Meet Soave Records: The Record Label With 1 Million Followers On Spotify & Deezer
learn how to pitch songs to hugely popular playlists on Spotify in order to increase your shots of being playlisted, from one of the most popular electronic music imprints
Fresh good vibes. This is Soave’s motto, a record label and playlist creator from Rotterdam, Netherlands, that has managed to gather 1.1 million followers on their official Spotify & Deezer accounts in a bit over 4 years since its inception.
The collective of artists, curators and promoters working under the Soave name is tuned on the smooth frequency of chill house music, consisting of covers, deep house cuts with a slight balearic touch and soft electronic tunes with Oriental allusions. Just to give you an idea of their sound, you can check Henri Purnell’s Feel It Still, a song that surpassed the 10 million streams mark on Spotify. Henri is part of the extended Soave family.
You may think that their Spotify playlists, accepting song submissions through popular platforms like SubmitHub, are managed by an army of curators. Well, actually there are a handful of people doing this, even if we talk about 100 songs received on a daily basis! Jan has the final word on what will enter the playlists, filtering also demo songs for the two labels he is managing (Soave Records and Soave Radio). We had a little chat over email with Jan, to learn some insights about how to grow one track’s popularity on Spotify, how to pitch songs to hugely popular playlists on Spotify in order to increase your shots on being playlisted and how relevant is a record label in 2020. Jan’s advice (tracking down how the songs are already performing online and the artists’ popularity points out to the relevance of platforms like Soundfeed nowadays).
How did the Soave records idea come up in the first place?
It started as a blog called Selected Sounds where I could do something useful with all the hours I was spending on SoundCloud listening to new music. Slowly it grew into a label as I got to know more artists.
Was it a moment when things boomed for Soave, in terms of playlist followers?
Not really. I felt I was late to make the switch from SoundCloud to Spotify, but after a year or so things started to grow there.
How many daily submissions do you receive and how do you handle all this volume?
We have 2 A&R managers who focus first on demos and only on submissions if they have time left. Probably more than 100 each day through various channels.
Are there any important criteria that help you filter the tracks you receive through your submission gates?
Track stats, artist popularity, pitch text.
It helps if we know the artist name already, and if the text is normal and not filled with capital letters, broken English or other mistakes.
What does it take for a track to make it into the Soave playlists?
A lot of luck and a quality, fitting and catchy sound.
From your experience, what promo strategy does it work best to make a track get more streams on Spotify?
Sign with a label that has good Spotify results on their current releases, and not just on some.
Is a record label still relevant on the music scene in 2020, where everybody has access to the distribution channels and marketing tools?
Some artists are really good at marketing, but for the ones who are not, a label still is necessary on that area. Also, labels can help you create the best track with feedback, toplines etc.
3 tracks that perfectly define the Soave signature sound
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