Can you pitch a song to Discover Weekly or Release Radar?
No. Spotify's algorithmic playlists, such as Release Radar, Discover Weekly and Daily Mix, have no submission form and no curator to email. Spotify builds them for each listener from listening habits. There are two things you can do: pitch the song in Spotify for Artists at least 7 days before release, which puts it in your followers' Release Radar, and get the song in front of listeners whose reactions tell Spotify who else might like it.
Spotify's playlist editors said it directly in a 2020 Q&A: "There is nothing specific you can do to get on an algotorial playlist." What you can influence is the input those playlists work from.
What counts as an algorithmic playlist
Spotify sorts its playlists into three groups:
- Made by editors. Playlists such as Today's Top Hits and RapCaviar, run by Spotify's editorial team. You reach them with the pitch in Spotify for Artists.
- Made for you. Playlists Spotify generates for each listener, such as Discover Weekly, Release Radar and Daily Mix. These are the algorithmic playlists this guide is about.
- Algotorial. Playlists where editors pick a pool of songs and an algorithm chooses and orders them per listener. Two people can open the same playlist name and see different tracks.
Spotify describes its "made for you" playlists as based on "what you like, share, save, skip" and on the listening habits of other people with similar taste. Discover Weekly updates every Monday and Release Radar every Friday.
Release Radar: the one you can plan for
Release Radar is the algorithmic playlist with the clearest rules, and Spotify publishes them:
- Your followers get songs from your new release in their Release Radar.
- If you pitch a song in Spotify for Artists, Spotify includes that song in your followers' Release Radar. If you do not pitch, Spotify picks a song from the release.
- Deliver your music at least 7 days before release to be in Release Radar in the first week.
- Each listener gets one song per artist per week, and a song can stay in for up to 4 weeks if the listener has not heard it yet.
- Songs a listener has already played are left out, and so are re-releases and some alternative versions such as acoustic, karaoke or live versions. Remixes are included.
Release Radar also reaches listeners who do not follow you yet: Spotify fills it with new music from artists a listener plays and with "other artists we think they'll like".
Two things follow from this. Followers on your artist profile are the most direct route into Release Radar, so ask listeners to follow, not only to stream. And the pitch matters even if the editors pass on it, because it decides which song your followers get.
Discover Weekly and Daily Mix
Discover Weekly is a list of songs per listener, refreshed every Monday, built from their listening and that of people with similar taste. Daily Mix and other mixes are based on artists and genres the listener already plays. Spotify does not publish a threshold, a number of streams or saves, that gets a song into either.
What Spotify does say is which signals it reads: likes, saves, shares and skips, and how songs are listened to together. A song that listeners save and add to their own playlists gives Spotify more to work with than a song that is played once and skipped.
Where independent playlists fit
Spotify notes that most streams are "active" streams, where listeners pick what they hear, and that this includes streams from listener playlists. According to Spotify, those streams can help signal "that we should be paying attention to a particular song or artist".
That is where independent curators come in. A placement on an active playlist whose listeners match your genre puts the song in front of people whose saves and skips feed the same systems as Discover Weekly. It is not a guaranteed route: nobody outside Spotify can say how much one playlist placement moves the algorithm.
The playlist has to be real for this to work. Streams from a botted playlist are artificial streams, and Spotify says confirmed cases can lead to withheld royalties and corrected stream counts. A fake playlist does not bring real listening, and it puts the song at risk. Before you pitch an independent playlist, check it: the guide on telling whether a playlist is botted lists five checks, and a playlist health check gives an estimate of real listeners.
A plan around one release
- At least 7 days before release: pitch the song in Spotify for Artists. This is the only step that directly puts a song in front of algorithmic playlists, through your followers' Release Radar.
- Before release: build a list of independent playlists in your genre that are active and look real. The guide to submitting music to Spotify playlists covers both routes, and the editorial pitch guide explains how the pitch and independent curators fit together.
- Release day: share the song with your own audience and ask them to follow you on Spotify and save the track.
- First two weeks: pitch independent curators whose listeners fit the song. The playlist pitching guide has templates.
- After four weeks: check the Playlists tab of the song's stats in Spotify for Artists. It shows which playlists the song was added to, including algorithmic ones.
What does not work
- Paying for streams or guaranteed placements. Spotify says any service offering guaranteed playlist placement for money breaks its terms.
- Streaming the song on repeat yourself or asking fans to loop it. Spotify defines an artificial stream as "a stream that doesn't reflect genuine user listening intent" and asks artists to discourage fans from streaming on loop.
- Releasing a re-upload of an old song. Release Radar leaves out re-releases of songs already on Spotify.