🇳🇴 ❤️ 🇵🇷 Norway Has A Thing For Latino Music
Thomas aka DJ Feedback, the curator behind one the best Latin music playlists on Spotify, shared his view on the music scene in the digital context
You might expect a blue sad soundtrack to haunt you through the mostly chilly Scandinavian realms. But let us break the news for you: it’s not! There is a lot of good vibes, driven by the looooong summer days. And there is also a subtle connection between Northern Europe and South America. Unexpected, right? You just have to take a closer to look to Latino Hits 2010 - 2022, a playlist curated by Thomas Aalborgen aka DJ Feedback. Hailing from Tønsberg, Norway, Thomas is a solution architect at Airbus and at the same time he curates one of the most popular playlists in the Latin blooded genres spectrum.
Now gathering close to 5,000 super active followers, his playlist is a an amazing mix of music with a Latin DNA, crossing genres as smooth as ice skating on a frozen Norwegian lake. Intrigued by this unexpected combination, we got in contact with DJ Feedback. We were gifted with a nice chat about the digital music world, about what drives him to manage the playlists and many more 👇
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Since when is music an integral part of your life?
I would say music became an integral part of my life when I started as a DJ in a local youth club in 1999
How did you end up becoming a music curator?
I guess you can say that I ended up as a music curator when Spotify made personal playlists public by default, and their search algorithm included these amongst the search results.
You’re focused on Latin flavoured music, but also on EDM. Which sound is closer to your heart?
For the last decade I would definitely answer Latino, but before that it was EDM.
What drives you to curating music playlists? What’s your motivation?
It is my passion for music which drives me, where I’m constantly seeking new catchy music to complement my Latino Hits 2010-2022 playlist. Discovering unknown artists making great Latino music that I can share with my followers, is a great bonus and satisfaction.
Can playlisting be a full-time job? Is it for you?
For curators such as the ones representing record labels etc, it’s a full-time job. For me personally, I’m only doing this as a hobby.
How can you sustain yourself, financially, from doing playlists?
In order to keep doing this as a professional activity… Unless you are hired as curator by a record label or similar, one way of making a living from this, is to enroll tracks against compensation. This is not legal, but it is certainly happening in the industry. Personally, I have decided to turn down such offers.
What are you looking for in a track to add it to your playlist?
My main purpose for curating music, is to frequently enjoy listening to the playlist myself. Therefore, I’m only including catchy Latino tracks that I believe stands out and I can listen to repeatedly. Putting together playlists based on what is perceived as hits by others, is vastly covered by other curators.
What tools and methods do you use to discover new music?
Part from monitoring 20 various playlists weekly, I am a playlister part of the Playlister.Club A&R Program. I’m also exposed to new music by submissions received by e-mail.
What does a good song pitch mean to you when you are approached by artists?
Typically, the song pitch does not make a difference, as the track have to speak for itself. If I find it catchy, it qualifies for inclusion.
How many daily submissions do you receive and how do you handle all this volume? I’m not advertising my playlist on web or social media; hence the volume is limited to a handful of songs weekly.
What is your strategy to grow the number of followers / subscribers for your playlists? Organically, paid…
The followers I’ve gained this far, is purely organically, and I intend to keep it like that. I believe that is the appropriate way to gain active listeners amongst the people who share similar taste in music, opposed to introducing a bunch of zombie listeners.
Are you building or have you considered building a record label around your playlist activity?
For the fact I’m only curating a single playlist primarily for my own satisfaction, starting a business associated with this is not being considered. If the future reveals an opportunity to turn my hobby into my profession, I would certainly consider it.
Would it be better for the industry (not just for you) if Spotify and other platforms allow charging for playlist placement? Who would this benefit mostly? The big spenders or the quality?
Playlist (PL) enrollment against payment would definitely favor the big spenders. Personally, I believe DSP PLs is already influencing the charts too much. As an example, from the Latin genre, their “Viva Latino” and “Baila Reggaeton” is both amongst the top 5 most popular PLs on Spotify, having more than 10M followers each. If you are fortunate enough to have your track listed on either of these lists, your single qualifies for Gold if all the followers stream the track 8 times with minimum 30sec each (16 times for Platinum). Spotify flush the aforementioned PLs every Friday (everything in the list appears as new), which in most cases trigger their followers to screen the entire list at least once more in their search for new music. You would expect such PLs to be populated with a lot of new content weekly, but that is not the case, typically less than 5 songs are new per week. Fortunate for an artist such as “Bad Bunny”, currently 6 of his songs (out of ~50) is included in “Baila Reggaeton”. Wonder if it is only the quality of his music that claims ~10% of the PL, or if there is already some sort of agreement in place? From his latest album “Un Verano Sin Ti”, 3 of the tracks is included in “Baila Reggaeton”. If I further add that 3 different tracks from the same album is included on “Viva Latino”, it appears a bit strange. Please note that I’m only using “Bad Bunny” as an example (nothing personal against him or his music). Anyhow, being heavily exposed on two of the biggest PLs in the industry, certainly contributes to his position as the 7th most streamed artist on Spotify
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Do you think that having a song placed into independent playlists helps to trigger Spotify’s algorithms in any way, just to push it maybe into Discover Weekly or other algorithmic playlist?
Based on my experience, including a song from an artist to one of my PLs, will in term result in suggestions about other tracks from the same artist part of your personal Spotify PLs (new releases part of “Relase Radar”, and older tracks part of “Discover Weekly”).
How do you feel about DSPs algoritmic playlists? Is it fair competition?
I believe personal DSP algorithmic PLs such as Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” looks at your playlist collection as well as users with similar listening habits and generates a playlist of music primarily made up of developing artists. Amongst the two mentioned, I would say “Release Radar” appears fair competition based on the relatively large portion of developing artists, while “Release Radar” is mostly populated by new releases from established artist from the genre you tend to listen to the most.
What do you think about major labels playlist operations (Warner, Sony, Digster)? Is it a fair competition against independent playlists?
I believe the DSP’s in-house playlisting team have established relations with a selection of trusted sources for new, emerging music, such as major labels playlist operations. I doubt PLs curated by independent third-party playlisters is amongst them. Though the DSP provides the framework for anyone’s music to be heard, I can’t recall that I have ever been exposed to tracks from an independent artist part of the personal DSP algorithmic PLs before.
Apart from this, what do you do for a living?
I’m a solution architect in Airbus.