A bit of context before we start. I am the founder of Stulyo, but I am not just a tool maker: I am also a playlist curator, with a network that adds up to several tens of thousands of followers. I built Stulyo for myself first, to answer my own questions. What follows is one of my own tests, that I simply wanted to share.
I am not going to sell you a dream. This is not a story about a million streams or a viral stroke of luck. Just a small experiment, real numbers, and a mechanism I found interesting enough to share.
I have a playlist, « Mood été ». For four months it stalled: around 950 followers, flat, and invisible in Spotify search. On the keyword « mood été », it did not even show up in the top hundred results. In other words, it existed without existing.
And let me be honest about that starting point. Those 900 followers, I had already gained them with ads, but poorly targeted ones. I had gained subscribers on paper, with no real engagement behind them. With 900 followers, I was not even passing five streams a day on the tracks at the top of the list. In other words, it had no value. Empty followers create neither listens nor rankings.
There was also a question of timing. « mood été » is a seasonal query: demand climbs as summer approaches. So I chose to relaunch at the right moment, to ride the wave rather than paddle against the current. Half the work is pushing when the wind picks up.
One important point: « Mood été » is a track and a playlist in French. So I targeted and measured everything on France only, the ads as well as the ranking. No point scattering the budget across markets that do not search in French.
The method: ramping up in steps
The idea, this time, was better targeted. But above all, I did it in steps. Instead of dropping 30 euros a day all at once, I started at 10 euros a day, then 20, then 30, ramping up gradually.
The reason is simple: let Spotify's algorithm understand. A sudden spike looks artificial. A gradual climb looks like a playlist gaining momentum naturally. I wanted steady, believable velocity, not a one-day burst of pressure. In total, around 300 euros over about ten days.
How the position evolved, day by day
All the positions below are measured on Spotify search in France. The visual at the top of this article traces, day by day, what Stulyo recorded.
What struck me most is that the ranking did not move right away. For the first few days, the playlist stayed stuck around 30th place. Followers were starting to arrive, but the rank was not following yet. This is exactly the moment when most people give up, telling themselves it does not work.
Then the click. Once the velocity was steady and consistent, the ranking started to climb, step by step. From 30th to 25th, then 19th, then 14th. A few days later, 8th, 7th, 6th. And after about ten days, 4th place.
Here is the lesson: the algorithm needed to see the growth hold over time before moving me up. Rank follows velocity, but with a delay. If I had cut it off after three days, seeing 30th place frozen, I would have missed everything.
After that, the playlist settled between 2nd and 4th place for several weeks, while it kept gathering followers. And in mid-June, at the peak of the season, it finally took first place on « mood été », with nearly 2,000 followers. Today it hovers between #1 and #2, more than double the starting point.
Again, nothing crazy. But the most interesting part is not the ranking itself, it is what it triggers, and the difference with my empty followers from before.
The real mechanism
When your playlist climbs back up in search, it starts being found organically. People stumble on it, listen, follow. And those listens land on the tracks inside it, including yours. This time, the streams are there, not just a follower counter.
This is where it gets interesting. Those streams and saves send a signal to Spotify's algorithm. Little by little, your tracks start showing up in Radio, Discover Weekly, the Release Radar of listeners you would never have reached otherwise. The ads only started the machine. After that, organic takes over.
And there is a third layer. A well-ranked playlist, with real followers and real listens, becomes an asset. On platforms like SubmitHub, Groover or Playlist Push, a playlist that performs can become monetizable: artists pay to be considered, and a visible playlist attracts those requests. What was a hobby can fund part of its own growth.
The most telling part: today
I did not cut everything, but I clearly reduced the ads. And the playlist keeps climbing, carried mostly by organic. That is the whole point: once the machine is running, it largely turns on its own. The sponsorship was not a tap to keep open permanently, just the initial spark.
What I am not promising you
Be honest with yourself: it does not work on just any keyword, and certainly not with poorly targeted ads. If you go after « summer hits » against Spotify's editorial playlists, your budget evaporates. And if you buy followers at random, you get empty numbers, like I did at the start. The key is to aim for a winnable niche, at the right time of year, with clean targeting and a gradual ramp. And it is not instant: velocity matters more than the amount, and the ranking takes time to react.
What I take away from it
A playlist's SEO positioning is not an end in itself, it is a trigger. Done well, well targeted, well timed and ramped up in steps, it turns a small budget into visibility, visibility into streams, streams into algorithmic activation, and the whole thing into an asset that can fund itself once the ads are reduced. Poorly targeted, it only gives you empty followers.
The one thing that is essential is to measure. Without tracking rank and growth side by side, I would never have seen the difference between my empty followers at the start and the real traction today, nor known when to stop. That is exactly why I built Stulyo.
If you want to see which niche you could win, start with the Keyword Finder. It is free.
