HOW TO MAKE YOUR SONG MORE PLAYLIST–FRIENDLY

For your song to make the listeners’ playlist, it has to be play-worthy, in that, it must satisfy the need of your listeners as well as leave them wanting more. However, getting your song to be added to the playlist isn’t just about making good music or promoting the sound through all channels, there are certain technicalities that can aid your song and make it more playlist friendly. It is along this line that we shall briefly discuss certain fundamentals to achieving this.

As an artist, you must have it in mind that your music must have playlist features i.e short and straight to the point. For instance, to make a radio playlist, certain edits are done. The process of making those ‘edits’ could be burdensome, hence, the radio stations leave the song off their playlist. Having shorter versions of the song is good, especially for radio listeners, who are not as patient to listen to the whole song. It is therefore advisable to make a song for the playlist short and straight to the point.

Before we proceed, it is important to state clearly that this is not to dissuade the creativity of artists or restrict their musical expression, what we have discussed thus far is for the sake of musical playlists, especially on the radio. It is to this that we say it is advisable to make the original version of the song before making ‘playlist edits’. Have it in mind that the edited version of the song shouldn’t be so different from the original song, just a little extraction from different parts will do.

In editing your song, you can take note of the following:

• Song Length: Make sure the length of your edited song does not exceed 4 minutes. It might begin to bore your listeners after the 4-minutes mark.
• Song intro & outro: Ensure this does not exceed 15 seconds. Make it captivating and exciting.
• Song Structure: Be sure to communicate what the song is about with a captivating hook or vocals. Keep your listeners in the groove of what you are singing. 

Also, you must ensure to grab the attention of your audience such that, they won’t be eager to skip your song. In doing this, the song must have a fantastic intro and the body of the song must captivate them to want more. Failure to do so will reduce your chances of making money from your music on music streaming platforms. Before a song is considered streamed, the listener must have listened past the 30-second mark. Anything less than the 30-second mark will mean the song wasn’t streamed, hence, reducing your chances of making money off the song.    

In a nutshell, musicians should make their songs playlist-friendly. To do this, musicians should, after making the original version of their songs have edited versions of their songs. The implication of this is that it relieves the radio stations the stress of editing your song for a radio playlist as well as it is designed to capture the attention of the listeners, within the 30-second mark, on a music streaming platform.