Spotify Editorial vs Algorithmic Playlists | TAP
Understanding Spotify editorial vs algorithmic playlists
By TAP Editorial Team
Quick answer
Editorial playlists are chosen by people at Spotify. Discover Weekly and Release Radar are built separately for every listener. The link between them is behaviour: an editorial add puts your song in front of people who listen closely, and what they do next, saving it, playing it again or skipping after ten seconds, is what the personalised playlists respond to. Pitch through Spotify for Artists before release.
Editorial and personalised playlists get treated as two separate games, and they are closer to one loop. A person at Spotify decides an editorial add. Discover Weekly and Release Radar are assembled for each listener from what that listener does. The connection between them is your song being heard by people whose behaviour the personalised systems are already reading, which is why an editorial add sometimes turns into something larger a fortnight later, and sometimes does not.
Two kinds of playlist, one loop
An editorial playlist has a human behind it choosing what goes on. A personalised playlist has no fixed track list at all: Release Radar and Discover Weekly are built for each listener out of what that person plays, follows and skips, so no two people see the same one. Neither can be pitched in the way a blog can be pitched, and only the first has anybody to pitch to. The loop between them runs through listeners. An editorial add sends your song to people who chose that playlist and tend to listen deliberately. What those people do next is the part that carries. If enough of them let the song run, save it or come back to it, that behaviour is the raw material the personalised systems work from, and your song starts turning up for people with similar habits. If they skip early, that is also information, and nothing follows. This is why an editorial add can look quiet for a week and then move, and why an add on a large playlist with disengaged followers can lead nowhere at all.
What the personalised playlists actually respond to
Spotify does not publish the mechanics, and anybody who tells you the exact weightings is guessing. What is documented, and what artists can act on, is simpler. Release Radar exists to put new releases in front of people who follow you or have listened to you, so the number of people who followed your profile before release week matters more than anything you can do during it. Discover Weekly is built to introduce music somebody has not heard, which is why it usually arrives weeks after release rather than on the day. So the useful work sits before the release. Get people following the profile rather than only saving a song, because followers are who Release Radar reaches. Pitch through Spotify for Artists in time, because a pitched song goes into Release Radar for your followers whether or not an editor picks it up. Then let the release run for a fortnight before drawing conclusions, since the personalised surfaces update on their own schedule and week one tells you very little.
The pitch form is where your genre gets decided
When you pitch an unreleased song in Spotify for Artists, the form asks you to describe it: the genre, the mood, the instruments, the culture or scene it belongs to, whether it is a cover. Those answers route the song towards the people who look after that area, and they are the closest thing to addressing a pitch to someone by name. Be accurate rather than ambitious. A song described as belonging to a specific scene reaches whoever knows that scene, and they will recognise it or they will not. A song described in the broadest available terms goes into the largest possible pile. Describe what somebody hears in the first fifteen seconds, not what you hope it will be compared to. Where the record sits between two genres, pick the one it would be filed under in a shop and use the rest of the form to say what else is in it.
One pitch, before the song comes out
You can pitch a song once, and only while it is still unreleased, which makes the release date the deadline for the whole exercise. Spotify's own guidance is to pitch as far ahead as you can manage and at least a week before release; more than that is better, because editorial planning happens further out than most artists expect. That single shot changes the order you work in. Get the release delivered to your distributor early enough that the song exists in Spotify for Artists with time to spare. Check the metadata before you pitch rather than after: the title as it should appear, the credits, the artwork, the release date. Then write the description as though the person reading it has forty other songs open, because they do. Say what the song is, who is on it, and one thing that is true about it and not true about most records. Nothing in that description should read as a sales pitch.
You cannot contact an editor, so read the playlist instead
Spotify's editors are not listed and there is no address to write to, which is deliberate and unlikely to change. What you can do is study the playlists themselves. Look at the last fifty songs added to the one you are aiming at. Which artists are they, at what stage of their career, on what kind of label, produced how? Is the playlist adding songs on release day or picking them up later? That tells you two things. First, whether your song belongs there at all, which is usually obvious once you look and rarely obvious before. Second, how to describe your song in terms that playlist already uses. If everything on it is sparse and close-recorded and your song is a wall of guitars, no description will bridge that. Pick a different target rather than arguing with the evidence, and keep the ambitious one for a record that fits it.
What to watch after release, and for how long
Give it a fortnight before deciding anything. In Spotify for Artists, the numbers worth watching are the proportion of listeners who save the song, how much of it people hear before moving on, and how many of your streams are coming from playlists you were not added to by a person. That last figure is what tells you the personalised surfaces have picked the song up. Watch where it is being heard as well as how much. A song that gets added editorially in one country but streams mostly in another is telling you where your audience actually is, and that is worth more than the add itself when you plan the next release or a run of shows. If an editorial add produced nothing after two or three weeks, the honest reading is usually that the song reached the wrong listeners rather than that it was ignored. Both are fixable at the next release, and only one of them is about the song.
Describe the record you made
The most common mistake is describing a song as two things at once to widen the net. It narrows it. A description that hedges between two scenes reads as uncertain to whoever picks it up, and it puts your song in front of two sets of listeners who are each half interested. Pick the genre the record would actually be filed under, then use the remaining fields for what else is in it. If you are in the UK and your song would sit as comfortably in an American playlist, there is no need to force the regional framing: Spotify already knows where you release from. Describe the record you made, in the plainest words available, and let the second and third fields carry the nuance.
Key takeaways
- Editorial playlists are chosen by people. Discover Weekly and Release Radar are assembled for each listener, so there is nobody to pitch on those.
- The link between them is listener behaviour: saves, full plays and early skips on an editorial add are what the personalised surfaces read.
- You can pitch a song once, only before release, and Spotify asks for at least a week. Earlier is better because editorial planning runs further out.
- A pitched song goes into Release Radar for your followers whether or not an editor takes it, which makes followers worth more than saves before release week.
- Read the last fifty adds on the playlist you are aiming at. It answers whether you belong there faster than any amount of pitch writing.
Pro tips
1. Deliver the release to your distributor early enough that the song appears in Spotify for Artists with weeks to spare. The pitch deadline is the release date, and a late delivery costs you the pitch entirely.
2. Spend the pre-release push on profile follows rather than pre-saves alone. Release Radar reaches the people who follow you, so a follower before release is worth more than a save afterwards.
3. Describe the song the way somebody would describe it after fifteen seconds of hearing it. Comparisons to artists ten times your size read as an argument rather than a description.
4. Look at the last fifty adds on your target playlist before writing anything. If your song would sound like an intruder there, the pitch was never the problem.
5. Wait a fortnight before judging a release. The personalised surfaces update on their own schedule, and week one figures have made plenty of artists change a plan that was working.
Frequently asked questions
If no editor picks my song, will the personalised playlists still find it?
Yes, though more slowly and on a smaller scale. Release Radar is built to put new releases in front of people who already follow or listen to you, so it reaches your existing audience regardless of any editorial decision. Discover Weekly reaches people who have not heard you, and it needs enough listening behaviour to work from, which usually means it shows up weeks after release rather than in the first few days.
Can I pitch a song again if it is turned down?
No. Each song can be pitched once, and only while it is unreleased, so there is nothing to resubmit once it is out. Put the effort into the next release instead: check whether the description matched what the song actually is, whether the playlists you named were a fair target, and whether the pitch went in with enough time before the date.
Is a huge playlist better than a small one?
Not on its own. What follows an add depends on whether the people who see it listen, and a smaller playlist whose followers listen closely can do more for a song than a large one they treat as background. Follower counts are the easiest number to see and the least useful, so weigh what a playlist is for and who chose to follow it above how big it looks.
Can I find out who the editors are?
No. Spotify keeps its editors anonymous and there is no submission route outside the pitch form in Spotify for Artists. Anyone offering you a direct line to an editor for money is selling something that does not exist. What is available to you is the playlist itself: its recent adds tell you what that person tends to choose, which is most of what a contact would have told you anyway.
Do my previous releases affect how a new pitch is treated?
Your audience does. A profile with more followers and a record of people finishing your songs gives any new release a stronger start, mostly through Release Radar reaching more people on day one. Treat each pitch as being judged on the song and its fit with the playlist, and treat the audience you have built as the thing that decides what happens in the fortnight afterwards.
From the field
Proof points
- Best UK send window: Tue/Wed 09:00-10:00 UK (Across 60+ campaigns)
- Optimal follow-up cadence: +7 days from initial pitch (Liberty internal data)
- Reply visibility blind spot: Stations add to rotation without replying (WARM monitoring vs email reply rate)
What actually happened
Eyes Glued, BBC Radio 6 Music: 153 plays across 6 weeks, accelerating in week 4. Track-led pitch with a single playable line. (March 2025)
Spotify for Artists is a portal pitch, not a person pitch, and that is the trap. The form is the floor, not the ceiling. The plays come from named editors who know the show fit, and you only earn that contact by shipping the form fill cleanly first. I treat the portal as the audition and the human relationship as the gig. Both have to work.
Chris Schofield, Radio plugger, Liberty Music PR
Related resources
Further reading
- TAP Blog — In-depth guides, comparisons and advice for independent artists running their own promotion.
- UK Music — The voice of the UK music industry, representing labels, publishers, and collecting societies.
- Music Week — Industry news, charts, and analysis for music professionals.
- The Music Network — Global music business intelligence and networking.
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