Afrobeats playlist pitching

Afrobeats is used as an umbrella far beyond its original meaning, and that vagueness costs artists. A record that is Afro-fusion with a live highlife guitar and English verses is not the same proposition as a Lagos street-pop single or an amapiano-adjacent club track. Curators who programme one of those will ignore a pitch that could be any of them.

Be specific in the metadata and in the first line: the rhythm, the tempo, the language mix, the region, and the two or three artists whose audience would recognise it. Specificity is not a limitation; it is how a curator decides in four seconds whether the record belongs in their playlist. The same honesty applies to the genre field in Spotify for Artists, which drives which editorial team even sees the pitch.

There are four. The free editorial pitch inside Spotify for Artists, submitted before release. Independent curators whose playlists are named and run by a reachable person. Diaspora and specialist radio: stations and shows in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, London, Houston, Toronto and Paris that programme African music. And press and blogs that cover the scene, which usually lead to both playlists and radio.

The concentration is real: a small number of large playlists dominate, and the people who run them are pitched constantly. That is why the independent middle matters. A 4,000-follower playlist that genuinely plays your sub-genre is a better first target than a 500,000-follower general Afrobeats list where your record will be one of forty new adds a week and never surface.

Radio is more accessible in this scene than in many others, because specialist shows need new music every week and their presenters are often reachable. Pitch with a serviced download, a clean edit, a duration and a one-line description. Offer a short interview or an ID drop, and be specific about which show and which presenter you are writing to.

Timing is the hardest part. A Lagos release, a London playlist team and a Houston radio show operate on different weeks, and a record can peak in one market before another has heard it. Pick two or three markets for the first wave rather than trying to hit everywhere at once, then extend with the evidence from the first wave. Our Afrobeats growth guide covers the audience side of this in more detail.

One line naming their playlist or show and a record on it that sits next to yours. Two sentences on the track: sub-genre, tempo, language, and the one thing that makes it distinctive. One link. Then a compact block: artist, city, release date, clean version, instrumental available, territory availability and the label or self-release status.

Keep it under 150 words and send from a domain mailbox. The curator pitch template is the base; the only change for this genre is that the first line must prove you understand which part of the scene the playlist covers. If you cannot tell an Afrobeats playlist from an amapiano one, do the listening before the sending.

An artist based in Lagos releases an Afro-fusion single in English and Yoruba at 104 BPM. The first wave is 25 independent playlists split between Lagos, London and Toronto, each with a curator traced to a published contact. The second wave, two weeks later, is eight specialist radio shows in the same three markets plus four blogs.

The editorial pitch goes in before release with the sub-genre stated honestly and a clean edit ready. Sends total 37 first emails plus follow-ups, comfortably inside a Starter allowance. The artist reviews replies by market rather than overall, because the useful finding is usually that one market responded and the next campaign should start there.