'The Sorting Hat' Playlists

As a small music artist submitting to blogs and playlists, and trying to build an audience, I realised there was a gap in the playlist world. Frustratingly I found certain playlists and blogs wouldn't accept artists with lower amounts of monthly listeners, but how are you supposed to build a fanbase when no one will let you in the club? So I created 'The Sorting Hat'. A playlist were artists with under 10K monthly listeners could submit their music, with a guarantee I would listen to it, and as long as it was good quality, I would place it in a playlist 'House'. E.g. House of Pop. That's it, no bias, just quality music playlists.

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Too often when artists have under 10K listeners they get put in 'Upcoming Artist' playlists, which are helpful to a degree, but how often do you take a chance on a playlist full of every genre, in the hopes of finding someone you would commit to listening to? Exactly. With the genre specific 'House of' playlists, I wanted to create a place where people who wanted to find new artists could do so, within the comfort of their tastes. This also helps artists get placed on algorithm playlists with later releases as Spotify now knows what kind of artists their music fits in with, and what kind of listeners would enjoy their music.

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I could see so many of my talented music friends encountering the same difficulty, artists much more talented than myself, who deserve to be heard! So I decided to do something about it, and ‘The Sorting Hat’ playlist was born. I posted on TikTok with my idea and it blew up a fair bit. I was getting hours and hours of submissions to ‘The Sorting Hat’ collaborative playlist and there was so much good music. 

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Originally I sorted through as much as I could until I didn’t have any more spare time to work on submissions and curating the playlists themselves. Overall I have worked on these playlists for around 80 hours, most likely more. I eventually closed the playlist as I was overwhelmed with submissions and had no time to edit the houses. 

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But the immediate response was amazing! Several artists have told me that the playlists really helped boost their following, boost their monthly listeners, and helped them to get onto Spotify algorithm playlists with future releases! This was truly encouraging! And I am so happy to see the artists that have hit tens of thousands of followers since 2021 that were previously on playlists. I’m not saying the playlists are responsible at all! But it is nice to claim those bragging rights of knowing an artist since they were itty-bitty ;)

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So here we are today! I am proud to announce that I will be re-releasing every genre playlist with its shiny new cover and updated songs. I will post each playlist to my Spotify profile and on Instagram when they are ready. I will be reopening submissions via submit hub when I reach 1K followers on each playlist.

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I am super excited for the future of these playlists! And I would appreciate your help in sharing these amazing artists and their wonderful music! So follow the playlist on Spotify, share them online, and more importantly add your favourite songs to your own playlists!

 

- Much love, Z x