Nigel Sparkes:
Another thing too that artists need to understand is, a good quality song will take you a long way. And when I mean quality is, if you're not good at mixing your song, you should find someone that's good at mixing your songs and mastering your songs, because it makes a difference, especially on a playlist. Because if your song is being played after a good quality mix song and it comes on next, and the listener's listening to that, the sound quality is going to automatically turn them off and they're going to skip your song. That negatively affects you as well, so that's very important that artists make sure that they get their records mixed and mastered to the best of their ability that they can.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month, without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.
All right, I'm excited to be here today with Nigel Sparkes. Nigel is a music business marketer who's been working with top-tier talent and executives over the last 10 years. He has over 8 million records sold, working with clients that include Grammy nominations, radio number-one hit singles, Soul Train Music Awards, number-one-charting billboard singles and albums, so he knows a thing or two about releasing music. He started a company called PlaylistStreams in 2020, and since then, PlaylistStreams has helped thousands of artists, as well as major labels and indie labels, in their rollout plans for their music on Spotify. So today, I'm excited to talk with him about the topic of releasing your music and getting more streams on platforms like Spotify, and the power of using playlist campaigns to do that. So Nigel, thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Nigel Sparkes:
Thanks for having me, Michael.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Maybe before we dive in, you could share a little bit about yourself and how you got started and reached a point with 8 million records sold. Maybe share a little bit about your story.

Nigel Sparkes:
I started in the music business when I was in college, honestly. I was managing some kids. I went to Penn State University. I'm a business student, and by default because I was a business student, I just became a manager, and they were rapping and singing, and I got them on the radio at the school. We was in a newspaper. They played our song at the football games, et cetera, et cetera. I graduated and I still wanted to do music instead of pursue my career in investment banking that I went to school for.
Long story short, I end up working with a publishing company, and then I started managing a bunch of artists and producers, and then I came across these special, talented guys, and we end up doing a song called Tonight by John Legend featuring Ludacris. It was my first number-one record. It was in Think Like a Man movie. And then during that journey I started working with artists like Ne-Yo, and we did a bunch of records with him and Miguel, and just kept going and going and going and going. That's my main business. I'm a talent manager. I manage artists, I manage songwriters, I manage music producers.
Playlisting came about, I would say, about five years ago or six years ago. At the time I had a artist and I was just seeing the trend of what was going on in the music space, the transformation from MP3s, actual ownership, to digital ownership of songs. And I kind of jumped ahead of the curve and I kind of figured out how to get on Spotify playlists about, like I say, six years ago. With that, I was just doing it for my artist that I managed at the time, and I just noticed that a lot of my peers in the business who was managing artists or worked at labels or producers that had their own artists, were outsourcing their marketing efforts to people and they were getting scammed. So at that point I was like, "Let me create a platform for playlist streams where I'm actually a music executive and people can actually trust a company that's going to say and do what they're going to do." So, I created PlaylistStreams in 2020, kind of right before the pandemic, so during the pandemic I wasn't building it out.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Amazing. Man, that's great to hear. And unfortunately, it seems like the music industry is one of those industries where you hear so much about being scammed. There's the classic idea of someone writing a contract and signing away their rights and whatnot, so it's good to see and hear that there's people out there that are looking to combat that as well.
Maybe you could share a little bit about that specifically, because obviously as a musician nowadays, a lot of us are asking the question, "How do we get more streams on these platforms?" And maybe if you're starting out from scratch and you don't have an audience yet, how do you actually build an audience and how do you grow your numbers? Maybe you could share a little bit about some pointers for anyone who's listening to this right now who is looking at different platforms that they could invest in in order to try to grow their audience and get more streams. How does someone spot out the scams or the things that aren't really worth it, versus something that's more effective?

Nigel Sparkes:
The first way to spot out a scam is if it's too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true, all right? Maybe a few years ago, there was a lot of company out there selling streams for $10 and $20 and it's like, get a thousands of streams for 10 and $20. That's too good to be true, so that kind of would give you a red flag per se. If it's too good to be true, if the price is too cheap for all these amount of streams, you kind of want to question that within itself. That's mainly the main way to do it.
And then just looking at reviews, and talk to someone on the phone and kind of hear them out. If you can contact someone on the phone and hear them out and ask them questions, as many questions as you can. See, we'll play the streams. In the beginning, I guaranteed the streams, we still do now, I guarantee the streams. And when I did it, a lot of people were like, "Oh, how do you guarantee streams? How do you guarantee streams?" But at the time, you have something called Spotify for Artists.
Because I've been doing this for five years without Spotify for Artists, when Spotify for Artists came about, it was a game changer for people like me, because now I have access to the data. I can actually look at the data, what's going on on these playlists. I can see which streams are ... or, playlists are driving streams, playlists are not driving streams, because that was a big thing too. You would get on a lot of playlists and these playlists weren't driving no streams. They have 100,000 likes or 250,000 likes, and then you get five streams at the end of the month, and it was just like, "That doesn't even make any sense."
Now, having the data, you can see which playlists are active, which playlists are not active, so that allowed us to come up with a strategy to provide and put artists on active playlists. So, if we put your song on a bunch of playlists, we can see which ones are working, which ones are not, we can take it out that playlist, put it on another playlist, et cetera, et cetera. We also could identify bots that way. So, because we have access to the data, we can see which playlists are biting, and if they aren't biting, we'll remove the song immediately and we can delete it from our system. So it's like, we weed out a lot of those playlists and we try to focus on the playlists that's actually active and that can kind of work for the song that the artist is giving us.
I think another thing too that artists need to understand is, a good quality song will take you a long way. And when I mean quality is, if you're not good at mixing your songs, you should find someone that's good at mixing your songs and mastering your songs, because it makes a difference, especially on a playlist. Because if your song is being played after a good quality mix song, and it comes on next and the listener's listening to that, the sound quality is going to automatically turn them off and they're going to skip your song. That negatively affects you as well, so that's very important that artists make sure that they get their records mixed and mastered to the best of their ability that they can.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Yeah, that's such a important lesson. I know for us, when you're first starting out, I didn't fully appreciate how important it was to work with the right producer and mixing engineer and mastering engineer. I think I thought that basically if you're just super, super talented that that would be enough.
But it's sort of like, I don't know, it doesn't matter how talented you are, if you are recording your song on a motorola razr phone, if people even remember what that phone was, it's this old flip phone, but it has a microphone. But if you're recording that song, then there's no way it can possibly compete. Doesn't matter how good you perform it or how great the song is, it's just not going to be competitive. And I know for us, the amount of improvement that came when we actually worked with the right producer, who wasn't just a local friend but was someone that actually had worked with the types of artists that we wanted to go on tour with, and some really bigger names, that was one of the biggest game changers for us in terms of the quality of the music. I think you're spot on in that advice, and it sounds like what you're saying is, that is an important foundation. If you're going to be successful using these strategies, then you want to make sure that you start with the song.

Nigel Sparkes:
Exactly. It's all about the song, and I work in the music business. The song is the most important part of everything. The song, it's all about the song.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Tell me a little bit more about PlaylistStreams specifically. It sounds like you have a great strategy for basically sussing out what the botted playlists are, removing those ones, and finding where the active playlists, people who are actually listening to it, so you have a good process for the way that you've curated these playlists. Do you focus specifically on one genre, or certain kinds of genres, or do you have services that span across different genres? And how do you factor in that when you're accumulating those playlists?

Nigel Sparkes:
We focus on multiple genres, and some of the more popular ones seem to be hip hop, country, rock, and pop. We also have done EDM dance in the past, folk songs, but without database ... We've done Reggaeton Latin music as well. But if we get a song and our team feels that we can't achieve the goal or the streaming goal, we won't take the song, and that could be genre-specific.
During the holidays we get a lot of Christmas requests, and we have to turn them away, because there's not a lot of Christmas playlists with that much data. Every year, there's new playlists coming and coming and coming, but it's such a short amount of time that we don't feel comfortable putting your song on these playlists, because they're newer playlists, and we can't really identify the data to guarantee our streaming service to you. So, we're very picky when it comes to that, right? Again, if the song sounds too bad, we'll turn you away, if the quality's bad. But if there's a genre that we're not confident in playlisting it, then we'll turn it away as well.

Michael Walker:
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Cool, that totally makes sense. What are some other recommendations that you would have for someone? Or actually, let me put it this way. Now that you have a ton of experience working with artists and seeing people who've shown up and were perfect and they did everything exactly right and they had awesome results and success, versus maybe some people who did everything wrong or they came in with the wrong mindset or they struggled. I'm curious, if you had to hold those two different types of artists in two different hands, and kind of contrast and compare them, what was it that really set apart the artist who became the most successful versus the one who struggled?

Nigel Sparkes:
That's a great question. I would say mindset, right? Because you're never going to get it right the first time. You're going to run into some brick walls, but it's all about your mindset. You got to be coachable, you got to have a growth mindset, and you got to learn from your losses, learn from your mistakes, and just become better. The artist with that type of mindset, they never give up, also learn and is coachable and don't act like they know everything, is the artist that I've personally seen thrive the most. So it takes a nice artist, that they treat their team with respect. They don't act like a bitch, pardon my language. But really, the people around you, it takes a village, and the people around you are important, so your attitude towards them is important as well. And you want to be nice to them and appreciate them for the work that they do for you as an artist.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's so good. Yeah, it's interesting too. There's so much technical stuff and tactics and strategies, and all that stuff is great, but it seems like when I ask most people who've experienced success and they've seen people experience success, "What was the differentiator?" they say exactly what you just said. It's really a matter of mindset. That sort of begs the question, what would your recommendation be for them if they're trying to figure out, how can I improve my mindset and have a growth mindset? I want to feel less self-doubt and I want to be able to be disciplined, but maybe they struggle with that sometimes, so how can they start developing that?

Nigel Sparkes:
I would say find an accountability partner, someone that you can trust to be vulnerable with, and it's not like a yes man, it's like, "Yes, yes, yes," people who are like, "Oh, you're ..." They're going to be like, "You're fucking up. Get your shit together." You know what I'm saying? Someone that holds you accountable, whether that be a family member or a friend or a manager or business partner, someone that you can trust, whose opinion you trust, that's one way if you can't do it on your own.
Some people, they can read self-help books and cultivate a plan and stick to the plan and be disciplined, but that's not everyone. Especially musicians, you guys are all over the place sometimes. Your thoughts are everywhere. Songwriters, artists, if you can have someone that you can trust, keep them close because there's a lot of people out here that tell you "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," but not always the best thing that you need to hear. The person that tells you what you don't want to hear is the person that you want to keep around the most.

Michael Walker:
That's powerful. Yeah, making sure that you have sources you can trust to tell you the truth, not just people who are going to say "Yes" just to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Huh. Yeah, that's interesting too. That's something that I totally relate with, and something that I see in most of my mentors too. They speak to this idea of, you become the five people that you surround yourself with most, and it seems like there's a lot of truth to that.
And nowadays, you don't even necessarily have ... The best case scenario is if you actually are spending time with that person, and you're learning directly from them, you're witnessing ... you're talking back and forth, that's the best way to absorb that and really communicate with them. But nowadays, it's possible to ... Because of the internet and because of videos and mentorship and even this podcast, there's ways that you can get the voices of influences, mentors that have done the thing that you want to do in your ear. And it does seem like that's one of the most powerful ways to shift your mindset too is just surround yourself with the people who've done it, and that's going to flip so many switches.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yeah, exactly. Like you said, podcasts like this, listen to podcasts, interviews. Just like you said, listening to people that's done it, surround yourself with good positive people around you, and just staying positive. It's a journey. Nipsey Hussle said it right, "It's a marathon, it's not a race." You fall down twice, you get up three times.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Awesome. When we talk about accountability buddies, or maybe even the topic of finding a mentor, that might be an interesting one to talk about. Would you have any tips for, if someone ... Let's say that they're listening to this or watching this right now and they want to upgrade their mindset and/or their skills, or they want to surround themselves with people who have done the thing they want to do, which in this case, maybe it's growing their music career and having a successful music career. What are some ideas for them to get themselves in the room, or start communicating with those mentors to allow them to be coachable and to be able to learn and grow?

Nigel Sparkes:
I would say start with social media, identifying people who have done it or you want to know or admire, and just follow them. Because they'll post books that they read or quotes or interviews, and just study everything about them. There may be an opportunity where they're speaking at a conference and you go to that conference and you have your two minutes of elevator pitch to talk to them, and because you kind of know about that person, you have some type of conversation, that person might admire that and be like, "Hey, take my email address," or, "Here's my phone number," and contact you.
There's a great book that I read by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's really an excellent book. If you could really master that book, you'll be A-OK in anything in life. But yeah, just find out who you want to mentor you, or people you admire, and seek them out on YouTube. Watch their interviews. For me, one of mine is Troy Carter. I watch everything about Troy Carter. I read everything about all his interviews, and so when I see him in person, we have great conversations. I know what's going on. I know what he's tapping into. But you know, you got to do that.

Michael Walker:
Hmm, so good. Yeah, and even just the way that you approach those people. If you're coming at it from a place of ... It's so easy to feel that energy shift when someone approaches you and they want something from you, or they're just thinking, they're, "What's in it for me?" And that's how they're coming to it, versus someone who shows up with an open heart and is looking to provide value, or who's grateful or appreciative, it's just a totally different energy.
And so it seems like there's so much that you can do by approaching those people and not asking for anything from them, but maybe even asking yourself, "How can I provide value to them, and how can I help them?" And what people might not recognize is what you just shared is that one way you can provide value to them is by actually listening to what they're saying, and by appreciating that and recognizing it and being able to show them that you appreciate. Just saying "Thank you." Just saying "Thank you" to them for doing that, that's really valuable, and you're going to stand out because you showed up and you said "Thank you," and you weren't asking for anything, versus if you show up and you're like, "Hey, I've got this thing that I'm working on and I want you to ..." It's so funny how that works.

Nigel Sparkes:
If you think about it, it's actually flattering. If a stranger came up to you and said, "Thank you for XYZ, Modern Musician," you're going to feel good about yourself, right? And then they may be like, "Hey, man, let's stay in contact," you're, "Sure, no problem." Now, there you go. It's all in the approach and the energy and the confidence, and you have to know how to relate to the person that you're talking to and figuring it out.
I'm from New York. I learned that in New York, you know? You got two seconds to get their attention or they're going to walk away, so you got to know what you want to say in that two seconds to get that attention so that you can get their contact or start some type of relationship. Because I started in the music business, I didn't know anybody. I had no contact. I had no relationships. My family didn't work in the music business, at least on the urban side or pop music. So it was like, I had to start from the bottom and I had to go out there and network and talk to people and not be afraid to talk to people. How my clients got to work with Ne-Yo was I went in the elevator with his manager, and in that five minute or whatever we had, I convinced him to take a meeting with me, and the rest is history.

Michael Walker:
Wow. That's awesome. That actually opens up a great question, and this probably actually circles back around to that recommendation of the book by Dale Carnegie, right, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, I think a big piece of that is about how do you show up. But how do you build relationships, specifically for an artist who might be listening to this or watching this right now, who maybe they are a little bit more shy or introverted, or they don't naturally feel comfortable meeting new people and asking them for their contact info. What are some tips or lessons for them to be able to actually raise their voice and be able to start building relationships and networking in a way that they really need to if they want to grow their music career?

Nigel Sparkes:
That's a great question, right, and the way to do it, you have to be bold enough to wear a piece, or a conversational piece, whether it be a hat, whether it be a brooch, whether it be a certain jacket or something that is going to draw people to you, plus you got to have good energy. And then you have a conversational piece, people will actually come to you and be like, "Hey, nice hat," or nice brooch or nice earrings or nice sunglasses, and then you just got to be able to just take it from there. Because if you want to be an artist, you cannot be shy. You have to get out of that comfort zone. You want to perform in front of 50,000 people like Beyonce, she's not shy. She has to go out there and be vulnerable in the moment in front of 50,000 people. So, if you really want to be a artist, you have to overcome your fear, and they always say, "Success is on the other side of fear."

Michael Walker:
Mm. So good. Yeah, it's interesting too, as you described that idea of even having a conversational icebreaker or something that becomes a nice entry point. It really does seem like ... Part of the reason I brought up that question is I personally used to be very shy and awkward and had some social anxiety, and the idea of networking was really challenging. And over time with the band, we basically had to learn how to be a better communicator and how to be comfortable with not fearing rejection.
And it seems like there is sort of an element of, when you're meeting enough new people every day, then it's kind of like it sharpens your edge. And some of those little topics, like the icebreakers, you might notice, you say something to one person and they laugh or they respond to one certain point of it, and you're like, "Okay, cool. Now when I share that story, I'm going to make that same joke," or I'm going to say it in this way or I'm going to craft it. I'm going to kind of hone that edge. And so I think there's a really powerful process of sharpening that edge. Like you talked about, it's a matter of experience and being willing to put yourself out there and see what's actually resonating, or how to communicate what's actually working, and then be able to lean more into those pieces.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yeah. If you're a shy artist and you really want to be a artist, I would study some salesman, some really good salesmen, or take a sales job that's going to push you outside your comfort zone, and you'll get over it because you got to produce, right? But salesman, even posts about salesmen, it kind of tells you how to talk to people and use your tone in a proper way to entice them and make them feel good about themselves.
We live in an information age. You can learn, and it's up to you to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and you're only going to grow. And another thing is to be honest, right? Bryson Tiller, he's very much a introverted artist, very quiet, to himself, seems kind of shy, but his manager is different. So if that's your personality, you need someone on your team that could offset that, like a yin and a yang, you know what I'm saying? So, you got to find your weakness and then if that's your weakness, you need someone on your team who that's their strength, so it makes sense.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's a good point. And it's interesting too that you brought up that point about if you're shy and you want to learn how to get over it, to study sales. I didn't really think about it this way, but the thing that actually got me over the shyness was exactly that. We basically did door-to-door, quote, unquote, "door-to-door sales," but rather than doing door-to-door, we walked up to fans who were waiting in lines for shows and we met them, introduced ourselves, shared some clips of our songs, and then if they liked it, we had a backpack full of CDs and we would offer a CD. There was something about that that was very similar, I think, to door-to-door sales.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yes.

Michael Walker:
That was probably one of the most important experiences I had was doing that for about six months. And yeah, I hadn't really thought about it at the time, but that was 100% a sales kind of environment.
Maybe you could speak a little bit to ... I feel like for musicians especially, we might be a bit averse to the idea of sales, or we feel like it's, I don't know, wrong or manipulative. So, maybe you could talk a little bit about sales and shine a light on how you'd recommend thinking about it and approaching it in a way that's not sleazy or manipulative, but actually is coming from a good place.

Nigel Sparkes:
I mean, it just depends on the product, and your job is to convince the person that they need this product, and if they don't need it, there's no need to force it to them. There's something for everyone, and when you're doing sales, you're going to see, "Oh, this person is motivated or not motivated." And then you don't want to waste your time on the non-motivated people. So you know who to talk to and who not to talk to, and when to push and when not to push, all right? Again, it depends on the product, so it's not like everyone needs something or wants something and you just got to really kind of tap into it. You don't want to sell someone something that you know it's a bad product or something like that.
When it comes to sales, I could never sell a product that I do not believe in because I'm too passionate about it. And when you have a product that you believe in, like your music, there's so many conversational pieces that you can talk about and you can see, if this artist is similar artist to me, you can talk to them about why that artist is similar to you and how they would like your music, right? So it's always something to talk about when you're passionate about it, but if you're not passionate about it, the product sucks, then you're probably not going to sell it.
And it's like, for me, it was a game. It's a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more numbers and sales you're going to do. Of course people are going to say "No." That's the first thing. That's the easiest thing to say is "No." You might meet a shy person like you and they may need the product, but they shy, so they don't want to talk to you, so they automatically going to say "No." And you just got to be like, roll with the punches. And again, energy is everything. If you have good energy, upbeat, people are going to gravitate towards you and want to hear what you have to say and then you just take it from there. But I can imagine you now, you probably could approach anyone with no fear.

Michael Walker:
That might be a little bit of a stretch. But certainly for me now, if I feel some fear when I'm approaching someone, it's not the kind of thing that's going to hold me back from approaching them if it's a person that I should talk to.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yeah, exactly, because you did it, door-to-door. I did something similar to you. I sold wireless internet on the streets in New York City, and I was a brand manager, so I didn't have to sell it, but I had to show the team how to sell it. And this was the era when everything was hard-wired, so wireless internet was like, "Oh, I don't need it, I don't need that." So we had to sell it, but there was people that needed it, and we became the number-one market for the company.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Super interesting. Yeah, I think a couple of points that you brought up there that just totally rang true are how important it is to have a good kind of market-to-product fit. I feel like that's really the key to effective sales at the highest level is, you find where there's a genuine need, or there's someone that is actually going to get genuine value from the product, and then you figure out how to communicate that value and tap into that thing that already exists.
If you're trying to generate desire for something that doesn't exist, sometimes it's possible you can kind of, I don't know, redirect some different forms of desire to try to put that on something else, but it kind of goes against the flow of nature. But instead, if you can actually find people that have that desire already and they have that need, and you can purposefully craft your product so that it speaks to that and that it helps, it provides that value, then it's like the rest takes care of itself. And you have to show up and you have to learn how to communicate that value, because if they don't understand that, then it's not going to help them. But when you have that fit and you can communicate that, then man, then the world opens up.

Nigel Sparkes:
And the same thing is true of playlisting. When it comes to playlisting, you kind of want to create songs or promote songs that fit in the playlist, all right? And when I say "playlist," I mean look at the biggest playlists in the world that you would want to be on, and does my song fit on that? Because that's where you want to be anyway. So, if you have a rap song and you want to be on RapCaviar, but my song, it doesn't fit RapCaviar, you can't come to PlaylistStreams with a rap song that doesn't fit RapCaviar, but want RapCaviar playlist. Because our job is to listen to the music and figure out, which is the best playlist for this song? And then when we put it in, that's when we look at the data and be like, "All right, this playlist is not working for this song. We have to swap it out."
So when you release the songs, you have to understand that there's a format. I'm not saying sound like what's going on, but you kind of want to be in the playlist. You don't want to be like, top 40's here, you don't want to be the sound that's all the way over there if you're a pop artist. You understand what I'm saying? So, if rock and roll is leaning this way, you don't want to lean too left. You know what I'm saying? You don't want to lean too left to where it doesn't fit in the main playlst because the song is like, ah, it could be a great song, but because it doesn't fit the flow or the format, it's not going to fit in for the time. You understand what I'm saying?

Michael Walker:
Yeah, yeah, I totally hear you. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's similar to when we're talking about sales, how it's like the best case scenario is you find where there's genuine fit and there's genuine need and then you can provide that as a value. But the same thing applies to playlists in the sense that you need to find the right playlist where it's a good fit and it's actually going to resonate with people who are listening to that playlist. So you could have ... Maybe the example is you could have the most amazing country song ever, and every country fan would be like, "This is the best song ever." But if you take that song and you put it on a death metal playlist, then it doesn't matter how good the song is, it's the wrong fit, and it's not going to resonate on that playlist.

Nigel Sparkes:
Exactly. Exactly, and that's what we try to do all the time. The songs that come through, it's like, it has to fit certain genre or even quality of, if you're doing a rock song, it has to fit the rock quality. Because even if it's in a playlist, it's not going to get the streams. It's going to get skipped, and then it makes our job a thousand times harder.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That makes sense. And probably that's even worse of a situation, because if they get skipped, then Spotify's algorithm's probably noticing, wow, this song gets skipped all the time, and it's not something that people want to have recommended to them.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yup.

Michael Walker:
But it could be because it's on the wrong playlist. It's not necessarily because the song wasn't good enough.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yup, and I like to encourage artists too, before, a lot of artists, I would be like, "Do the playlist thing immediately when you release." But it's actually better if you do the playlisting a little bit after, all right? So, you get your core audience fans listening to your music, the algorithm likes that. The algorithm likes that the people that follow you listen to your new song or share your new song and engage with your new song, and then you put it on some playlists and you get new listeners and new fans and new audience, it just enhances it even more.

Michael Walker:
Mm. Cool. Makes sense. So you kind of want to have that seed group that engages with the song and that's going to give it a good idea of who those people are before you even pour gasoline on the fire.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yeah, because essentially, as you grow your audience, you don't want to have to rely on the playlists, right? The playlist is to expose your music to new people and new audiences, but you want to build your audiences. You want to build them constantly from all social media platforms, and then the only real testament of that is the first week when you drop a song, how many people listen to it? How many people saved it? And you're going to see, "Oh, this release, I got 5,000 on my own. The next release I got 7,500." You can see your core audience actually growing.
Because what a lot of people do is they'll put this song on a playlist for a certain amount of time and that's it. They're not doing nothing. So it's like, all right, your song stayed in the playlist, and if it doesn't grow, it's just going to die down. And if you're not releasing enough content or enough music, it is going to die down, and you want to be consistent as possible. So if you're dropping a record every six weeks, you want to try to keep the songs on playlists so that it doesn't die down, because it could constantly grow since your monthly listeners is going up, the followers is going up.
So consistency, I would say, is the number one thing that you have to do as an artist, and you have to be consistent. You have to have a plan like, all right, this year I'm going to drop 12 records. So, have a plan to drop a record every single month and have a plan for each record, and don't deviate from your plan. Consistency is the number one thing that you have to do to be successful in this business.
You have to be consistent, whether your music sucks, but you're going to grow, right? And you're going to see like, oh, man, this audience is gravitating to my music, or this type of song is generating streams. You're going to know, you're going to start to see what your audience likes to hear from you. And you're only going to learn that by consistently releasing music, and it doesn't have to always be on a DSP. You can release music on Audiomack or you can release music on SoundCloud, or you can start a discord and throw ideas in there. But you've got to constantly be feeding people, audiences, all the time so that you can grow.

Michael Walker:
Mm. Smart. Yeah. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that it's consistency is one of the most important things. And also not just consistency, but also learning from your consistent releasing, and then you're adapting, you're seeing what's working, what's resonating, and through that process then you can hone it in.
The analogy that comes to mind is ... I love this analogy for anything that's goal-setting or achievement, is that if you want to learn how to make a free throw, then you don't learn how to make a free throw by grabbing the basketball and just standing at the free throw line and aiming for two days straight without throwing the ball. You have to throw the ball and actually put something out in order to see where it lands. And usually, unless you're really lucky, it's not going to land in the hoop the first time. You're going to throw it, it's going to be way to the right. But then through that process of looking and seeing where it landed, okay, the next one, I'm going to throw it a bit to the left.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yup.

Michael Walker:
And so it sounds like that's what you're saying is, have 12 basketballs and keep pulling them and shoot it, see where it landed. Okay, I know I need to aim this way now, and keep doing that. And that's a way to sort of calibrate so you can dial in what's working best.

Nigel Sparkes:
Yeah, exactly.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Super smart. Awesome. Well, hey, Nigel, it's been a lot of fun. I feel like we've both talked quite a bit about Spotify playlisting and streaming, but also some really important stuff about the fundamentals of having the right mindset, which is kind of at the core of everything. So, thank you for taking the time to share some of your experience and lessons that you've learned. And for anyone who's listening or watching this right now who is interested in learning more about PlaylistStreams, could you share a little bit more details about how someone could dive deeper?

Nigel Sparkes:
could just go straight to our website, playliststreams.com. You can contact us through there. We also have a blog with a lot of tips and advice, so that's the best way. All of our social media's on playliststreams.com, so just go to playliststreams.com and you can contact us through every platform right there.

Michael Walker:
All right, fantastic. And like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access, and yeah, appreciate you taking time to be here.

Nigel Sparkes:
All right. Thanks Michael. Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.