We have now launched our brand new referral program where you can get paid for referring your friends to Artistlib.

The program is really simple, all you have to do is to send your referral link to your friends which they will use to sign up with.

If your referral signs up as an artist, you’ll get 20% from their first purchase of credits. If your referral registers as a curator, you’ll get 20% on their first 3 months of earnings.

Top strategies:

• Blog posts
• Youtube videos
• Social media

This is an amazing opportunity for you to make money while supporting independent artists!

What is the difference between a good and a bad playlist curator?

Well, there are a few steps in my opinion that seperates the good ones from the bad ones. First of all, a good playlist curator would never charge anyone for a spot in their playlist. Charging for a spot in your playlist, or payola as it’s called is both prohibited by Spotify and it’s immoral.

I thought that I’d share a few tips on how to become a good playlist curator.

Find your nische – Make sure that you find your nische for your playlist whether it’s new releases, a specific genre, a specific decade, specific mood etc. This way you can target a particular audience. Use your cover photo, title and playlist bio to let potential followers know what they’re in for. People are often searching for a specific artist, genre or mood so include them in your bio. Keywords are important! This way the audience knows what they’re gonna get and they will continue to come back and listen to your playlist. Try to make sure that you also introduce something new for the audience so that they can discover new music that they havent heard before. When you’re choosing the artcover for your playlist, make sure that the image is your own or royalty free. Spotify can delete your playlist for copyright violation.

Write good feedback – Make sure that you write constructive and honest feedback for the artists that are  submitting to your playlist. Just writing that you don’t like the track or don’t think that the track is a good match for your playlist is not enough. What do you like/don’t like about the song? Why is it not a good fit for your playlist? What do you think about the mix & master? Is the melody catchy enough? Also have in mind that alot of artists are very sensitive when it comes to getting feedback on their work, therefore you should try not to be too harsh on the feedback. There must be something in the track that you think is good. Try to think like if you sent in a song, what would you want them to write? It’s of course important to be honest, but just because it’s a matter of personal taste doesnt mean that the song is bad produced for example. You can still give them feedback for the production, chord progression, melody or whatever it might be that’s good, even though it’s not your personal cup of tea.

Make sure that you are regurarly updating – Make sure that you are regurarly updating your playlists. I update my playlists every Friday since that is the official day for new releases. I try to update with around 10-20 new tracks in every update. I have built a ”top 10” which is basically me putting 10 tracks at the top of my playlist, that can be tracks that are really hot at the moment, tracks that I know that my audience likes and also new releases from popular artists. Also make sure that your playlist is not too long, or not too short. I try to keep my playlist around 75 tracks and that’s what we in Sweden would call “lagom”, which basically means “just right”. 🙂

Build a relationship with your audience – Make sure to use the power of social media to build a relationship with your audience. Set up an instagram account, twitter, facebook page etc for your playlists. Since social media is bringing us closer together and gives the audience a chance to get involved in your work it’s a great way to communicate with the people following your playlists. It’s also a great way for building your playlists and brand to get new followers with targeted campaigns.

There are several benefits with curating at Artistlib. I thought that i’d make a list of the benefits that you’ll get by signing up as a playlist curator.

• You’ll have all your submissions in one place. –

As a playlist curator you receive thousands of submissions for your playlists. Alot of curators gets submissions sent to them by email. When you start out it’s a good way to receive your submissions, but after a while you will get tons of emails and it will be hard for you to keep up. With Artistlib you will still receive a great ammount of submissions, but you will have everything well oriented and easy to access. This way you wont miss out on any good tracks that you’d love to feature in your playlists.

• Earn money –

When an artist sends you a premium or express submission they are also asking for your feedback on their song. If you respond within the time frame you will receive money from the submission. Either $1 for a premium submission, or $2 for an express submission. The founder of Artistlib, is both an artist and a playlist curator and knows exactly how it feels to struggle with balancing your time between your daytime job, working in the studio and also finding time to curate your playlists. My vision and i think most of other peoples vision as well has always been to turn my passion for music in to my full time job. With Artistlib we want to give you that opportunity.

• Quick and personalized customer support –

We are a small team and we believe in personalized customer experience rather than the feeling of talking to a machine. I know how frustrating it can be when you are trying to reach out to the staff of a service that you’re using and you only get automated answers to your questions.

• Grow your playlist –

With Artistlib you can also choose to receive standard submissions. A standard submission is free for the artist to send to you. However, the artist will have to follow your playlist in order for them to to send a submission. We make sure that they keep following your playlist and not only follows for the submission and then unfollows. If they choose to unfollow, it will appear that they are not following the playlist and the submission is not valid.

• Get connected with the music industry–

Our vision with Artistlib is to build it like a community and to be a bridge to the music industry. Not only for the artists but also for the curators. As a curator you get alot of experience when it comes to promoting and also listening to music, and if you’re good at what you’re doing you will learn how to recognize a hit song. If you can use that experience and everything that you learn along the way you can be really valuable for the music industry. As a curator you have the power to reach out to thousands of people.