Spotify playlist promotion costs at a glance
Five routes lead to Spotify playlists. This table shows what each one costs, what you get for it and where the figure comes from.
| Route | What it costs | What you get | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify for Artists editorial pitch | Free: Spotify for Artists is free to join | One unreleased song at a time in front of Spotify's editors | Spotify, Spotify |
| Direct outreach to independent curators | Your time; PlaylistLookup Premium $6.95 per month or $54.95 per year | Curators' published contacts, which you write to yourself | Our pricing |
| Submission platforms | SubmitHub: premium credits from $1 each, 1 to 4 credits per curator | A submission through the platform under its rules | SubmitHub help |
| Agencies and managed campaigns | Prices vary; most agencies do not publish them | Someone else pitches on your behalf | No reliable public price list found |
| Paid placements (a promised add) | Not listed: we advise against them | A playlist spot that does not depend on the curator liking the track | Spotify |
Third-party pages checked on October 8, 2026. Prices change, so open the linked page before you pay.
1. Spotify for Artists editorial pitch: free
Spotify's editorial playlists are pitched through Spotify for Artists, which Spotify describes as free to join. Spotify asks you to deliver your music at least 7 days before release, accepts only an upcoming song that has not gone live, and lets you pitch one song at a time. It also says that a song pitched at least 7 days before release is added to your followers' Release Radar playlists (Spotify for Artists: pitching music to playlist editors, checked October 8, 2026).
A pitch does not promise a place on an editorial playlist, but because it costs nothing, it is worth doing for every release before you spend money elsewhere.
2. Direct outreach to independent curators: your time
Most playlists are run by independent curators, not by Spotify, and many of them publish an email address, a social account or a submission link in the playlist description. Writing to them costs nothing but time. The slow part is finding the contacts: the guide to finding curator contact info shows how to do it by hand, and the playlist pitching guide covers what to write.
A directory does the searching for you. In PlaylistLookup you search by keyword, such as a genre; on Premium and Pro you can filter by followers and last playlist activity and send pitches from your own Gmail. Email addresses go through a deliverability check when they are added to the directory. Premium costs $6.95 per month, or $54.95 per year, which is about $4.58 per month.
Who you can reach for the price of a subscription
As of November 13, 2026, PlaylistLookup tracks 401,000+ Spotify playlists, and 115,000+ of them have at least one public contact channel on record, such as an email address, an Instagram account or a submission link. These figures describe our own database, not all of Spotify. The definitions and the full breakdown are on the Spotify playlist curator statistics page. More detail on how we count playlists and contacts.
3. Submission platforms: per curator
A submission platform sits between you and the curator: you send your track through the platform and the curator replies there. On SubmitHub, premium credits start at $1 each and cost less when you buy more, and a curator asks 1 to 4 credits per submission. With premium credits, SubmitHub asks curators to listen for at least 60 seconds and reply within 72 hours with an approval or written feedback (SubmitHub help: standard and premium credits, checked October 8, 2026; check SubmitHub for its current rules).
The trade-off is that you pitch inside the platform's format rather than in your own words. A side-by-side comparison is in PlaylistLookup vs SubmitHub.
4. Agencies and managed campaigns: prices vary
Agencies and managed campaigns pitch curators on your behalf. Prices vary and most agencies do not publish them; we did not find a reliable public price list, so this page gives no range. If you consider one, ask in writing which playlists they will pitch, how they reach the curators and what you get if nothing is added. Walk away from any offer of a fixed number of streams or placements.
5. Paid "guaranteed" placements: our advice is to avoid them
Some services sell a guaranteed spot on a playlist. We advise against paying anyone who guarantees a playlist add. A guarantee means the placement does not depend on the curator liking your track, and the playlists such services use often have listeners who do not engage with what they hear.
Spotify addresses this directly on its page about paid services: "Any service that claims to offer guaranteed placement on playlists on Spotify in exchange for money are in violation of our terms & conditions, and they shouldn't be used." On artificial streaming, the same page says: "When we identify confirmed cases of artificial streaming or stream manipulation, we take actions that may include the withholding of associated royalties, the correction of public streaming numbers, and measures to ensure the artist or song's popularity is accurately reflected in our charts." (Spotify for Artists: artificial streaming and paid 3rd-party services that guarantee streams, checked October 17, 2026).
A worked example: one release
Here is what one release can cost when you combine the routes above. The artist and the choices are an example, not a recommendation of a budget.
- Pitch the song to Spotify's editors through Spotify for Artists, 7 or more days before release: $0.
- One month of PlaylistLookup Premium to find and write to curators directly: $6.95.
- A small SubmitHub test with 10 curators at 1 to 4 credits each: 10 to 40 credits, which is at most $10 to $40 at the $1 starting price, and less if you buy credits in bulk.
Total: at most $16.95 to $46.95 for the release, and $6.95 if you skip the SubmitHub test.
Will you earn the money back?
Spotify does not pay a fixed rate per stream: "Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate" (Spotify for Artists: royalties, checked October 8, 2026). To show the maths, assume $4 per 1,000 streams; your own payout depends on listeners' countries, plans and your distribution deal.
The streams needed to cover a campaign are its cost divided by $4, times 1,000. A $50 campaign needs $50 / $4 × 1,000 = 12,500 streams, and a $100 campaign needs 25,000 streams.
Promotion does not promise any number of streams, so treat this as a way to put a budget in proportion, not as a forecast. Judge a campaign on what you can see in Spotify for Artists, such as new listeners, saves and playlist adds.