Collaborative Playlists are Not Necessarily Open
The first thing you need to understand is that collaborative playlists are not universally accessible to
everyone. Many people (artists) on Spotify have the perception that a collaborative playlist allows
anyone to add their song to the playlist. This is simply wrong. Most collaborative playlists are set up
to allow two or more people to collaborate (work together) in assembling a playlist, but most such
playlists are set up with specific collaborators in mind. Unless you are one of those collaborators,
there is no way for you to add your songs to this playlist, and there is no way for you to get invited
to become a collaborator. Most collaborative playlists are by invitation only.
Although there are collaborative playlists that are open to anyone, there is no easy way to find them.
If you search within your Spotify account using the word “collaborative” and then look under playlists,
you’ll get many returns – but if you try to add your song, you’ll discover this isn’t possible in the
vast majority of cases. The reason? Because what your search has returned are invitation-only
collaborative playlists.
Truly Open Collaborative Playlists are of Little Value
If you do happen to find a completely open collaborative playlist, it is likely that a few thousand
other people have also found it, and this leads to the next point. Spotify’s best practices suggest
50-70 songs on a playlist. However, most of the open collaborative playlists have THOUSANDS of songs.
Consequently, if your song is one of thousands, it is unlikely you will get many plays or streams from
such a playlist.
Playlist MatchMaker Can Help
Playlist MatchMaker, that allows you to search for playlists by genre. Their search tool was developed
using Spotify’s API, so that means the search results you get will come directly from Spotify’s
database. Though “collaborative” isn’t a genre, if you search using that term, you’ll find a bunch of
playlists in the search results that are returned. I’d suggest you do this just to satisfy your
curiosity and to verify for yourself what we have described herein. The search results are returned in a
tabular format, so they are much easier to view at a glance and see the relevant data, like the genre,
the number of followers, the number of tracks, etc. Alternatively, a search in your Spotify account
means you must open each playlist, one at a time, to see the relevant information.
In conclusion, collaborative playlists are not a fast track to exposure, as many have imagined. Artists
will likely do a whole lot better finding regular playlists that match their genre of music, and then
reaching out to the playlist owners to request that they give their songs a listen. Playlist MatchMaker
can help you do this by locating relevant playlists using our unique playlist search tool.