How to get on Discover Weekly

Discover Weekly is the playlist Spotify makes for each of its listeners every Monday: 30 songs picked for that one person, most of them by artists they haven't heard yet. Nobody chooses the songs by hand and there is no form to send yours in. A song gets there when the way people listen to it tells Spotify's recommendations who else might love it.

What you shape is everything feeding it: who hears the song first, what they do with it and how the release around it is set up. This guide explains how Discover Weekly works from what Spotify has said in public, and what an artist can do about it.

What Discover Weekly is

Spotify describes it as a playlist that arrives every Monday with 30 songs picked for each listener. It began as a project from one of Spotify's hack weeks. Two people who both like your genre can get completely different playlists, because each one is built from that person's own listening.

It belongs to a family Spotify calls personalized recommendations, alongside Radio, Autoplay, the daily mixes and Release Radar. In 2022 Spotify for Artists wrote that 33% of all new artist discoveries on Spotify happen in those personalized sessions. For an artist growing a listener base, that makes them one of the main doors.

How listening signals feed it

Spotify says its recommendations draw on "a multitude of signals" to match a song with listeners. It doesn't publish the formula, and nobody outside Spotify knows it. What Spotify has said in public, in its own advice to listeners about shaping their Discover Weekly, points to the kind of listening that counts:

• Saves. A listener who likes a song is telling Spotify they want more like it.
• Playlist adds. Adding a song to your own playlist is a strong sign that you mean it.
• Follows. Following an artist brings in music from artists like them.
• Plays with intent. Spotify notes that a song played once and left alone does little for the playlist. Coming back to it does more.

Seen from the artist's side, each of those is a person reacting to your song. When enough listeners with similar taste save it, add it and come back to it, the recommendations have a reason to try it on the next listener with that taste. Each new listener who reacts the same way strengthens the case.

That is also why a bought stream does nothing useful here. A play from an account with no real listening history tells the recommendations nothing about who your song is for, and Spotify penalizes artificial streaming outright.

Why the weeks around release day matter

A brand-new song has no listening history. Its first signals come from the people who hear it first: your followers, the listeners of any playlist it reaches and anyone you send to it. What they do in those first weeks is the first data the recommendations get.

Three things meet around release day:

1. Release Radar. Your followers get the new song in their Release Radar, which updates every Friday. Spotify asks for the music to be delivered at least 7 days before release for it to be there in the first week, and for a pitch at least 7 days ahead if you want to choose the song. Those are listeners who already like you, so they tend to save and replay. More in our Release Radar guide.
2. The editorial pitch. If Spotify's editors put the song on one of their playlists, it reaches people who don't know you yet, and their reactions feed the recommendations too.
3. Your own audience. Posts, your artist page and fans you've emailed bring listeners who came on purpose. Asking them to save the song or add it to a playlist turns a visit into a signal.

When those three line up, a release starts with a crowd of people reacting to it in the same few weeks. That gives Discover Weekly, Radio and the mixes plenty to work with. A song that comes out quietly can still grow later, but it starts with less.

What you can do to give Discover Weekly a reason

You can't ask for a Discover Weekly spot, but you can set a release up so the listening it gets is the kind that counts:

• Release with time to spare. A release delivered well before its date can be pitched to the editors and reaches Release Radar on the day.
• Pitch every release. Spotify for Artists lets you pitch one unreleased song. Describe its genre, mood, instruments and story, so editors and listeners alike can place it.
• Ask for the save. When you post a release, ask people to save it or add it to a playlist. A pre-save does that for them on release day (see how a Spotify pre-save works).
• Grow followers. Every follower hears your next release in Release Radar, and every release starts with that crowd.
• Release regularly. Each release adds listening history to your profile and gives the recommendations another song to place.
• Keep the metadata accurate. Correct genre, credits and artist names help Spotify connect the song with the right music.

For the bigger picture of how listeners find a new song, read how to get more listeners.

Where Audora does this for your release

Audora builds every release around the weeks that count:

• Every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers about the song, and Audora dates the release to give the editors time.
• Your own moves (your pitch in Spotify for Artists, the pre-save, the Canvas) come up on the release's calendar on the day they matter.
• A promotion campaign is planned around release day, with every post written in your voice, its caption, hashtags and the picture or video it needs. You approve what goes out.
• Every playlist your song is on is shown back to you: editorial, algorithmic (Discover Weekly and Release Radar among them) and listener-made, with plays and saves from the stores' own reporting.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram (Stories included) and Facebook Pages post automatically, and nothing goes out until you approve it. Stories carry no link sticker, so your release link goes in your bio.

The exact steps for your release, each one dated to your release day, are in your Audora account. We keep adjusting them as we learn what works best for our artists, adding a step here, dropping or retiming one there, and your calendar follows. To see every step from the cover to the playlists, read what every track gets.

How to tell when Discover Weekly picks up a song

In Spotify for Artists, each song's stats show where its streams come from, including Spotify's personalized playlists. A run of streams from Discover Weekly usually means listeners on the edge of your audience are hearing you for the first time. Watch which songs it picks, because those are the ones the recommendations already know how to place.

On Audora you see the same thing in one place: the playlists carrying each song, editorial, algorithmic and listener-made, next to its plays and saves. When a song lands on a playlist, Audora tells you in the app.