By Florian Richling, Founder of ForTunes  
 
There was a time when third-party playlists on Spotify and YouTube were seen as a cornerstone of artist development and promotion. 

Though many music execs, managers, and emerging artists have moved away from focusing so much on streaming service playlists, the ground is still fertile for many emerging artists to gain exposure. Popular playlists create viable ecosystems for artists to gather streams and build their brand. 

Third-party playlists play a particularly enticing role for emerging artists who may have that new, unique or exciting sound, but have thus far been drowned out by the 50,000 new songs added to Spotify per day. They can act as catalysts and provide a leg up to other opportunities.

Verified Spotify artist, filous, boasting 1.8 million monthly listeners, agrees that playlists build a fanbase, but acknowledges it's confusing at first for a new artist . “I can imagine if you are just starting out in music  it would be difficult to go through all this playlist jumble,” filous said. “But there are some amazing tools out there these days. I produce with some newcomers who have never had contacts in the music industry before, and it’s crazy what can happen.” 

Entire companies and apps have been developed to help artists get their songs on playlists — for a fee of course.  There is a host of products out there being peddled to young artists, promising help to get noticed, get heard, get rich. Some are great; but for emerging artists or management teams on a budget, there are options that can serve the same purpose at a time when resources are tight. There is really no need to empty the bank if you have the right data and right approach.

The key moment comes as you attempt to identify playlists that are a good fit. The playlist ecosystem has matured, making it important to find the right curators that will connect with an artists’ work. This is deeper than pitching a slew of folks by genre or followers. You need to get granular about sub-genre and other musical factors. Artists can dig deeper by taking a close look at the audio features of the song, the social  and streaming media characteristics of the playlists’ other artists. Before you bother with pitching them, the playlists you’re targeting need to be vetted to weed out bots, lists unlikely to have a strong human following, and zombies, lists that have gone dormant. Updating frequency matters when you’re hoping to get some tailwinds for a new release. (At ForTunes, we have built powerful tools for identifying playlists along these parameters — and it is completely free.)

This approach works. With a success rate as high as 46%, compared to less than 1% on a genre-based playlist campaign, the numbers are undeniable. The following artists experienced a notable boost in streams after following the ForTunes playlist recommendations: 

• Artist Lofi Lemur gained 15,000 Spotify streams in 15 days, landing 7 playlist adds with only 15 contacted curators.
• In two weeks, Boston Switch’s track “CEO” saw a 500% increase in streams after joining 4 new playlists.
• Franko Fraize’s track “Snow” hit close to 700% increase in streams after 15 days and 5 new playlist adds.    

We’ve found, from talking to the artists in our community, that an artist reaching out directly to the curator can be a persuasive, compelling pitch. Sometimes other tools are necessary, however, and for that reason, we’ve created a direct collaboration with two leading blog and playlist promotion services, Groover.co and Submithub.com, who help artists connect with curators, right from inside the ForTunes app. This unique partnership helps creators manage outreach and spend their time and resources effectively. 

Don’t give up on playlists, friends. They still work wonders in the right circumstances. They are one area where artists can truly be their own best advocates. For artists with unique visions, they remain an essential part of taking control of your musical career and finding your fans. 

About ForTunes
ForTunes started its mission in 2018 to improve the lives of millions of music creators worldwide. Built and developed by a team of music and tech enthusiasts, ForTunes empowers independent artists with cross-platform music data analytics and data-driven career recommendations to optimize decision making and increase revenues

ForTunes, the music data analytics app created by artists for artists, is announcing the addition of Twitch as a trackable platform on its app. The biggest video game and video streaming platform in the world, Twitch offers infinite opportunities for musicians and artists to share their content and gain followers. 

“Though it started as a video game streaming service, Twitch has become the go-to platform for content creators to stream video content to fans and customers,” said Florian Richling, artist, producer, and founder of ForTunes. “Artists can use Twitch to connect with fans by streaming live concerts, hosting jam sessions, or AMAs. Using our ForTunes app will help these artists easily evaluate their performance on Twitch along with content on other social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Twitter.”

Though there are many analytics apps available for tracking views, streams, and likes across multiple platforms, ForTunes is one of few that presents artists’ data via a news feed. Not unlike a Twitter or Instagram feed, the ForTunes feed will now include notifications and posts about artists’ fans and followers, number of song streams, and video views. It gives the sometimes drab and bar-chart-heavy metric dashboard a more exciting face. 

“We’re excited to give our users an opportunity to gather data on the new frontier of music streaming on Twitch,” said Richling, “There may be many artists who might not even realize that Twitch can be a huge source of brand building and exposure. But utilizing Twitch video views and audience data offered on the ForTunes platform allows music creators to evaluate their performance and optimize their social- and streaming-media strategy.”

With an average age of 21, Twitch viewers spend roughly 95 to 105 minutes per day watching videos and gaming streams, offering musicians multiple sidedoor opportunities to introduce new music to a loyal audience.

And for a limited time only, ForTunes is offering the code “FORTUNES25” at checkout on their website for a 25% discount of a ForTunes Premium subscription.

About ForTunes
ForTunes started its mission in 2018 to improve the lives of millions of music creators worldwide. Built and developed by a team of music and tech enthusiasts, ForTunes empowers independent artists with cross-platform music data analytics and data-driven career recommendations to optimize decision making and increase revenues

“Every artist we asked said they wanted data,” recalls Florian Richling, artist, producer, and founder of ForTunes. “But none of them seemed to want to interact with data on a regular basis. At least not in the way it’s traditionally presented.” ForTunes, the data analytics app built for music creators, makes analyzing an artist’s online presence as easy as checking a Twitter feed.  

Founded in 2018, ForTunes is the artist’s choice for most intuitive and best value for music data analytics. Developed in Vienna by Richling and label and college radio veteran Christoph Muck, ForTunes is the insights app that has the data artists want, with the interface and ingenuity that gives them what they need. 

Rather than presenting users with a dashboard of numbers, charts, and spinning dials, Richling and Muck decided to present artists with data via a familiar-feeling newsfeed. Much like Twitter or Instagram, ForTunes sends notifications that inform artists of important benchmarks, achievements, and other key moments revealed in the data, achievements they can easily share to their socials. The approach worked: ForTunes has 100,000 app sessions each month by artists from over 130 countries. 

“We built ForTunes to be an app by artists for artists,” says Richling, Co-Founder of ForTunes, a former label manager who also scored platinum and gold singles as a sound engineer. “It’s an all-in-one data platform to measure every aspect of your online presence as an artist, from your social feeds and followers, to your streams and playlist apps. It is the app I wish I had as a young artist and producer.” 

Richling’s passion for music began young and took him to the famed Vienna Conservatory. He turned to audio engineering and production, starting a small studio in a recession and launching a label. His label activities led him to cross paths with Muck, who was working for Sony Austria heading up their digital efforts. They both saw the gap in data for artists in the industry. The pair teamed up and launched ForTunes in the middle of the pandemic. They were met with a tremendous groundswell of artists support, signaling that despite what industry leaders assumed, recording and performing artists do actually care about the data of their music. 

ForTunes’ data offerings rival every major competitor out there at a fraction of the price. “What separates us from our competitors is that we want ForTunes to be accessible and affordable for the long haul,” says Muck, ForTunes Co-Founder and former Senior Manager of Digital Business at Sony Music Austria. “When we launched in 2018, we were seeing really expensive apps and tools, but nothing made specifically for the rising artist. We have a $7.99/month premium user price, but we pride ourselves on our free tier, which is packed with value and will always be free.”

Fan-generated social posts, music blogs, and YouTube videos and comments are gathered and presented as a newsfeed, making it easy to keep up with every aspect of an artist’s reach. At the Premium level, ForTunes gives artists perhaps one of the most useful tools in modern music streaming history: ForTunes not only tracks playlists adds, but also uses granular song data to identify well-suited playlists that can organically boost an artist’s fanbase. ForTunes playlist suggestion feature is already being dubbed the best solution out there by industry leaders. 

“If you are a music industry newcomer, you may not have as much data as those who have been around for a long time,” said Richling. “We’re trying to show these young artists how to play the music streaming game, by teaching them, first, how to play the data game. By using our app, artists will quickly find that fan engagement is more important than fanbase size or number of followers. Engagement is a new currency. And our app gives artists the best and most intuitive way to measure engagement.”  

About ForTunes
ForTunes started its mission in 2018 to improve the lives of millions of music creators worldwide. Built and developed by a team of music and tech enthusiasts, ForTunes empowers independent artists with cross-platform music data analytics and data-driven career recommendations to optimize decision making and increase revenues