For the majority of AWAL members, the Campaign Overview Form is the first step in submitting your upcoming release for playlist consideration. This form is for internal use only, and is designed for our team to get a better understanding of where you’re at in your career as an artist. This is your chance to wow us!
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Helpful tips for the Campaign Overview Form questions
- When should I submit the form?
- What if I don’t have a lot of highlights or data to share?
- What happens after I submit the Campaign Overview Form?
- What else can I do to get my track on playlists?
Common mistakes to avoid:
- Avoid writing about potential plans for the future and hopeful marketing drivers. We’re really looking for you to highlight what you have achieved already, or have upcoming that’s locked in. The form questions should not be used to list your goals for this release (e.g. playlists you want to be added to).
- Please do not fill out sections of the form with links, but rather you should summarize your successes and highlights in each section.
- Curation teams at DSPs have hundreds of releases to review every week, so keep your information concise and to the point. Avoid being overly descriptive.
- Provide as much relevant information as possible, and do your best to answer all questions. All information can be useful, and although it might not seem impressive, a thin section could be counterproductive or appear incomplete. Submissions that appear to have been rushed through will likely not move on to the next stage of the playlist submission process.
- The information you include on the form will directly translate to anything we send to the digital music services, so please use the third person tense (no ‘I’, ‘our’, or ‘my’).
Helpful tips for the Campaign Overview Form questions
What is the focus track on this release?
Include the name of the track you’re submitting. Only one track title can be highlighted as the ‘focus track’, even if it’s part of an EP or album, so please do not list multiple tracks in this field.
Radio / Tour Dates & Live Appearances / Press Market Drivers
We’re looking for lists of prior achievements or upcoming placements, for example:
- Radio: Please include the names of stations and/or presenters.
- Tour Dates & Live Appearances: Please include upcoming or past booked tours, notable previous support slots (and number of dates supporting them), and festival appearances.
- Press Market Drivers: Magazine features, blog reviews. Please don’t include links to the press, and instead share highlights (e.g. “Last single premiered on The Fader”).
If this is your first release under this artist name, but you have previous success under another name or as part of a group, feel free to include those highlights in these fields.
Spotify
Please include your total stream count, monthly listeners, followers and the names of any notable playlist placements.
Apple Music
Please include your total stream count, and any notable playlist placements. You can find this information in AWAL Analytics, in the AWAL app, or in the Apple Music for Artists app.
Retail Information
What we mean by this is specifically in-store events, notable syncs (from movies, video games, television and ads), or brand collaborations. If not applicable, write ‘n/a’.
PR activity and focus
If you’re working with a PR agency, please include their name and an explanation of their campaign plans for this release.
When should I submit the form?
We generally ask for at least six weeks notice if you’re interested in submitting your release for playlist consideration. This gives us enough time to review your submission and deliver your release, as the Digital Music Services typically have a four week deadline. Once you’ve submitted the form, you should notify us through the Contact Us form in your AWAL Portal as we have no other way of being notified of a submission.
What if I don’t have a lot of highlights or data to share?
Before you get started, please take a look at the examples of strong marketing drivers that we’ve outlined here. While there are no specific set of achievements that an artist needs in order to secure playlist placements, in our experience, these examples are a rough guideline to what the digital music services are looking for, and should give you a good indication of what to continue working towards.
If you find that you don’t have information or data to highlight for most fields, or if this is your first release as an artist, it might be worth focusing on building your marketing efforts in other areas and checking in six weeks ahead of your next release.
While playlist placements can help with a successful release, they’re just one aspect of a marketing or promotion plan. We recommend that you incorporate other elements into your marketing strategy by pursuing press opportunities, radio play, touring or sync placements to create a well-rounded campaign.
What happens after I submit the Campaign Overview Form?
The first step is to notify us through the Contact Us page in your AWAL Portal so that we can be notified of the submission. From there, our Community Support team will review the information you’ve sent over to see how your campaign planning is going and determine next steps.
What else can I do to get my track on playlists?
There are many other ways to submit your music for playlist consideration outside of AWAL. You can use the Spotify’s Playlist Submission Tool in Spotify for Artists, and also look into opportunities to pitch to third party playlists curated by publications and tastemakers. We generally recommend staying away from services that guarantee placement and streams in exchange for a fee, so make sure to thoroughly research any service you’re thinking about using. For more information, check out this article on Streaming Fraud.
You can also keep working on building out your other marketing efforts by submitting your release to genre-specific blogs, publications and radio stations, booking more shows, and building your social media following. There’s not a specific point when playlist placements are guaranteed, but creating a well-rounded promotion campaign will improve your chances.