Elevating Your Content With Spotify Playlists

Rat & Boa landed in my inbox a while back with a newsletter covering their latest tracks on R&B radio. The latest drop, titled “Into The Shadows” is a curated playlist, featuring the likes of Grace Jones. The Rolling Stones and Billy Joel. This email couldn’t have come at more perfect timing, serving as a reminder that I had been wanting to cover this topic for some time now.

For several years, I have watched brands maximise their marketing strategies on less obvious platforms than the usual Instagram or TikTok, as another avenue to deepen brand experience. One of these platforms being capitalised on is Spotify, with a reported 574 million users (well over double compared to Apple), it makes a strong case for brands to add this to their digital presence.

What I like about this angle is it really gets brands to spark a creative conversation, to lean into their imagination and almost look to create this imaginary world, from the perspective of their brand. Because that’s exactly what music does, it sets a mood. With zero to a very small budget, you can transport your audience and create another level of brand storytelling, not to mention the content you can create and repurpose.

You can get really creative with this as well, it’s not necessarily limited to just a Spotify playlist. Aimé Leon Dore has their own take, with a dedicated page on their website dedicated to guest DJ’s they bring on to create albums which is also published to Apple Music.

You can also invite a “guest host” who comes in to curate the playlist, making for a special collaboration that produces unique content for you both, which of course in turn provides more content and mentions through cross promotion.

There is so much scope here, where depending on the industry, brands can share just about anything from jazz compilations for a summer night, to focus playlists for greater productivity, to a playlist of recommended podcasts. Almost any business could apply this to their digital activities.

Another advantage is that it’s so repeatable, in an age where there is the constant need to create and share, this makes a more effortless and doable approach to add to a brands content calendar.

SETTING THE MOOD

Because we want to tap into a particular emotion and connection when someone listens to a playlist, an exercise that I like to use is to brainstorm quite literally where this is taking place. Think of it as coming up with a particular scene in a movie, where would this scene take place? Which country? Who would be there? Who is the protagonist? What would they be doing? What time of the day is it? When you set the scene and clarify these finer details, it gives provides more clarity in the selection of music.

In creating your personalised playlist, you want to think about:

• What mood you want to evoke?

• Will this be influenced by a particular genre?

• Is this set in a particular season?

• Does it coincide with a special occasion?

GETTING CREATIVE WITH VISUALS

Based on the scene that you have set for your playlist, create a mood board that represents this entire scenario and use this as a starting point for creating the graphics for your playlist. This type of content also really lends itself to videos, so you definitely want to take advantage of that given the video takes preference with social media algorithms. Celia Loves create regular playlists shared on their socials, using both videos and carousels. They’re a great example of well executed and on-brand content.

CREATING CONTENT EFFORTLESSLY

I think almost anyone (myself included) can relate to feeling like they constantly need to be churning out content. Which is why I always like to approach content with getting the most out of what you create and this comes in the form of repurposing.

Playlists can also be repurposed on various platforms and also multiple times. As an example, a seasonal summer playlist can be shared with different visuals across different platforms, this ensures the content feels “fresh” and new. It can then also be dripped out every few weeks or so, within that 3 months over the summer season.

Some ways to think of how this can be actioned:

• Dedicated newsletter - like Rat & Boa’s below, featuring the playlist exclusively, this could also include a short synopses of the meaning behind the songs chosen

• Blog post - a more expanded version of the newsletter

• Instagram - shared different visuals across static posts, stories, and reels

• TikTok - repurposed from reels or vice versa

• Pinterest - this platform does well with frequent pinning, so this could be dripped out more frequently than other social platforms

• X (Twitter) - this can look like lyrics from songs or quotes from podcasts (depending on the playlist you create)

This creates a more realistic approach to creating content simply by creating a really beautiful curated playlist with the a bank of visuals to match.

···

Thanks so much for reading!
Is there a topic you’d like me to write about?
Drop me a DM, I love hearing from you.

Until next time, Aylen