Tyler Hayes of New York Times writes,
“Life is just one playlist away from being perfectly soundtracked”
That, however, is for scores of listeners, music lovers, and those interested in curating the perfect list of soundtracks and music while they walk, run, jog, wait in the supermarket aisles, or what to board metro rides.
As a music artist looking to make a living off of your music, your needs for music playlists are different (apart from your own need to listen to music for fun or for inspiration).
Your playlists are your life.
YouTube Artist Channels
YouTube Artist Channels is an official (and free) gateway for your music playlists that you can use to bring your subscribers, fans, and community together on YouTube.
More than a billion people visit YouTube every single month (and this number is only growing). Imagine an audience of a billion people or more, all over the globe, for your music.
YouTube Artist Channels are special conduits to help you manage, organize, showcase, and promote your Music work. You can organize your content. Work with Auto-generated playlist shelves that collect all of your official music content (music videos, Art Tracks, etc). Further, these shelves are dynamically organized based on popularity and recency.
With Youtube Artist Channels, you can also Improve music discovery by optimizing your content on an ongoing basis — not to mention staying on top of analytics such as views, subscribers, engagement, and more.
When fans search for you on YouTube, they’ll be linked directly to your Official Artist Channel from search results and from your watch card on the right side of the screen.
If your budget allows, you can also launch and manage your promotions. For instance, you can promote your newest release or favorite videos via a dedicated promotional shelf and featured video slot.
Third-party Music Playlists (Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, & More)
There are scores of communities and music broadcasting services for Music enthusiasts of all kinds. There are some more audio/video streaming services that niche down and provide for a more focused experience.
The popular and the biggest music broadcasting services also provide a way for you to create, upload, and manage your music playlists.
As a music Artist, music broadcasting services such as Spotify could be a huge platform for exposure. Spotify for Artists gives you access to the platform, tools, resources, and a built-in community of music aficionados to benefit from.
Spotify is the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with 345m users, including 155m subscribers, across 178 markets. Spotify users have access to over 70 million tracks (not to mention 2.2 million podcasts). On Spotify alone, there are over 4 billion+ playlists waiting to be discovered.
Your playlist should be one of those.
On Spotify for Artists, you’d have to create an Artist bio, a profile, and then pitch your next release to editors.
Then, there’s Apple Music for Artists where you can tap into the millions who live in Apple’s own ecosystem of products (such as iPhones, Macs, and iPads). After creating and uploading your music to playlists on Apple Music, you can get a snapshot view of your music’s performance (such as milestones and projects, and how they perform), average daily listeners, discover the tracks that are rising in popularity, know where your listeners are from, and more.
Similarly, SoundCloud has a thriving community of emerging music artists showcasing their music tracks. Starting with a robust SoundCloud Community for Music artists, you can start with setting up your profile, manage your music playlists as a music creator, monetize your music, and engage with your fans.
Other top music streaming services (worldwide) are Pandora & iHeartRadio.
Where are your music playlists going to be?
Staging Your Own Playlists (On Your Own Website)
In addition to YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, and any other third-party music streaming services you’d want to have a presence on as a music artist, it always makes sense to have a place on the web to call your home.
Starting and running your own website — complete with your artist bio, profile, and a way to manage your music playlist(s) — is a foolproof way to stay in the music business.
An easy way to start is with WordPress CMS (self-hosted) and then use special plugins to help you create and manage your music playlists. There are several audio player plugins available with WordPress.
Interestingly, a WordPress plugin called WP SoundSystem helps you create tracks, manage playlists, and use WordPress as the engine for your business growth — all with your own branding and design. WP SoundSystem also has a way for you to manage your music playlists efficiently. Of course, you can also directly connect with other streaming services such as SoundCloud, Spotify, and others.
How will you create, manage, and promote your own music playlists as a music artist?
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