Video summary

How To Become A Music Curator (And Grow A Spotify Playlist FAST) 🚀

Main summary

Key takeaways

Business

Core Strategy: Spotify Playlist as a Growth + Monetization System

  • Build a Spotify playlist that attracts subscribers while also promoting the curator’s own tracks.
  • Monetize through “curator placement” / reviews, where artists pay to be listened to by curators (examples mentioned: SubmitHub, Groover).
  • Reinvest early monetization into paid promotion to grow the playlist faster.

Monetization Playbook (Playlist as an Income Channel)

How Curators Earn

  • On SubmitHub, curator earnings are cited as $0.50 to $1.50 per song review.
  • Rule of thumb: watch 5–10 songs per day → enough for one or several ad campaigns to further develop the playlist and the curator’s music.

Unlock Condition / Requirement

  • SubmitHub monetization requires at least 1,000 playlist subscribers.
  • Example state: 256 subscribers, so the curator is not yet eligible/fully unlocked.

Playlist Creation Framework (Designed for Search + Subscriber Value)

Genre Positioning

  • Use an “unofficial but accurate” genre label (chosen: “summer house”).
  • Playlist title strategy: capitalize on a pattern observed in Spotify search results (popular playlists included the current year).
  • Final naming: “Summer House 2024”.

Description SEO / Keyword Optimization

  • Approach:
    • Review top playlists’ descriptions in search results.
    • Rewrite using ChatGPT.
  • Implemented keywords: include lifestyle/genre terms surfaced in narration, such as “pool,” “beach,” “beach house.”
  • Trust/frequency signal: playlist updated weekly.

Track Selection / Quality Heuristic

  • Proxy metric used: average popularity score of tracks in the playlist.
  • Targets:
    • At least 50 songs total
    • 10 songs are the curator’s own (implemented as “every fifth song”)
  • Validation:
    • Checked average popularity score on a third-party site: 53
    • Claim: close to best-in-class summer house playlists.

Growth Engine (Paid Ads for Playlist Subscribers)

Ad Platform + Template

  • Used Hypeddit and the “Roll My Spotify Playlist Ads” template (originally designed for artist playlists).
  • Adapted the template for curated playlist promotion.

Reported Campaign Performance (KPIs / Targets)

  • Engagement: ~60% engagement
    • Described as the highest engagement among his campaigns
  • Cost metric: $0.20 CPC (20 cents) over the last 7 days
    • Described as the lowest cost per click among his campaigns

Campaign Setup Choices (Operational Steps)

  • Targeting regions: tier one and tier two countries (default in Hypeddit)
  • Audience targeting:
    • Used Hypeddit’s AI to generate interests
    • Manually selected one interest due to duplicate audience suggestions
  • Interests example list mentioned by the AI:
    • Deep House
    • Eric Prydz
    • Roger Sanchez
    • Tech House
    • Noted: Eric Prydz appeared twice from separate suggested audiences

Creative / Offer Optimization

  • Playlist cover changes for ad effectiveness:
    • Added the Spotify logo
    • Added the tag “listen on Spotify”
  • Video effect: “VHS glitch”
  • Production approach:
    • Took an MP3, generated a waveform, and used slicing
    • Snippet length adjusted to 15-second snippets (changed from 30s to 15s)
  • Ad copy / hook geared toward the curator angle:
    • Ad text: “Looking for new house music?”
    • Ad title: “Check out this playlist.”

Budget

  • Daily budget: $5/day
  • Total spend reported: $205

Results (Measured Outcomes)

  • Time to growth: in less than a month
  • Subscriber growth: 256 new playlist subscribers
  • CAC-like metric provided: ~$0.80 per follower
    • Derived from $205 spend / followers
  • Listener + streaming lift attributed to playlist inclusion:
    • 219 new listeners
    • 1,000+ streams of his tracks

Operational Next Step (Scaling via Autopilot)

  • Once the monetizable subscriber threshold is reached, keep the campaign on autopilot to reach 1,000 followers faster.
  • Current gap to monetization requirement:
    • 256 / 1,000 subscribers (needs ~744 more)

Frameworks / Playbooks Used

  • SEO for playlists
    • Title patterning using top search results (including year)
    • Keyword-rich description generation (use ChatGPT + competitor phrasing)
    • Credibility signals (e.g., updated weekly)
  • Curation-to-conversion
    • Curate for subscriber value (genre fit + popularity-score benchmark)
    • Self-promotion cadence: 10 of 50 songs
  • Paid growth execution loop (GTM-like)
    • Build playlist → run Hypeddit template ads → iterate creative (cover, video effect, hooks) → track engagement/CPC → scale while keeping campaigns live
  • Quality metric benchmark
    • Track average popularity score (achieved 53)

Presenters / Sources

  • Presenter: John (founder of Hypeddit)
  • Tools / sources mentioned: Hypeddit, SubmitHub, Groover, ChatGPT, and the “Spotify Growth Switch” course (credited to John)

Original video