How to find the perfect songs for your Playlist

Playlisting Tips

The thought of playlists excites you, but you’re afraid your DJ skills are not adequate? Or maybe your niche taste of Tropical Grime will not please your audience? We’ve got you covered — here’s a cheat guide on how to find the perfect tracks for your playlist in no time.

Keep in Mind

The song search and curation doesn’t need to be time consuming or complex. Here are a few bullet proof tips to guide you in the process: 15 tracks is largely enough. There is no need for the playlist to be all in the same genre. Unless there is a special connection, don’t put two songs of the same artist in a consecutive order. Have fun but make sure there is a common theme!

Understand your listeners

Knowing your audience’s listening behaviour will help you where to look and what kind of music the playlist should include. As a starter:

• Analyze which of your latest articles about Music have worked, take notes on what artists and genres triggered the most engagement.
• Find out if there is a specific time when your audience visits you most. If it’s in the morning, you might do well with a playlist filled with happy pop songs, if it’s during work time you might opt for chillout/concentration music.
• No previous music content to analyze? Music data service Nextbigsound got your back! Unveil artist fanbases demographics and geodata to identify what to focus your effort on — who knows, maybe your audience detest Beyoncé?
• After following these steps you will have sufficient info to build patterns — E.g. most of your audience are born in the 60’s and like rock, the highest point of engagement is in the morning during weekdays — make a “6 o’clock it’s 60’s rock” playlist!

Sneaking is not Cheating

Head to your favourite streaming service and check out popular playlists for inspiration. Search by keyword, genre or mood — to find what you’re looking for, and add what you like. You can also find inspiration from sources like playlists.net, topsify.com, digster.fm and mixing.io.

Intelligent Taste

Feeling lazy? Take advantage of the SMART RADIO features on platforms like YouTube and Spotify. Launch a radio using an artist, song, or genre as a keyword and save the tracks you like along the way. Not much effort really, all you gotta do is press next.

You’ve probably heard about Spotify’s Discover Weekly, that creates playlists based on what you like, Unfortunately you don’t have your audience login, but if you believe you know what they like, you can automate a playlist here.

Stay in the loop

• Follow the charts to find out what the world is listening to, add a few top tracks: Billboard Hot 100 list knows what’s up!
• Add some trending tracks from up and coming artists to make the playlist more personal.
• Check out Hypemachine to see what’s buzzworthy at the moment.
• Make it local with tracks from Spotify’s interactive map — generate playlist with music popular in specific areas.

Simple Terms:

1.Check existing playlists featured on streaming platforms & playlists websites
2. Search for specific niche playlists with keywords
3. Use smart radios/playlist automation
4. Check the charts to see what’s on the top

.. And add whatever sounds good

The tools above are some of our favourites, however there are millions of ways to discover music so be creative! Just make sure you have the audience in mind and not only your own taste when curating the playlist. Now all you gotta do is share your music, there’s a whole crowd waiting for you!

Check out our guide on how to optimize your promotion strategy, and get one step closer to playlist stardom!

PS. No need to stop working! Listening to music is multi-task friendly, all you gotta do is hit next or push save, so please continue with what you were doing!

/ Miranda Lundberg: Community + Content at Soundsgood

Related Articles:

How to make your Playlist go VIRAL
Fast-track to an Efficient Playlist Strategy
How to Promote Playlists on your Media Channels
Music Strategy — An Essential Part in Modern Day Branding
FAQ

Join the world’s first community of music influencers on Soundsgood and create universal playlists for your audiences. Seamlessly publish your playlists across all music platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube & Soundcloud in just a few simple steps! For more info, check out our website!