Curated playlists drive 40m streams for independent artists

Our playlist network Curated recently crossed two incredible milestones, reaching 1.6 million total followers and driving 40 million total streams across the playlist catalogue. In just one year, Curated has proven itself an incredible asset to independent artists looking to boost their streaming numbers and find new audiences, with ‘calming acoustic’ and ‘songs to cry to at 1am’ both crossing 250k followers each.

Since rebranding from frtyfve to Curated Playlists in late May, the network’s total followers on Spotify have grown by 15% and weekly streams have risen by 5.8%. Meanwhile, @curated.playlists has racked up an impressive 135k followers and 42M likes on TikTok, opening up a further avenue to promote the independent artists we work with.

Curated Playlists drove 20.9k streams in 7 days for singer-songwriter?Leroy Sanchez, who saw a 60% increase in streams the day after being added. 72% of acoustic artist?Paperthread’s 358k Spotify streams have been driven by Curated Playlists, with over 260k streams in just 3 months. The network has also driven 917k streams for singer-songwriter and TikTok star?Jon Caryl?since he was added back in October 2020.

The ‘calming acoustic’ playlist alone has driven 318k streams for?Tim Halperin, who has been a fixture of Curated Playlists since August, 2020. Before?Micky?was added to the playlist network, he was averaging 3.6k streams per day; as of March 2021, he is averaging 21.1k streams per day. This is a massive 486% increase in average daily streams since being added to the network, with over half a million streams coming from Curated Playlists.

While many artists aspire to the well known Spotify editorial playlists, our network is equally valuable and even more accessible. With a proven track record boosting newly signed artists’ streams, Curated is expanding its scope with the launch of ‘Curated by…’ playlists hand-picked by some of the hottest artists of the moment. Cassidi is the first artist to curate her own playlist, coming off the back of her viral TikTok track ‘What’s My Name’.

Given that Curated - then known as frtyfve - crossed 1 million followers in January of this year, the network is still not showing any signs of slowing down. Just recently, new frtyfve signing Boyish saw a 48% increase in daily streams following their addition to the playlists, and with their social reach of Curated growing thanks to TikTok, the second half of 2020 looks to be even bigger than the first.