Every Monday 100 million Spotify users receive a playlist containing 30 tracks that seems so perfectly suited to the user that they very well could have been ripped from a cassette tape from a former lover.
How Does Spotify Discover Weekly Work?
Through a filtering process that helps discover songs that you haven’t heard and are placed in a similar playlist to yours, Spotify personalizes a playlist sent to all users every Monday morning based on their musical taste.
These songs are selected by monitoring the number of saves and plays that you have stored throughout the week – From Monday until Sunday night.
Spotify’s tools group your listening history into super-specific sub genres. Your taste profile is essentially formed into a pyramid scheme split into three parts. The pyramid peak contains your current musical favorites. The Mid-section of the pyramid contains matched songs that are essentially recommended music. The bottom section holds songs that Spotify’s algorithm identifies and then filters out based on songs that you are likely to play but may not necessarily want to play often.
Spotify’s algorithm analyzes your listening history to get an idea of the music genres and sub genres you love the most. From this list, Spotify curates tracks from playlists that have more than two songs you have saved. This is also known as Collaborative Filtering.
There are over 2 billion playlists on Spotify. Each represents unique and precise musical tastes containing playlists that form the core of what makes the Discover Weekly recommendations work. Spotify’s algorithms can analyze all 2 billion of these playlists along with any playlist you have created before it proceeds to offer recommendations of introduce new material. Essentially, if the algorithm sees that there are two of your favorite songs on a playlist along with a third song that you haven’t heard before, it will recommend this new song to you in your weekly playlist. Spotify’s algorithm then filters all songs that have been selected from a similar playlist to yours which also match your music profile and then determines which songs you likely haven’t heard before. All this is done by analyzing your music history. It can be a ( bit like magic) little unnerving sometimes when a song comes into Discover Weekly that seems perfect for you. It’s even more bizarre to listen to somebody else’s Discover Weekly playlist; a playlist optimized for somebody else’s unconscious unique music preferences.
How to get on Discover Weekly and other Spotify algorithmic playlists?
Streaming numbers are an obvious factor but not the only factor. In fact, it is arguably more important that people listen to your songs all the way through. Spotify’s algorithm will look at how long people are listening and more importantly, how your song compares to all the songs that are being listened to. Are people listening to your music from the beginning all the way to the end? If so, that’s good. If people are skipping your song, that’s not good.
Also, saves, playlist additions, and social shares are all good metrics that tells Spotify to figure out if the person likes a particular song.
Spotify’s algorithm works better when your music is placed on listeners’ playlist that is similar to your music. This means, the more placements and saves you have, the greater the chance your music get to be placed on Discover Weekly.
You can submit your music to Spotify editors four weeks before the release date.
Why? Because it can help to get on official playlists like ‘New Music Friday’.
Those placements can bring you many saves and placements on private playlists, which shows Spotify’s algorithm that your song is important.
However, we recommend a few steps before uploading your music. We know how exciting it is to be discovered and have your music listed to everywhere, and we want you to make it right!
Step 1: The song.
Professional recording is required! Editors get a lot of tracks for them to listen to and place them on playlists, so the quality is the first thing we pay attention during the evaluation.
As artists we all have started under a low budget. Only a few have the benefits of a home studio. In case you don’t have one yet, don’t be shy to ask around. There are a lot of music students and emerging producers willing to help or for a good price.
Step 2: Artwork.
The art of your single or album represents the kind of artist that you are and helps to attract listeners. A great image creates some sort of expectations from the listeners and describes how unique you are as an artist. Make it artistic and clean!
Step 3: Submit your music.
Once your music is ready, its time to fill the Spotify submit form at artists.spotify.com.
Define and pitch your song as well as possible by the music genres, language, the mood of the song, instrument use, religion, location, and a brief text. Be clear, concise, and precise, but not in a robotic way!
Another way to get playlist placements is to hire music promotion companies like us Playlist-Promotion.com.
We place your music on the best and biggest independent Spotify playlists. In this case, on Spotify playlists related to your music genre and style before the release date.
To see our packages, please click here.
Features like pre-save link authorize will allow you to add your song automatically to the user’s library. This pre-save option is only provided by distributors, not Spotify. The more saves and streams you get, the more chances you have to be placed as quickly as possible onto Discover Weekly.
As a promoter, we narrow the best playlists from niches or communities of listeners that are more into your music style and related artists.
Saves per listeners: The song with a higher rate of saves is most likely placed in Discover Weekly.
For more information on how to run a pre-save campaign, click here:
The best way to trigger the algorithm with a Spotify Pre-Save campaign
Step 4: Promote.
Remember that you have to submit your song to Spotify four weeks before the release date, so this is the best time to promote your upcoming track!
Posts on social media like the artwork, promo videos with part of the songs, even a countdown will help to create a hype and reach new fans. Use paid ads like Facebook or Instagram ads to reach new audiences. Get your song on your email list so you can follow up with them in the future.
Sharing your pre-save link helps you get more streams and followers. Although huge Spotify listeners that use or help you share your pre-save link won’t get earnings by it, you can make a professional agreement or an exchange by offering promotional clothing, items, or tickets to your next gig. Make it special!
Sometimes we struggle to find the most effective way of getting our music out there and heard, Spotify’s Discover Weekly gives your songs the option to reach any corner of the world.
If you want to get your music feature on the user’s Discover Weekly playlist you need to help provide Spotify’s Algorithm with the data it needs to include your music onto listeners taste profiles. You do this by building a fan base away from Spotify, on other social media sites and building a fan base email list. Then promoting your music to the fan base you created. Focus on promoting one song at a time to increase engagement around that song. This makes it more likely to get noticed by the algorithm.
We can help you get your music on popular playlists curated by music industry professionals. Our team has extensive experience working with playlist curators and can help get your music in the right hands.
You want your music to be heard by as many people as possible, and we can make that happen. We have a team of experienced professionals who know how to get your music in front of the right people.
Elevate your music promotion strategy with our expertise in Spotify playlist promotion, YouTube promotion and radio promotion.
Promote your song today and let us pitch your music to active and organic playlists!