Why is it so hard to get a playlist on an artists "Discovered on"?

[StianSB]

Hi! 🙂

(Premium, Norway, Mac 2019)

For years I have enjoyed making playlists in Spotify. I have loved to come up with new playlist ideas (genres, themes etc.). It has also been great to find some small artists (with great music) no-one has heard about, and help them to get listeners through my playlists. And for years the strategy has been to listen a lot to the playlists for a few days, and then it shows up in the "Discovered on" section on the artist pages for artists represented on the list, and from there it would in many instances start to grow by itself! Great! 😀

BUT lately (the past few months) it has been so much harder to reach the "Discovered on" section at (even small) artist pages. I listen and listen (and listen again) to a playlist for weeks ...and NOTHING happens! So frustrating! And it is so killing my creativity. Luckily I have some playlists with more than 100 followers, so I am happy that they continue to grow automatically. But my passion to make new playlists is so decreasing.

What should I do? Do I just need more patience? If I listen enough weeks/months/times/hours will it eventually show up in artists "Discovered on"? Or do I need to beg my friends to listen to the playlist I am currently working on? (Is it more about number of listeners than number of plays/hours??) Or should I just stop listening to the playlist (because it doesn't count) and get another hobby?

Please help me understand how it works now! Or is it possible to come back to how it worked some months ago?

Kind regards

StianSB

[Eni]

Hey there @StianSB, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this here in the Community. 

We're afraid there's no way to place your playlist manually on that specific section. The playlists that appear there depend on their popularity so the more people save, download and listen to them, the more probability they have to show up in that section. In this case, what you can do is to share your playlist with other users and it might appear there eventually in the future. 

Hope this helps. If you need a hand with anything else, the community is here for you. 

[StianSB]

No, I am SERIOUS! I have been listening to Spotify almost daily since April 2020. And I have usually spent hours each time. I know Spotify, and something has drastically CHANGED! 😯 From the beginning and through the years I could listen a lot to a playlist for 5-6 days and it would start to show up in the «Discovered on» section of (small) artists. After a while I experimented with using 2 Spotify accounts, and it showed to be much more effective; it would normally take EXACTLY 2 days with much listening to a playlist before it showed up in artists «Discovered on». But that all changed somwehere between May and July 2024! Now I can listen and listen (and listen again) for weeks and NOTHING happens!

Why is Spotify doing changes that makes it more difficult for small artists to be discovered? Why is Spotify making it harder to grow playlists? 😟

For years I have loved to spend a lot of time in Spotify; listening to music, discover new artists, find new songs, make playlists, help artists to be discovered, grow playlists etc. 😀 And playlists have grown atomatically by spending a lot of time in Spotify and listen to music. And every time I listened to a song in a playlist it felt meaningful; I could enjoy the music, and it felt like I gave a vote for the artist, a vote for the playlist, and I would see the result of it within days (through the «Discovered on» function, which led to more followers to the playlist, which led to more listeners to the artists)😃, BUT NOW it´s like my individual vote doesn´t count anymore! …unless I spend time and effort to gather a bunch of others to vote for the same thing! 😓

So until May (or June or July) 2024 Spotify DREW me to spend more time IN Spotify, the MORE time I spent IN Spotify listening to music it «paid off» because I could see that it resulted in something!

Some people have for years warned about Spotify, because they pay artists so little, and I have not cared because I am not in it for the money! BUT NOW Spotify is forcing me AWAY from SPOTIFY in order to grow SPOTIFY playlists. That doesn´t make sense!

NOW Spotify drives me AWAY by forcing me to spend time on social media to make the playlists grow! And social media are so time consuming and distracting. So the way Spotify behaved BEFORE May 2024 it trigged me to spend MORE time IN Spotify to grow playlists. NOW I am driven to spend LESS TIME listening to music, finding artists and songs, and maintaining the playlists, developing my musical skills, and producing music, and MORE TIME on social media to make the playlists grow.

The only main reason for Spending time in Spotify now is to enjoy music (and that I can also do in YouTube with music videos and free lyrics, or in Apple Music with better sound quality). And if I spend less time in Spotify it would be pointless to pay for Premium as well (I like the free version also). 

PLEASE HELP me understand why Spotify wants to make changes that forces faithful users like me to spend less time in Spotify and more time on social media? Why does Spotify want me to spend less money in Spotify and more money for Ads? Why does Spotify want to make it so much harder for small artists to be discoverd, and make it so much less effective to grow new playlists?🤔

A: Is it an unintentional mistake? (in that case someone should try to fix it fast!)

B: Are Spotify, Digster, Filtr and the other big playlist curators afraid of competition?

C: Does Spotify think it´s too many artists now? So they want to keep the new, small ones in the shadow?

😧 Does Spotify want to promote all the new AI «artists» instead? Because the don´t need to spend time on developing musical skills, or producing music, or spend money on DAWS, VST´s, instruments, equipment, mixing and (mastering?) they can probably afford to spend time on social media and money on promotion…

OK. I usually don´t like to complain. But I have spent so much time with Spotify the last years -so this really affects me. Thank you very much that you took time to read this. 🙂

StianSB

[StianSB · Accepted solution]

Aah! 😀 I think I suddenly just cracked the code! I got a friend of mine to listen to some of my playlists yesterday. And today 3 of the playlists I have worked on for weeks suddenly popped up in many artists "Discovered on"! So it seems like it's now needed 3  unique listeners (instead of 1 or 2 earlier) to make playlists count in the "Discovered on"! I can live with that. 🙂