Love music? This side hustle is for you

GM. This is Work "After" Work, the newsletter that makes your wallet so fat it won't close.

It's Friday, let's boogie:

• 🎧 Spotify playlists

• 😂 Meme of the day

CURATING PLAYLISTS

If you love music because it always puts you in a good mood then give this side hustle a try.

Last night I went onto Lofi Coding (beats to chill/relax to) playlist on Spotify, as one would who wants to focus. And it got me thinking... If I was an artist, I would want my music on this playlist.

It has over 40,000 followers - that would be great exposure for an artist.

Sure enough when I started DM’ing people asking how much it was to put a song on their playlist I got a reply.

So to give you an accurate number of how much you can actually make doing this.. you’re boy went undercover for the night.

Call me Sherlock Q.

One person I messaged had a playlist with 33k followers and was charging $290 for one song placement.

And they had multiple playlists ranging from 200 - 48,000 followers. Check out this pricing:

One of the top payments is $290 for an "I'm on aux" playlist that has 33k followers. There are 8 million artists with 500,000 monthly listeners or less on Spotify.

And since you make around $1,500 - $2,500 a month with 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, all 8 million artists would most likely pay to be on these playlists because it will increase their streams and exposure.

If I were to estimate I’d assume the person I DMd gets 5-10 requests a day. The average pay is around $80 for a single placement. Multiple this by 30 and their monthly income is most likely $2,400.

I guess it really does “go down in the DM’s”

SO HOW CAN YOU CREATE A BUMPIN SPOTIFY PLAYLIST?

1. Pick a niche

The best way to grow a loyal audience is to niche down.

There are thousands of music genres, pick the ones you like the most. This will make curating playlists fun, and even therapeutic.

A good playlist nowadays should be ever-changing. For something like '80s and 90s rock' - these playlists are already “set in stone”. You can try to beat them but it’s going to be hard.

When you’re picking a niche make it one where you’re continuously adding new songs to the playlist to keep listeners engaged and coming back for more.

2. SEO the sh*t out of it

There is a playlist for almost every occasion. Singing in the shower? Yup. Late night drives. You bet. There’s even a playlist for going to Cancun on vacation.

For your title and description, when people search for "chill punk rock" you want your playlist popping up.

So when you're creating a title and description, try to think about what people will type in for your playlist's theme/mood and make sure those keywords are in your title and description.

3. Grow your playlist

TikTok is the place to grow your playlist. It’s already huge on music.

Find creators (relatively small) and pay them $10-$20 to make a 20 second TikTok dancing to your playlist and linking it in their bio.

Trust me this will work for a lot of people. The big creators will millions of followers won’t take that little but that’s okay. Spread it out among a bunch of smaller creators and it will have a similar effect.

There’s two other ways you can grow your playlist:

1. Reddit or Facebook Groups - talk about how you love this new playlist you found called “Punk Pop Bangers 🤘” in groups like Pop Punk Friends

2. Colleges - college parties are massive. If you have a more upbeat and party playlist that’s popular among college kids you can charge artists an ungodly amount to be placed on that playlist. Pay college students to play your playlist at parties and if it’s good, it will spread like wildfire through word of mouth

And once your playlist does get big (1,000+ followers), look into PlaylistPush - they connect Spotify curators with paying artists for placement.

These playlists are run by everyday people like me and you. If you love music and have always wanted to be in the industry, this will get you one step closer.

MEME OF THE DAY

😂😂

That's all I got for ya today folks!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.