What Does A Playlist Curator Job Entail?

What is the role of a playlist curator?

Before you get started with your playlist curator job - you'll need to know exactly what an official playlist curator does.

Being a playlist creator is actually pretty simple:

The main playlist curator's job is to put together a music library of songs that fit together.

Watch the video below to learn how to grow your Spotify playlist! 👇

How to be a great music curator

Great curators need specific skills to succeed.

Here are the attributes you need as a successful playlist curator:

• Keen attention to detail
• Strong understanding of trends
• Good organizational skills
• Perform reviews on your work
• Excellent knowledge of music
• Love listening to music

Each one of these is a key requirement to crush it.

The main performance indicator that you're doing well as a playlist curator is more Spotify users following your playlist.

Reviewing your own work and adding new music frequently is essential for playlist curators.

Ideally, you want to add songs every 1-3 days.

At max, on a weekly basis.

Most curators have a keen sense of playlist updates, choosing to update every Friday.

Of course, getting more Spotify users doesn't matter if your playlist is for example on YouTube.

You need to analyze the analytics in your Spotify account and make sure that all of your playlists are growing congruently.

If you have multiple genres of playlists, then you want to create various playlists for different types of Spotify users.

The more Spotify users on the playlist the better! 

Why is a playlist curator important?

Being a playlist creator is a pretty important job.

You're basically programming music experiences for others to enjoy - making a very close-knit family between great songs.

This is why Spotify hires a full team of curators.

Their discovery algorithm analyzes analytics of growing songs and places them - but the editorial team finds good music to promote in playlists such as "New Music Friday."

You can bet these Editorial curators are paid nicely as well.

Most fans love discovering new artists, but they don't know where to find much new music.

The very first place they check for new music is through playlists.

Here they can identify great songs and find brand-new ones too.

The current music industry is practically being held up by Music curators.

Different curator jobs in the music industry

The music industry has a bunch of different music curators.

Getting a playlist creator job might not be the exact thing you want!

For example: many YouTube creators identify great songs and put together compilation videos.

Although they aren't a playlist creator technically, the job isn't very different.

Here is an example of a curated compilation video:

Other jobs can be:

• Music curation for blogs
• Playlist curation
• Music curation videos

The theory behind good playlists

Not every playlist is equal.

What makes music fit in varied playlists can change depending on what you want:

• Warm attitude
• Sad vibes
• Hype energy

This is something that every playlist Curator in the music industry understands.

This is why you should follow the playlist hypothesis.

The playlist hypothesis is this:

The better your playlist can merge with lifestyle moments (date night, gym, sex, etc.) Then the better you are as a music curator.

This is an unwritten rule when making playlists have a strong propensity to succeed.

Great creators follow the playlist hypothesis and thus their playlists get heard multiple times a day!

write music articles and blogs to get started

Many curators start their journey off as independent bloggers.

When you write music articles you're getting into the mindset of a music curator - this is the exact person that gets a playlist curator job let's say at XXL magazine for example.

Not only do these music creators write music articles - but they also prove to have exceptional verbal communication for something as abstract music.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to get started (not even a music theorist!)

The organizational skills you'll gain as you write music articles will provide you with the excellent knowledge and key requirements to crushing it.

In this case, you would be working with cross-functional teams for marketing.

I urge you to perform interviews for artists and build an excellent work ethic!

This skill to understand music will come around when curating musical experiences.

That's why I urge you to become a music creator and gain a keen sense of what makes music good.

Structuring a good playlist

I'll run you through the content objectives of making a playlist.

Let's say for example somebody is going on a date night.

They might want new music to listen to while they're getting dressed and getting ready to go out.

This is exactly what the value of your music library playlist is.

There are countless different lifestyle moments where great songs with a warm attitude can make the experience more fun.

Ideally, you want to be programming music playlists so that the listener can both identify great songs as well as discover new music that proves interesting.

When making this date night playlist it's fine to add music of various topics as well as multiple genres.

If adding multiple genres, just make sure that there's a keen sense of harmony.

It might be worth it to make multiple date night playlists as a very close-knit family, then delete the varied playlists.

I hope you enjoyed this Spotify promotion guide!