What A Playlist Placement Actually Buys You
Some placements are worth every naira. Most are worth nothing at all. The difference is measurable before you pay.
Somebody is in an artist's inbox right now offering a playlist with two hundred thousand followers for a fee. The follower count is real. That is usually the only real thing in the message.
What you are actually buying
A placement buys you exposure to that playlist's listeners for as long as you are on it. It does not buy you saves, it does not buy you followers, and it does not buy you anybody who will still know your name next month. Those come from what the song does once somebody hears it, which the placement cannot influence.
Three questions before you pay
- What is the ratio of followers to monthly listeners? Two hundred thousand followers against four thousand monthly listeners is a graveyard. Real playlists get played.
- Who else is on it, and does it make sense? If your record is sitting between a lo-fi study track and a country ballad, nobody on that playlist is your listener.
- What happens after the placement ends? If the answer is nothing, you have bought a spike, not a career step.
The placements that do work
Curated lists with an actual editorial point of view, in your genre, run by somebody who plays them and talks about them. Those still exist. They tend to cost less than the fake ones, because the people running them are not primarily in the business of selling slots.
Every artist who tells me placements do not work bought the wrong ones. Every artist who tells me they do bought one with a real audience behind it.
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