Why Payola Won’t Help Much

Payola, also known as “pay to play”, is the practice of either bribing or paying someone to broadcast or perform your recordings in public. For example, when you pay radio hosts to broadcast your song or when you pay Spotify playlist curators to include your track on their playlists, that is "Payola".

The payola law was first applied in the 1970s because it was the first time that professionals in key positions were bribed to promote or even be biased about an artist or a song. Payola is still in practice today, despite being illegal by law. The tactic is still widespread across the music industry, even among pop artists. Payola might be efficient when it comes to promoting, but it hides dangers and disadvantages. The problem is that the big platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, etc, will expel anyone using that technique in an effort to be 100% legitimate. Spotify is obliged to DELETE all artists doing payola from its platform. And it is actively doing so pretty steadily. As an artist, that is the last thing that you want to happen to you. Your name and your discography will be permanently deleted from Spotify. It is also a matter of reputation. Your goal as an artist is to inspire admiration and respect and ultimately leave a legacy that typically doesn't include stories about you paying curators to promote your music or using black-hat techniques that will put you a step ahead of your competitors. Therefore, it is important for you to grow ORGANICALLY, but most importantly, LEGALLY.

There are many ways to promote your music on Spotify legally. The purpose of that blog is to help you discover ways that you can grow your Spotify following and, of course, your streams and make the most out of them without incurring any expenses or taking any risks. Our platform is here to introduce curators to artists and vice versa WITHOUT payola. The medium of exchange is not money (nor Bitcoin), but friendly exchanges. The artists follow the playlists, and thus the curators gain new followers. The curators add tracks to their playlists, and thus the artists gain streams. Everyone is happy; no one pays a dime. When you submit a song to our site, it is distributed to all playlist curators with whom we collaborate who have playlists of the selected genre. Each of them gets an email with a link to your song. So by using the site, you are actually allowing us to help you the right way by introducing your song to the right playlist curators that may add your song to their playlists because they like it, rather than being paid to do so, and that makes the process purely legal and organic! As a result, you can rely more on your talent as an artist than on the amount of money you pay to advertise.

Despite payola being illegal, there are still many music promotion services out there that offer masked payola as a "legal" service. Thankfully, there are some obvious signs that can help you identify and avoid them. These services ask you to pay for "considerations" that end up as guaranteed placements on the curator’s playlist immediately. Others claim that they do not get money for placements or even considerations, but only for reviewing the tracks, and thus you get your track listed under a fee with the pretense that you paid for the review and not for the placement! But of course, Spotify knows. And by doing so, you are taking a risk. The biggest risks involve paying a service to stream your music. If that music promotion platform or company guarantees you a certain number of streams or plays for a fixed price, this is not only a clear indication of payola, but it will also harm your Spotify profile because those providers typically use clickfarms or robots to deliver the streams. As a result, you must avoid such promotional providers at all costs, or you will most likely end up with a deleted Spotify artist account.

It is true that there are a lot of people out there scamming people with fake streams and follows. The people who made it in the music industry, the celebrities or even the well-established artists, have never used these kinds of tactics. All music companies and all record labels recognize that this method of music promotion is not only illegal but also harmful for the artists and for themselves. So if you want to make it big within the music industry or get on Spotify playlists, you have no alternative but to put in the research and work.

So what can you do to increase your streams? You could simply ask people to include your track on their playlist WITHOUT paying them. Or if you don't have any friends with playlists, or the time to search for playlisters and hassle around, let us do the trick for you. We built this platform for that exact purpose. You can submit your track to curators for free using our platform. You might pretty well ask, "Are the curators busy enough NOT to listen to my track?". Yes, they might be. However, it is possible that they will LIKE your track and add it to their playlists. As with everything else in life, nothing is certain. But in our case, all you have to lose are a few seconds of your time. It is costless and legal, and you jeopardize absolutely nothing. And for those seconds wasted, you might gain a listing! So give it a try!