The Spotify Playlist Hustle

Back in 2020, I had 200+ Spotify playlists on my Mid90s Records profile that I personally curated with a total following count of 100K+ people who were digging the music I was into. I started creating Spotify playlists back in around 2015 or 2016. It started with 1 playlist which I created simply because my work life was crushing my soul. I made these Spotify playlists so I could put my headphones on at work and just mash out on the music tip with no skips while dealing with the 9-5 ills. My first playlist? Well it was this one right here. music to work to (hip hop & jazz rap boom bap beats and instrumentals to work from home to)… I started hitting my first Spotify algo and I went hard… Curated that playlist and fine tuned it daily to get up to 2,754 followers. It’s not a algo that’s really alive right now but if I got after it, I could get it buzzing again. 759 songs…. 35 hours and 5 minutes of nothing but fire beats that I love.

As I made more playlists on Spotify, they started to give me “clout” in the streaming music scene as I basically owned my own algorithms within the Spotify platform. I played the SEO game well as that was my background coming from the ecommerce side. My SEO tweaks and A/B tests of my playlists allowed me to see what worked from an audio perspective, cover art perspective, and title and descriptions. Those all made up a formula that when i hit an algo on a playlist i would push hard with the levers i had on my side to get these playlists heard more… get these songs on these playlists heard more… get these artists you’ve never heard of actually get heard. Can you feel me?

I was texting my friends the Spotify playlists, going on my wife’s phone so she could follow my playlist, push the playlists on social media, connect with the artists on social media… hope that they’ll push the playlists with me for mutual gain…

then go back and rearrange the playlist, take tracks out, add tracks in that I would find, add in tracks that Spotify was recommending… I just played the game to a tee and to know that I have probably the best 90s West Coast Underground Hip Hop playlist on Spotify makes me happy. Go peep… you won’t be let down… and if you find that Spotify has their own 90s west coast underground hip hop playlist, just know they probably used my data to help build it… again… a story for another day…

The playlist above has 1,763 saves which basically means followers. This was a 90s West Coast Underground Hip Hop Playlist. That was the vibe… Songs didn’t need to be from the 90s but they did need to be from the west coast which to me means California and California only… they just needed to fit a vibe that I have curated over the years. And each of these playlists were different opportunities to hit different algos with different vibes and a whole different taste of music. 90s West Coast Underground Rap means Saafir but it also means Ab-Soul and can for sure stretch out to Seafood Sam and back to C-Bo. Not sleeping on Marvaless, Zagg, Vel Nine, Medusa, Vixen, Da 5 Footaz and any other Cali emcee that is dope.

Check this below… While the previous playlist above was 90s west coast underground hip hop, that is totally different than a 420 Rap playlist… you feel me? These are totally different vibes. I can’t have Wiz Khalifa “Kush & OJ” together with B-Legit… or i guess you can but you gotta be slick with the selections… So for a more weed oriented playlist, Wiz and Spitta get their own damn mixtape with Devin the Dude, Smoke DZA, Snoop, and any other weed head type hype. But let’s not just stick to 90s, 00s, and 10s and the emcees and groups only… You can’t miss out on the production from ALC, Statik Selektah, Harry Fraud and Conductor Williams and Daringer and NugLife and Budgee and Evidence and ProducerTrentTaylor… while a lot of 420 rap carried the same type of themes, I really got big ups the producers who leveled up on their production to have these beats be something that stood on its own with the tracks they were under. So when you see a playlist called “420 Rap”, just know we all interpret that differently… I like having dope beats in the mix with something like this. this one has 672 saves… it used to have a lot more… but that is a story for another day… it’s a good one too that not many know…

So these playlists were jump offs for me. Jump offs where I could actually get some music that I love heard by more people like me. These Spotify playlists gave me a chance to get artists heard. Get artists seen… So a lot of independent artists and a lot of the management teams from major record labels wanted me to get them placement on my 200+ Spotify playlists… I was a part of a site that took your social followings (IG, TikTok, YT, FB, etc.) and added it with all of your Spotify follows/saves and then, they let they know what your value was to their platform… and my value was good. I checked a ton of boxes for what they were looking for… I became the new independent radio station in town…

My followers elevated me and set me up as an influencer on their platform. This platform (shout out Playlist Push… there was another one too… i forget the name(s)) which fed me tracks to listen to on behalf of paid subscribers to their site who were artists and record labels. So now, because I had all of these playlists with 100K+ followers, this now equated to me getting paid $2.50 for every song I listened to and gave feedback to…. This was the pandemic… wife was pregnant… i had time… i went hard on listening to tracks and was racking up $2.50 per song and meeting cool artists as well as people started finding and following me on socials.

That $2.50 per song because $5 per song and eventually I made it up to $7.50 per song I listened to and gave feedback on…….

and then finally, $10 per song… $10 PER SONG I LISTENED TO?!?!!?! Yes, in 2020, I had a side hustle of making $10 per song I listened to from major labels and/or independent artists all from the comfort of my small apartment surrounded by my cassettes and my CDs… I would be up early in the morning doing a little Peloton and running a few numbers listening to beats and rhymes from aspiring musicians. I felt like I was doing my best rendition of Larry June on the low… the corporate Larry June…

I felt like I worked at a record label in the 90s and was going through the demos that artists sent. But I hadn’t started the record label yet but was still looking for artists to listen to. Artists to tap in with. Artists to follow. Some songs were really dope! Others, not so much. I had big rappers in the 90s I loved hitting me up and I also had some actors shooting me tracks as well. And then there were the true underground artists out in these digital streets hitting you any way they could so they could try to get their music heard.

Buying that bougee crib my wife wanted with money i made off my playlists was a legendary flex in the Fall of 2020. My new revenue stream of playlisting back in 2020 didn’t last. I eventually got told I was no longer an “influencer” so I could no longer rack up all of these listens for $10 per pop… all of my playlists I built on Spotify were real and i NEVER put a track on my playlist I didn’t feel. This has always made my playlists dope in my opinion…

From where I sat as a fan of hip hop, I found a niche to drill down into and I found a new way to make some cash in the process. While playlisting hard, I also for to Pretty to see a different side of the industry from a different viewpoint. It was also cool to realize that my playlists meant a lot to people… a lot to followers… a lot to artists looking to get heard.

Management teams for artists and artists/producers themselves would see my Mid90s profile tag and find me on socials. I would get about 5 DMs a day from artists all over the world trying to get me to listen to their track because my playlists meant new saves, follows, and overall interest in their music. I tried to listen to these new tracks but I didn’t have the time juggling everything. People would then try to throw cash at me to just add their tracks to my playlists… and be super thirsty about it as well… literally chasing me to give me $5 - $10 and I’m like dawg… I’m good… please leave me alone… I listened to your music and I wasn’t feeling it…

But there were several independent hustlers who were very persistent about sending me new songs to keep me in the loop with their artistry. I loved how these kids were hustling and how they handled themselves from a business perspective. They found me on Spotify with one playlist they thought they could be on and then from there, if I really was into the music, I would take tracks and scatter across several of my playlists… this got independent artists more streams… more follows… more attention… more eyes on them..

I loved knowing that my playlists had the chance to help a dope artist get their art seen and heard more. that was always so cool to me… My playlists were pretty much promo machines for artists. Back in the 90s we had radio to get music heard where the DJ’s and radio stations held a lot of wait… in the 2020s, we have Spotify Playlists… and if you have playlists with big followings, you are officially a DJ… or wait… a producer? or wait… a playlister? That sounds so lame… I don’t know what I am… I just know I’m a huge 90s hip hop head who loves making playlists with tracks from all genres so people can coast with the wave I'm building… and these playlists are never set in stone… i’m good swaying a playlist in another direction if I’m feeling the vibe… below is the current playlist i am building… give it a peep… find some new songs you like!