Do you pitch to Independent Playlist Curators before or after release on Spotify?

[indieman]

After reading this article: https://www.burstimo.com/spotify-playlists-guide 

This is my understanding:

In order to pitch to Spotify official playlists (i.e Spotify staff curators) via SPOTIFY FOR ARTISTS, it has to be with an UNRELEASED song , ideally at least 4 weeks before your song goes live on Spotify and other platforms like iTunes........So how are you supposed to pitch unreleased songs to Independent playlist curators if the song isn't live on Spotify? 

I'm told that the Spotify staff won't take your track seriously for their playlists unless you have at least 1000 plays.....but if it's still unreleased how are you supposed to achieve that?

But back to my main point - you should only pitch songs already released, to Independent Playlist curators?  Please correct me if I have got that wrong? If I'm wrong, how far in advance of release should you pitch to the independent curators?

Thanks