Every publicist can tell you there are certain questions we have dreaded over the years. When I started 20 years ago it was "get me in Rolling Stone" then for years it was "You are going to service my CD to Letterman and Conan yes?" Today its Spotify Playlists.
And of course this question happens for good reason. But, hold your horses. There are a lot of steps to take before you hire a PR firm like mine or a playlist servicing company to get you on playlists.
The First Important Thing to Understand is: A Majority of Spotify is Owned by the Major Labels
and their artists dominate most of the most followed playlists. The reason for this is 3 companies are in control of placing songs on those playlists - so this playing field is NOT even for indies. A comprehensive article came out on CASH music by Liz Pelly called The Secret Lives Of Playlists that is a must read so that you can fully understand just how little power you have as an indie artist on this platform when it comes to simply "getting on playlists"
Here's a nugget...
"Not all Spotify playlists are created equally... On other playlists, you’ll occasionally notice different logos... These are the playlisting brands owned by the major labels: Filtr by Sony, Topsify by Warner, and Digster by Universal. Very rarely you might see an independent label or brand logo. That majors own their own playlisting companies servicing Spotify, and that these major-owned playlists have prominent placement within the platform, should come as no major surprise: Spotify is largely a collaboration with all three major labels.
Now that I got the bad news out of the way, there is hope and with some planning and work you can and will get traction inside this valuable platform. To learn how, I decided to go to a group of music industry veterans who do this every day and in the panel How Streaming Playlists Work and How to Get On Them, that took place at MONDO 2017 in New York, I sat in as Streaming Promotions, Co-Founder, Charles Alexander Sung Cho, Founder and CEO, Chartmetric, Brian Vinikoor, Sr. Director Strategic and Digital Partnerships at mtheory, Brian Popowitz ,General Manager Blackbox, and Jason Jones Director of Sales Mute Records took us through an incredible amount of information mostly focused on Spotify Playlists. I have broken it down into little "nuggets" and added some links help you along the way.