57 shares

My process for posting everyday on TikTok and what these numbers mean

While these numbers can tell a story, you will really need a break down of my process to understand what they truly mean. For me, I would post anywhere from 1-4 times a day at varying times (all central) of 8am, 9am, noon. 2pm, 4pm, and 5pm. I picked these times as doing research told me these would be the optimal time to post. While I did see that if I posted outside of these times there was a dip in engagement, overall nothing within these times was typically better than the other.

In order to post every day, I would have to concentrate on content that was easy to create but still within my Niche. For me, all of my songs relate to racing music relevant of Gran Turismo, Forza, and other styles of games from the 90s.

To do this, I concentrated on creating slideshows around car magazine ads from the 80’s and 90’s to play on nostalgia while still being in my niche. I would also only use my own songs for these slideshows to match the vibe and hope that it would take off. Here is an example below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT87K4DXU/

(TikTok doesn't let you embed slideshows but you get the idea)

Additionally, I also created slide show content highlighting my songs on Spotify and asking to have people check me out. Finally, I would also use free stock footage of car related vids (racing, drifting, etc.) so that I could have plenty of content to choose from.

Initially, while I was confident that the video footage would get the most interaction, it turns out these types of videos got the lowest amount of engagement. With the second amount being the slideshows asking for followers on Spotify and the highest being the slideshows of cars.

Here is what those results looked like based on overall highest engagement average of each video:

·       Highest engaged content showing video of cars: 37 likes, 6 comments, 2 saves, 280 views

·       Highest engaged content of slideshows asking for followers: 32 likes, 4 comments, 10 saves, 436 views

·       Highest engaged content of slideshows showing cars: 134 likes, 0 comments, 24 saves, 1391 views

Should you post every day on TikTok to grow your Spotify following?

Verdict: Yes

Overall, I posted 64 videos between January 1st and February 1st, which comes out to an average of 2 videos per day and roughly 406 views per video. While this may not seem like a lot remember, the goal was to NOT grow my TikTok following, but to instead grow my Spotify following. You're not looking to go viral, you're just looking to grow, and it's almost guaranteed to happen with TikTok if your music is even somewhat decent.

The problem many people face when posting to TikTok is thinking they need a ton of views on a single video to grow. And while this certainly helps, looking at the numbers I was able to generate 26000 views organically with content that wasn’t too time consuming to make. It shows if you're just looking to grow, it's better to simply post ok content then to not post at all.

Your goal shouldn’t be a quick burn to gain followers, it should be consistent measurable processes to see growth of some kind. And while better content ultimately will give you better growth, you CAN and most likely WILL see Spotify growth if you simply stay consistent on the platform. This is especially true if, like me, you’re not looking to get on camera, do trends, create commentary, etc.

Consistency is the game, and I will continue to post every day in order to keep up the growth on my Spotify.

Follow me on my socials for more content

If you would like to follow me for more, feel free to follow me on Spotify, YouTube, or Instagram.

I've Mixed and Mastered Over 5000 Songs. Here's what I've Learned.

As a small business owner and music lover, I always look for ways to combine business with passion projects and to take the opportunity to talk to successful freelancers and business owners whenever I can.

Today, I sat down with Mike Rende, a 15 year music mastering and production professional and 1/2 of the EDM Duo RCKT PWR. We talked music, business processes to success as a sound engineer, niche plugins he uses, and the importance of a good work ethic.

Question:

Hi Rende, give us a brief introduction about yourself and your experience.

Rende: Yeah sure thanks for taking the time to speak with me. My name is Rende it's actually my last name but that's just what everyone calls me by my first name Mike.

I have been doing this music thing for I guess almost 15 years now and I started out by getting into DJing. Then production actually followed shortly after that. Then from there really mixing and mastering became a huge interest and importance to me.

I do production for dance music as well so if dance music doesn't sound good no one going to listen to it. So there was really kind of a demand for me to learn how sound engineering worked.

Jumping forward to that was I had a project that ended up taking me out to LA where I kind of really found that my niche was more into mixing and mastering.

Then the pandemic came around and I found out I can't tour anymore so it ended up the timing just ended up being right to go all in on mixing and mastering and it ended up kind of blowing up.

Question:

You mentioned that you've mixed well over 5,000 songs. Out of all the songs you worked on what would you say is the most common mistake you often see artists make when mixing and when passing a song off to be mastered?

Rende: I think when it comes to mixing I think artists kind of have this idea that the engineer is going to fix everything. Don't get me wrong to some extent that is my job.

But when you come to me and you're like “I want a song like it sounds on the radio” those artists have put in the time to make sure that they have the best samples possible and they have the best performance possible.

When it comes to what the engineer can bring, they bring the creativity and knowledge to really kind of bring your track to life. It’s not really about sitting there trying to fix little things or trying to adjust certain errors in the mix that could have just been avoided by a simple re-recording or really trying to nail the performance.

Different artists are at all different kinds of levels. But I think that really the most important thing is to really try your best to get the best kind of sound possible from the beginning.

So if you have a demo that's great and you're like “I really want the reverb to sound like this and this song” that's where I can come in and help be like cool I know how to make that kind of Reverb.

Justin: I also think a lot of artists don't get that a lot of those popular tracks on the radio and Spotify have teams working on them.

I remember I messaged Mutt who's one of my favorite producers and said “Hey how do you get your sound so crisp?” and he says “oh I have a team of four guys at the label that work on everything” and it's like cool man that's great.

Question:

What would you say is the hardest thing you had to learn when it comes to mixing and mastering techniques?

Rende: I think it's just more of an overall concept honestly but less is more. I can't tell you how many videos I watched for how many years of these guys adding all these different plugins and EQs and all this compression saturation whatever you're going to add to it to these different tracks to get them to sound a certain way.

I didn't really realize that they had a very specific end goal in mind. It's not something you really need to do to every kind of sound.

I think even in the last year my channel strips have gotten lighter. I'm literally only using the things that I know make a difference as opposed to trying all these other little things.

Don't get me wrong. Every once in a while, I'll step out of the box like “oh I really wanted to sound like this” and do something crazy but I think that my biggest thing is keep things simple when you can.

For instance, if the kick drum sounds good just leave it alone. Otherwise you’ll keep mixing and then all of a sudden you're like “oh well you know what the kick is actually fighting with the Bass a little bit now” so I think having that context is really helpful.

Question:

In your experience, what role does understanding the genre play in successfully mixing and mastering?

Are there any genre specific techniques that inspiring producers should be aware of or is there a more universal approach that could be taken to a lot of mixing and mastering?

Rende: I think I'm lucky enough to have been in the position for doing this for a long time and I learned mixing and mastering from producing dubstep.

So in order to get those sounds and everything to sound the right way you really need to understand compression and saturation and when too far is actually too far. But knowing the genre definitely helps.

Right now I'm doing this guy's whole Indie album. It isn't going to require all that extra saturation and compression like in Dubstep so I'm able to kind of take a step back and go “oh well it just kind of needs these little bits of light things.”

I know for me personally hip-hop and dance music are typically kind of the main things I work on. I do some rock and Indie stuff as well but that's just been the last year or two really.

I think it's a fun challenge to take on but whenever you're mixing anything it's just kind of a general tip to always ask for a reference or a demo mix that's in the same genre and the same kind of world that they're going for.

As long as I have those things I can figure out what the artist wants.

I think referencing on good headphones and good monitors is important because if you're just listening on Airpods they're fine but it's still not going to get everything exactly the way it's supposed to be heard.

I took Dolby Atmos class to get certified in Atmos mixing and the main engineer for Atmos Studios uses Airpod Pro Maxes to reference every mix.

Justin: I think Snoop Dogg did something like that. He says every song he mixes he's got it on his $30,000 system but also, they just put the cd in a $10 little CD player and see if it still sounds good to make sure they don’t miss anything. Because they want it to sound good for as many people as possible.

Question:

With advances in tech there are countless plugins and tools available for listening, mixing, and mastering.

How do you stay updated on the latest tools and how do you decide which ones to incorporate into your workflow? Are there any underrated or lesser known plugins or hardware that you find particularly useful?

Rende: So when it comes to like the newest and brightest plugins and stuff I think it's really a matter tastes. I know some Engineers that really just buy everything and dive into every plugin and just really tear it apart. For me, I found the plugins that I like and I just stick to them.

I get ads and I'll try demos of different new plugins like some of the AI based ones just to see what they are like but for me it's mostly things like the Fab filter stuff the sound tool stuff the isotope stuff.

I work in Ableton so all Ableton stock plugins are really great and then I think most of my reverbs I use Valhalla. Those are kind of like the tools that I've really used over the last five years because I know how they sound so I can get almost any sound out of them.

That being said, as far as underrated plugins go that I really like I use this plugin called Stereo Tool a lot. It's just a free plugin but it just does panning so well in like a natural way and Ableton actually doesn't really have like true panning like that so I have to find a way to do it anyway.

It’s just the cleanest panner I think I've ever heard. I haven't really heard another plugin or even panning in another DAW that sounds as good or as clean as that.

Question:

In the context of mastering, how do you approach loudness in the age of streaming platforms with their own loudest normalization algorithms?

What advice do you have for musicians who might be tempted to overly compress and limit their tracks in an effort to compete?

Rende: To be honest it's I think a bit more about the genre but I get that the streaming services are going to normalize everything to an extent.

If you listen to like a dance music song that hasn't been mastered on Spotify you could still kind of tell the difference. So for me I always do what I think sounds best even If it ends up being a little quieter, especially if it's not something like EDM.

If it's something like hip-hop or rock or something where you have a little more wiggle room and the mix sounds great and it hits really hard just leave it. Trying to get that extra DB out of it just isn't worth it.

Question:

How important is it to have different masters for different streaming platforms?

Rende: For me I don't even really create different masters for streaming just because there's so many different variables that go into it. Unless you're one of the big labels you don’t really get that level of insight into how streaming services do their mixes.

so I come up with one master that sounds good on everything. I could play it on a CDJ in a club and it sounds great, I could play it on a cell phone and it sounds great, and that's kind of what I work with.

Question:

You've obviously seen some success working with a variety of genres. Let's say someone is ready to start offering mixing and mastering services.

What would be the best way for them to get started and what can they do to ensure they can grow and get more clients?

Rende: I don't like to do things for free. Over the years I've seen artist get taken advantage of for doing things for free. Same with engineers and it's also happened to me.

To really get started you need to have a reasonable price even if it's just like 20 bucks or something for a hip-hop mix and master. Show what you could do for $20 and go all out by doing the best you can.

I think it's kind of a little bit on a case-by-case basis but I would say I don't I think that when I first started I was selling myself short.

Justin: I think what people also underestimate is the power of reviews when you're first starting. Money will come and go but a review will almost live forever and that’s a big deciding factor for people that are willing to pay more. I think once you have 5 to 10 solid reviews on a platform you want to up your rates.

Question:

Networking is essential, in the music industry especially. What advice do you have for aspiring producers on building meaningful connection with artists, other producers, and industry professionals?

Are there specific platforms or events you recommend for networking with the music production community?

Rende: For me the way I did it is I would go and meet people in person. For example, with dance music, just because again that's kind of one of my focuses, I just go hang out at shows.

When I was first getting started and I would hang out at shows I might have a drink or two, but nothing crazy. I would walk around and just start talking to people and eventually I ran into the owner of a venue, and eventually I then ran into the talent buyer, or I'll go talk to the guy working at the sound booth you know if I get there at 9:30.

I also think it's important to not just ask for things from people right away when you meet them. You just explain what you're doing and if they ask then you talk about it. Otherwise, you find ways to add value.

Maybe you meet an artist at this event, which has happened to me several times, and they say something like “Oh we just can't get this to sound right” you can respond and say something like “Oh I'd love to check it out for you. Maybe let's just do a quick session or something.”

You want to show them what you can do and then if they want you to finish the song you can say it's x amount of money. I know you can reach out to people on socials like Instagram and Discord, but I feel like there's a lot of noise to try to cut through on there.

Justin: Agreed. I think of the online platforms that Discord is probably the easiest one to connect and block out some of that noise if you're just starting. Especially since Instagram will straight just block your message sometimes.

I also agree with what you said about going to shows and concerts. think concerts are the easiest because you already have something in common because a lot of those artists are very passionate about what they do.

So, if you start asking things like “Hey I loved how you mix this and I love the way the base hits at this level. What made you inspired to do it that way?” They want to talk about that because they probably don't get asked that all the time.

When you ask them technical stuff, they're like “Oh cool, no one's ever asked me that before” and it comes off more natural.

Question:

The music industry is constantly evolving. How do you anticipate trends and changes in production styles and how do you adapt ?

Are there any recent trends that you find particularly exciting or challenging from a mixing and mastering perspective?

Rende: That's a really good question. When it comes to the trends, I think it's just important to still keep an open mind to different kinds of music even if you don't like it. For me the Mumble rap thing was not really something that I was the biggest fan of.

People will come to me and they want that style of music and I'm like “Well it's not my favorite but I mean I get it.” I don't have a negative connotation or anything towards it, it's just it's not for me. But I get why people like it.

It helps because you might learn something listening to that genre that you would have never thought of before. Like the way you could press the vocals, or the way that and artist side chains the vocal reverb and delay to it to get a clean sound that still like bounces.

I think it’s also important to be listening to older music too. Listen to the way old mixes sound, like stuff from like the 60s and 70s.

Question:

As technology has democratized music production it's has been allowing a lot of artists to produce music from home.

How do you think this shift has influenced the role of a professional music producer and what advice do you have for artists navigating the DIY landscape?

Rende: You know that's a really great question. I think that it's both good and bad because it's made it a lot more accessible for people which is always a good thing. But with accessibility comes saturation.

I remember when SoundCloud first came out and I used to be able to scroll in my SoundCloud feed and catch up every day because there would only be 5 or 10 maybe new songs a day. Now on Soundcloud if you go on your feed there's no chance you could catch up.

Because there are so many artists, I think when it comes to the DIY stuff it's important to kind of know how serious you want to take it. You need to understand a realistic budget for yourself.

I would invest in something like a pair of Airpod Pro Maxes and a laptop with some good software to get started. If you're producing at home I wouldn't buy monitors and stuff because your room’s not going to be treated. From there you kind of prioritize what you want based on the music you want to make.

Like if you're a rapper, invest in the headphones and interface and a decent mic and your laptop. You don't have to buy all the fancy plugins and everything either. You can get a good sound out of your DAWs plugins at least when you're getting started.

Justin: I think we had a saying in the rock community that the guy with a $5,000 guitar usually plays the worst. People think the equipment will make their songs better when the biggest issue is not getting the fundamentals down first.

Rende: Yeah that's same thing. So, you can get a nice tool but you don't have to buy the $10,000 monitors. That’s also just out of reach for so many people anyway.

Question:

What would you say was a piece of game changing information that you still think about when it comes to mixing and mastering?

Rende: I think that's it's kind of a twofold answer for me. The first is it is a bit hard to say this too, but it's just because you don't think something sounds good doesn't mean that someone else is going to think it doesn't. Within reason though because that's like a dangerous like you know like line to walk.

I think it's important to leave as much room for creativity with an artist as you can. But on a more technical thing what really kind of took my mixing and mastery to I think the next level was having a process.

Every single time I have a template built for me to just drop stems in. I always start with my kick drum and my snare every single time. It doesn't matter the genre then I do. Then the high hats and stuff and then from there I do just the kick and the base. Then from there I typically move on to either the synths or the vocals.

Question:

Thank you for your time today. Before we wrap up, do you have any interesting projects that you could talk about that you want to shout out?

Rende: Yeah definitely. I actually want to shout out my buddy's project. Me and him were a duo we were called RCKT PWR.

We were doing all this production stuff together and in the last couple of months he started his own project called Seth David.

I do all the mixing and mastering for it and to be quite honest it's a really dope project. He's a super talented producer and he just got picked up by a management company. So shout out to Seth.

If you would like to work with Mike, you can reach him at the link below:

Mike Rende, Mixing and Mastering

If you like my content, follow me on Spotify or subscribe to my YouTube Channel

I reached out to 100 Spotify playlist curators. Here's what I learned.

As a music producer for the past decade, I would say I have done OK from an organic standpoint. I always believed that if you have the hustle and make great content you will see success. While I still believe that, I have always been curious about where the line is between straight organic, outreach, and the dreaded "Pay to Play" (Which should be avoided at all costs unless you want to kill your momentum).

Luckily, I had some extra time and income lying around and decided that, after creating a new track that I had professionally mastered, that I would try to go all in on outreach to playlist curators to see what results I could create.

To do this I used a variety of techniques and platforms, some free some paid, and then measured the results. Here are the platforms and techniques:

• Email
• Forms
• Groover
• Instagram
• Playlist Push
• SubmitHub

To make it clear, while some of these ARE paid, this is the FIRST time I have ever used payments for any kind of music marketing. Everything else before hand has been organic. Because of this, I wanted to have a fresh start from a brand new song.

This is why I picked my track Sad Eyes as it was professionally mastered. It also managed to do well both here on Newgrounds and on YouTube, so I felt like the track itself had merit for a campaign.

Email

Cost: $0

Outreach: 6 curators

Playlists acceptance: 2

Rating: 7/10

Advantage: Low Cost, Follow Ups, More Exclusive and Professional

Disadvantage: Time Consuming to write and find emails, low response rates

Ah yes, the try and true method of emails. What's great is emails are free, and will always come off as more professional than DM's in my opinion (I always try and get an email if I can). The problem with emails is they can be hard to get, especially for really large playlists. There are services that supposedly can get you these emails, like DistroKids Playlister but for this campaign I wanted to see what I could do spending absolutely no money at all.

The thing about email is curators are not obligated to respond to you or even open your email. This means you will have to do your due diligence to write both compelling subject lines and follow up with multiple emails to get a yes or no. This technique, while low cost, can also be VERY time consuming for both finding and writing and responding to emails. If I had more time to dedicate I would have liked to have reached out to more curators and I'm sure I would have had better results.

For this campaign I ended up only getting 1 response, but that response was a yes that had me end up on 2 playlists, both with over 2000 followers on them. However, I did have to message the curator a few times to get him to respond and to follow up to double check if he was still going to post them or not as I didn't see them go live on the date he stated.

They DID eventually get posted though. So not bad for something free.

Forms

Cost: $0

Outreach: 4 Curators

Results: 0

Rating: 3/10

Advantage: Low cost, easy to submit

Disadvantage: No customization for messaging, Low response rate, Inability to follow up

This is the only technique I did that not only got 0 placings but also got 0 responses (Despite them often requesting your email/socials to submit).

Most of these were bigger playlists who most likely get hundreds of submissions per month, so it's understandable why I didn't get a response. Ideally, I would like to submit to more curators that have you fill out a form as the cost to do so is $0.

However, because you can't reach out to follow up AND these forms often don't allow for any kind of customization like emails do, I would say it is the LEAST effective process and I would recommend that if you had to choose a free option to instead go with emails instead of submitting to forms as the only advantage forms have are the speed to which you can submit.

Instagram DMs

Cost: $0

Outreach: 3 curators

Playlists acceptance: 1

Rating: 5.5/10

Advantage: Low cost, easy to find curators, follow ups, If you have a decent following on IG that can play into getting accepted

Disadvantage: Might not be able to send follow up messages, if you have a low IG following you're more likely to get rejected

Other than Twitter and email, Instagram is probably one of the most preferred methods that up and coming playlist curators will ask for submissions. The first time I actually got on an up and coming playlist was from a Twitter DM, so I know first hand how effective DMing can be.

That being said, I was VERY lucky to get on that playlist, as my social following on both IG and Twitter are VERY low (I primarily only use NG, TikTok and YouTube) and unfortunately this can play into you not getting accepted, or even a response, from a curator through social DMS.

I currently stand at about 3 million YouTube views, with my biggest song being at about 170k plays. However, it's all on another platform and because these curators get SO many responses most likely they will look at your IG following first and a low count may stop them from going any further. That being said, I was able to get on 1 playlist as the curator, unknown to me, had a previous track of mine on his playlist before. He also isn't a giant playlist (probably about 200 followers) but it is currently growing.

Either way, as a free option IG DMing is certainly better than filling out forms, but doesn't give you as much freedom as email does. I'm confident I would have seen better results if I simply had time to reach out to more curators.

Groover

Cost: $11+

Outreach: 24

Playlists acceptance: 5

Rating: 6/10

Advantage: Low cost, easy to find curators, can get specific with genres, quick to send requests, allows for custom messaging, let's you preview the playlist submissions that have been accepted.

Disadvantage: Transparency on playlist size could be better, getting a good curator is a gamble, feedback can be generic and some curators might not even really listen to the track, low match rates for more niche but still popular genres.

Now that we are leaving the free options, it's time to get into the paid space, Starting with Groover. Groover is a platform where artists can buy credits to pitch directly to playlist curators, blogs, influencers and labels. To pitch, you upload your song link and then buy credits for a dollar each. Each pitch can cost anywhere from 1 to 10 credits depending on the curator. You can buy individual credits or bundled deals, but the minimum purchase to get started is 10 credits.

When it comes to Groover I would say my feelings are...mixed. On the one hand, I like how you can get a variety of different customization options for starting a campaign to match the exact curator you want.

Currently, you can search based on Genre, location, past interactions, and even custom options like keywords and being a "Certified Spotify Curator" (whatever that means).

While this may SEEM great, the seams start to unravel when you try to actually build out and run the campaign. For instance, while Groover has several curators, the number goes down significantly depending on the genre you're in when compared to other platforms.

For instance, I make Jungle and Breakcore. while not the biggest EDM style genre, it has a significant following and breakcore especially has been getting more and more mainstream appeal. That being said, when I went to find a Jungle or Breakcore playlist Groover pulled up one. And it was a playlist I was already on.

So because of this, you might have to submit to playlists that aren't a "prefect match." While you can still get accepted to smaller playlists doing this, this most likely means that unless you're the EXACT sound a bigger playlist is looking for that is on Groover that you might be better off using another platform instead that is more genre specific.

Groover was also the only platform I reached out to where it felt like some of the curators straight LIED about listening to the track.

My song not only has vocals, but they drive most of the track. So this was baffling to say the least.

SubmitHub

Cost: $1+

Outreach: 29

Playlists acceptance: 2

Rating: 6/10

Advantage: Low cost, easy to find curators, can get specific with genres as well as emotional feeling, quick to send requests, allows for custom messaging (not as much as Groover though), has a good mix of mainstream and underground/more niche genres, lets you preview the playlist submissions that have been selected and see stats on the average play count songs get along with engagement level, high response rates.

Disadvantage: Acceptance rates are the lowest of the paid options I tested, while most curators respond the responses can be on the generic side without actually telling you what you need to do to get a song on the playlist, playlists you do get accepted on can be lower volume followers or lists that only keep you on for a very limited time (up to a week).

SubmitHub is a platform that connects independent musicians and content creators with music bloggers, curators, and record labels, streamlining the music submission process. Musicians can upload their tracks, and then SubmitHub offers a submission gateway to a diverse network of music professionals. These professionals can listen to the submissions and provide feedback or consider featuring the music on their platforms. It offers a more efficient and transparent way for emerging artists to get their music in front of influential tastemakers and potentially gain exposure in the music industry. Credits on Submithub are a dollar each and each currator charges between 1-4 credits.

What I like about Submithub is, at their price point, they have the most specific genres and playlist sizes of the paid platforms I have tested. As someone who makes Jungle/breakcore music, Submit hub having a dedicated genre section for that with an actual decent amount of quality playlists was a breath of fresh air.

Submithub was also the platform that I tried that gave me the most insight on playlists data and genre picking data. This would make it to where submitting to the wrong playlist would be mainly on you the submitter not picking the right curator instead of sending to a playlist that doesn't match due to lack of information. This means Submithub will get you some of the biggest bang for your buck if you do your due diligence.

That being said, the acceptance rate on Submithub was the lowest of the paid platforms I tried and was tied with email for being the 3rd lowest playlist acceptance rates. Additionally, with email I only sent out a small handful and it was all free, where as with Submithub I sent out more than 4 times the amount of with paid requests to get back the same number of playlist adds.

This is why Submithub had the 2nd lowest acceptance ratio out of everything I tried, a solid 6.897%, only losing out to forms which was at 0%. Compared to email which was at 33.33%.

Despite this, I have seen several success stories as well as horror stories come out of Submithub. I believe it comes down to making a song that was more in line with others on the playlists to a tee. This can mean if you have even some slight uniqueness to your sound your not likely to get picked up.

I will say though that the two playlists I DID end up getting on were decently sized growing playlists.

PlaylistPush

Cost: $300+

Outreach: 34

Playlists acceptance: 8

Rating: 8/10

Advantage: High level of quality playlists, highest acceptance rate of the paid options I tried, has the largest selection of genre options of the paid options I tried, in-depth campaign analytics that can tie directly into your Spotify for Artists account.

Disadvantage: Expensive, requires a high minimum starting rate, because of the minimum rate you are nearly forced to submit to playlists that aren't a good fit just to reach the quota to run a campaign, you can't see what playlists you're submitting until after they reach out to you, there is no refund policy unlike the other paid options.

PlaylistPush is a service that facilitates the promotion of independent music by connecting artists with playlist curators on streaming platforms like Spotify. Musicians looking to increase their music's visibility can submit their songs, and PlaylistPush matches them with playlist owners whose audiences align with the artist's genre. These playlist curators then consider adding the submitted tracks to their playlists, providing artists with a chance to reach a broader audience and potentially increase their streams.

Out of all the options I tried, PlaylistPush gave me the most playlist adds. With the cost it takes to submit to PlaylistPush however it was to be expected. At about $300 minimum to start a campaign, the price point should only be looked at for your best possible tracks. These need to be mastered professionally, and I would even do remote tests with listeners to see if the track does better than others on your social channels before submitting to PlaylistPush.

There are TON's of discount codes out there, and once you run a campaign you can even offer your own promo codes, but even then the cost will still be relatively high. This is why I don't recommend using PlaylistPush unless you have fully done your homework on the track you want to submit.

This is because not only is it expensive but all sales on PlaylistPush are FINAL. The other paid platforms I tried offer refund policies should curators not respond, but on PlaylistPush that isn't an option. I'm sure if NOBODY responded you could talk to customer service, but if only a handful do you would most likely be out of luck.

Still, I was able to get most curators to respond and was able to get on 8 playlists, more than any other outreach I did.

I will also say I came across a unique thing where of the 8 playlists I was added to, 2 of them were curators I reached out to on other platforms that had said NO on that platform but said YES on PlaylistPush for the exact same song on the exact same playlist.

This leads me to believe that, because PlaylistPush is more expensive, chances are they pay more and curators are more likely to accept a track in order to keep up with PlaylistPush. So while the acceptance rate on PlaylistPush was MUCH higher than other platforms, that most likely isn't due to their quality control as much as it is due to what they pay, at least on certain playlists.

Overall though, my experience with PlaylistPush was mostly positive and I may use them again in the future.

In Conclusion

Overall, I would say if you're a new artist just starting out go with the email option of finding playlists on Spotify that list their email address (You can do this by typing in your genre and @gmail, @yahoo, etc. and then going to the playlists tab). It will be time consuming, but it allows you the most freedom to get in front of curators while having zero costs.

Of the paid options, both Groover and Submithub have their advantages and flaws, but I would try out both of them due to the low costs associated with them just to try them out and see what you can get.

And while I liked PlaylistPush the best of the paid options, it is 100% NOT something to use if you're just starting out due to the costs and I would only recommend it if you happen to just have the money to spend or you did your homework and think your track would still be successful without it but can do even better using it.

Overall, I will have to wait and see which playlists perform the best, and I may do an update on how each playlist from each platform performed.

If you haven't yet, Feel free to Follow me on Spotify or Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

What I have learned after a year on Spotify to see organic growth (No ads, no paying for placements, just 100% free organic marketing:

1) If you're a relatively unknown artist you want to take 15 minutes to fill out your artist description for SEO purposes.

I see so many artists that leave this blank or just have it say something like "This me, ugh" or something trying to be cool. This isn't helping you. For me, I saw I was getting compared to certain artists and sounds, and so I put those in the description. And low an behold, I began to get added to playlists that talked about those genres, sounds, and artists. Why? Because Spotify used the keywords to recommend my tracks and the people that made those playlists heard them and added me to them.

2) A lot of big and up and coming playlists will list their email, Instagram handle, twitter name etc. and you can send them your track to be considered.

This is exactly what I did and it got me on the #10 spot for one of the largest Jungle playlists on Spotify which netted me a ton of listens.

3) Don't pay for placements, don't pay for streaming farms.

They are scams, and it's super obvious when you do this to both listeners and the Spotify algorithm when you do this and it can get you banned if you're not careful.

4) Keep your name consistent and have all of your platforms linking back to each other.

This makes its easy for people that follow you on one platform to follow you/listen to you on another.

All of my main channels list the other ones out consistently and this has been pretty crucial for getting more views/plays.

You can even use something like Linktree to list them all on one link.

This is mine: https://linktr.ee/i9incher

I have also seen and know SO many artists that start to build some kind of traction, and then they decide they don't like their artist name so they change it and they lose all that momentum because they confuse people. Just look at my own user name. You don't think I ever wanted to change it? But I didn't because then it would be too confusing for people. However It IS a name that people will recognize.

Which brings me to my other point, DON'T name yourself after an artist song, a comedy bit, etc. Chances are people trying to find you online won't be able to because the song title, comedy bit, tv show etc. will come up WAY more often in search results. Trust me, I had a band that was the same name as a comedy bit on Family Guy. Guess which one comes up all the time while the other one is buried in obscurity?

5) If you're not on TikTok get on it.

I had a 30 second clip of one of my songs go semi viral due to a trend (over 30k plays on TikTok) and I saw a huge spike in plays and subscribers across all of my platforms because of it.

6) Sometimes you just have to accept that not only will it take time to grow organically, but depending on what genre you are in your potential for growth will be limited.

Some of my favorite artists that I personally listen to have fewer than 10k listeners a month on Spotify. And unless you were one of the first in a genre that isn't "mainstream" chances are you're not going to be raking in a million listeners a month soon if EVER. But that's ok, just do what you love.

7) When making your tracks, try to go after a specific emotion. And no, this shouldn't be an emotion like "Love" or "Wanting to party." There are already a ton of songs that do this, you want to be unique.

For me, a lot of my tracks focus on the feeling of running, racing, energetic, etc. In fact, this lead me to one of my favorite reviews that I still think about to this day:

This has made me stand out and got me picked up on a lot of animations, games, front page features, and has helped build me a fan base (which I'm grateful for).

If you haven't followed me on Spotify yet, feel free to give me a listen and if you like what you hear feel free to follow:

i9incher Spotify

Hi Everyone. So my other accounts have been growing well organically over the past couple of years. I have been posting to Soundcloud and Spotfiy recently. I would like to create more songs but I always get stuck on the mixing and mastering part. Everything I have ever released has been done by me from creation, to mixing, to mastering.

While I have gotten better, I want to release a few older tracks to my Spotify that aren't exactly up to par.

Specifically, I want to release 2 tracks (If I can locate the original files) to Spotify.

Those tracks are:

Space Fighter

Future

And an unreleased track I am currently working on.

As you can tell, these tracks are too loud and a bit bass heavy. So I would want to go back and edit them but I'm not sure I would have enough time to do so.

So I wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations of mixing and mastering people that they recommend I could go to. I will obviously pay for their services, I just need them mastered efficiently.

You can also check out my channels here:

Spotify

SoundCloud

YouTube

And Recommendations would be great thank you!

I'm happy to say I was able to complete another track this year and upload it to the audio portal. This song is my first to be designed and feature full vocals. I think it came out really well.

i9incher - Reckless

Happy New Year Everyone!

Ok, so I have had this happen consistently when I upload to the audio portal.

I'll upload the audio, and the wave form will come out looking fine like this:

But then after going live a few minutes later, it will get squared out and look like this:

So I have reuploaded the audio. And if I leave it in preview it still stays like the first example. But then, as soon as a I publish, 5 or so minutes later it will change to the square compressed version.

Is this something Newgrounds is doing to the audio file?

After being featured in Different animations and games, I was finally able to get one of my tracks featured in a game on Steam! :O

I want to thank PuffBalls United for featuring my song Psychosis in the original Infiltrating the Airship game, and then once again deciding to keep the song for the HD Remake!

Because of this game, combined with the madness community and other awesome animators like Twisted4000, I was able to get in front of more people than I could have ever imagined. I wanted to thank everyone for helping me along the way.

I want to also encourage you to go out and get the HD remake of the entire Henry Stickmin Collection on Steam!

Go to Steam.