TikTok Curators & Music Discovery: A Big Opportunity for Spotify?

With the impending will it, won’t it drama of TikTok potentially becoming blocked in the US in the coming weeks, creators are once again scrambling to figure out their plans for content creation moving forward. 

Many creators have built large followings and revenue streams from the TikTok’s wide distribution and usage, and the sudden shift in availability can tip that all on its head. Their heads are swarming with questions like:

• Which platform should they switch to – YouTube, Instagram, some other site?
• Will their audience find and follow them on the next platform?
• Can they continue to monetize their content (effectively) on another site?
• Do they need to change their format or posting schedule to best fit with another platform?
• Should they even continue on their creator journey?
• What if TikTok stays around? Should they get started on another site to hedge their bets moving forward?
• Will this happen again?

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time creators have had to deal with the headache of social platforms coming, thriving, and dying in the social media graveyard. Large follower counts and life-changing viral memes can be erased in an instant. I’m sure you remember sites like Vine, MySpace, and Byte, just to name just a few. Some creators were able to survive the switch (ie. Lele Pons, King Bach, and Logan Paul). Many others did not.

Looking specifically at this new, emerging cohort of video creators specializing in music discovery via curation, I’m most intrigued as to why Spotify hasn’t yet stepped in for the win. Let me explain.

The New Music Discovery Problem

As a devout music fan intent on discovering new music and artists (and desperate to avoid the pitfall of not discovering new music past your 30s), I’m constantly in search of new music discovery streams to feed my appetite. 

I use Spotify religiously, with over 10 years of streaming history on the platform (my first playlisted song dates back to summer 2011). My favorite songs are saved and playlisted and my top artists followed. It’s a full complement to my daily life – soundtracking my work day, workouts and runs, long drives in the car, and everyday life. I imagine the data tracked from my listening activity has some of the most detailed insights as to what I want to listen to, and exactly when I want to hear it.

Spotify’s additions of the weekly personalized music playlists have been helpful in uncovering songs I may have otherwise missed. Release Radar is a great way to keep track of new music from artists I already love and listen to, while Discover Weekly is an often hit-or-miss attempt at introducing me to songs the algorithm thinks I’ll like (some Mondays I feel like none of the suggestions even make sense based on my listening habits).

I’ve gone down the music discovery rabbit hole of using Song Radio to find more songs that match a particular vibe, or shuffling through my Recommended Stations, but I find that these evolving playlists often just recommend and play songs and artists I’ve already listened to, liked, and playlisted. I experience the same issue with the Daily Mixes. They’re a great way to play a mix of songs within a particular vibe, but 99% of the time, it plays songs I already know and love, rarely introducing me to something new.

I know Spotify offers an extensive range of both editorial and user-generated playlists, but I’ve yet to find ones that perfectly align with my music taste or are updated frequently enough to keep up with my listening habits. A few new songs added every few weeks just isn’t enough to satisfy my appetite for new music discovery – it feels like fruitlessly searching for a rare gem in an endless sea of options.

Otherwise, my new song recommendations come from listening to friends’ playlists, soundtracks of videos I watch (from TV, movies, or social media videos), or pure random luck. Otherwise, it can become quite the struggle and I find myself drifting back to just shuffling my ever-growing soundtracking this life playlist (so much for discovering new music).

Thankfully, an emerging category of TikTok music curators has emerged to help solve my (and many others’) music discovery problem.

TikTok Music Curators are solving new music discovery challenges

TikTok music curators have become some of the most popular creators on the app, with their frequent song, artist, and playlist recommendations driving new music discovery across all genres and niches of music.

Creators like Kaseys.Playlist, Fuegostine, and OccupiedLiving (among many others) have built substantial followings on TikTok specific to their personal music aesthetic, essentially acting as a new radio station model for introducing likeminded listeners to songs that should be on their radar.

I’ve followed both Kaseys.Playlist and Fuegostine personally for the past few years, and can attest to the fact that their music recommendations are like having your own personal music DJ right at your fingertips – they consistently introduce me to new artists. In fact, I’m pretty sure I came across one of my favorite artists of late, Holly Humberstone, through Kaseys.Playlist’s videos sometime in the midst of lockdown. Since then, Holly’s graced my top 5 played artists on Spotify Wrapped for the past few years.

Their recommendations have become critical to my music discovery pipeline. Each Friday I anxiously await the update to Kaseys.Playlist’s new this week Spotify playlist, which I listen through right after Release Radar. She also calls out the top new songs to check out in an accompanying TikTok video, which is a great appetizer highlight of what to expect.

In weeks where I open Spotify to find that nothing new has been added (I guess music curators deserve time-off, too), I slightly panic at losing this small delight I’d been quite looking forward to all week.

Essentially, the impact these music curators have had on my personal new music discovery is significant. They’re shaping my weekly music listening habits, powering longer (and more enjoyable) listening sessions, and unlocking new music discovery, while at the same time, making me a new fan of otherwise undiscovered music artists. 

Music promotion challenges for independent music artists

From a music artist perspective, the music discovery and promotion hurdles in getting their music out there and discovered by new listeners are immense.

Every day, over 120,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify and other streaming platforms. Of that massive catalog, independently distributed music – comprising “Artist Direct” releases and non-major label tracks – accounts for an impressive 34.2%.

Narrowing it down further, 5.9% of distributed music comes from ‘Artists Direct’ – independent artists distributing through platforms like DistroKid and TuneCore. This DIY segment of the music industry contributes an estimated 7,000 new songs daily to Spotify and other streaming platforms.

For context, these are primarily artists doing everything themselves – from writing and recording to distributing and marketing their music. Some may have managers or small teams, but overall, this independent artist segment is largely trying to figure it all out themselves with little to no promotional budgets.

For these artists, unlocking budget friendly, yet effective methods of music promotion and new fan discovery can be incredibly challenging. If you’re familiar with the music industry at all, I’m sure you heard about the scammy pay-to-play playlist promotions or seen artists spamming video comments and Discord communities with their latest releases, all with little-to-no impact. Add to that the recent limitations implemented by Spotify on minimum stream counts to earn revenue, and it’s a wonder that people try to make it as a new artist at all.

That being said, there are new and powerful tools emerging for music artists, democratizing the otherwise very expensive music marketing and promotion rollout.

In fact, it’s part of the work we’re doing at Thematic, where we connect video content creators and music artists in a one-to-one value exchange. Music artists are able to get their latest song drops featured in creator videos in exchange for song promotion. 

As a result of this creative collaboration, viewers around the world are able to discover new songs and artists based on the YouTube and social media videos they watch. And it works. 

To date, artists using Thematic have had their music featured in 1.6M+ YouTube videos across an audience reach of 2B+ subscribers. This has resulted in 80.5M+ new fans for these music artists, and opened up opportunities for radio play, publishing contracts, and major label deals. Perhaps you’ve heard that song “Sunroof” by Nicky Youre, or listened to bangers by EVAN GIIA, JP Saxe, or Paul Russell? Yep, all of these artists launched song campaigns on Thematic, giving them a groundswell of new fan interest through the 1,000s of creator videos across social media soundtracked with their music.

The organic influencer marketing and song promotion we provide artists at Thematic is just one piece of any artist’s music marketing rollout. Another key driver of music promotion for independent artists are these coveted placements on a music curator’s videos and playlists.

The opportunity for Spotify to become the home for video curators

All of this is to say that I believe Spotify has a massive opportunity on its doorstep to take the reigns as a leader in new music discovery via these video-first music curators. It has long struggled to develop its video arm, as it is by-and-large considered primarily an audio platform.

And I get it. From a personal perspective, the amount of time I’m actually looking at the Spotify interface is incredibly slim. I often select my playlist or album, click play, and then just have it running in the background. The song Canvas visualizers are a “nice-to-have” in regards to establishing an artist’s branding, but to-be-honest, I never look at them. Music videos as a whole are, unfortunately, somewhat of a dying medium as attention spans diminish and costs can be prohibitive (especially for independent music artists). And video podcasts are just a totally different ballgame, as they’re not exclusively centered in the music space.

With the looming aforementioned TikTok ban perpetually haunting creators’ minds, it’s almost too obvious that Spotify should at least try to become the new de facto platform to host this type of content. Here’s why I think it could work for all parties:

Video music curators specialize in new music discovery – introducing new songs and music artists to their followers, often centralized around a specific music niche. Music artists persistently crave new ways to get their music discovered by new fans and music lovers, who want quality and often human recommendations of songs that match their taste. And I’m assuming Spotify wants more usage of their platform (more streams, engagement, quality content, etc.).

By making a place for music curators to share their video content directly on Spotify, all of the above needs could essentially be met, streamlining the new music discovery experience for all.

For example, right now, in order to get a TikTok music curator’s latest artist recommendations, you need to open TikTok, hopefully be recommended their content in your feed, watch their video, leave TikTok and open Spotify to look up the artist, and etc, etc… You see how easily you can lose someone’s attention and interest in this flow.

Wouldn’t it be that much more effective to see this video directly within Spotify and then simply click to play the artist’s music immediately? Wouldn’t it be interesting to jump into playlists of albums or artists, and not just songs (ie ‘The Top 5 Artists You’ll Like if You’re A Fan Of…’ or ‘My Top 10 Albums Released in January’)? Right now these simply don’t exist within the Spotify UI.

And in the case that these TikTok music curators are left without their current “home” of TikTok, how does that impact the top of funnel streams from a Spotify perspective? Wouldn’t it be better to have more control over this flow of engaged listeners?

Yes, these curators are usually already active on Spotify and update and create playlists regularly. But from a listener’s perspective, it’s absolutely impossible to know which playlists were recently updated or what’s new that I should check out. That summer playlist from last year will be relevant again in just a few months time, but it’s not intuitive to find in the current UI. 

Introducing video capabilities would enable curators to breathe new life into older playlists by adding fresh song finds and sharing them directly with their followers. These types of short-form videos could make music recommendations and playlists more engaging, keeping them top-of-mind and effortlessly linkable for music fans.

In regards to making it a compelling home for these video curators, there’s obviously the challenge of how to incentivize them in regards to monetization. Currently, these curators exist on social platforms because that’s how they can earn money from their content. Their earnings are derived from the views and ads shown around their videos, and then split based on viewership or watch time share. This is similar to how Spotify pays out artists from a total revenue pool based on the songs receiving the most streams.

A monetization model for video curators on Spotify could match this existing ad share model. Or perhaps there’s an opportunity to pay out curators based on the streams they drive for music artists from their content. It could be considered the next iteration of an affiliate model that both solves a curation problem and reduces the amount of niche curators the platform needs to hire directly. That’s for the bigger minds at Spotify to figure out, but you get the idea.

Looking ahead at music promotion and discovery opportunities

At the end of the day, I’m simply excited about the evolving opportunities and challenges in the creator-music-tech ecosystem. It’s an area I’m personally very invested in, both as a music listener and fan and co-founder of Thematic. It’s always been a passion of mine to discover and support the music artists I love, and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead.

If you’re interested in nerding out about new music discovery, want to talk about a partnership with Thematic, or simply want to send some new songs my way, feel free to reach out via email.

And, as always, if you’re an independent music artist who is looking for effective and free music promotion for your songs through influencers and social video content, please submit your music at hellothematic.com/artists.

I’d be amiss to not drop in my latest new music discoveries after the entirety of the above thought piece. You can find all of my currently on rotation and recent faves in my currently listening to playlist on Spotify ✌️

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