Ask any record label or artist, what is the most exciting part of releasing new records, you’ll often be told that it’s seeing people’s reactions who have just heard their music the first time. It’s that feeling of relief mixed with joy, that somebody else has given your music a big thumbs up. For labels, Inflyte’s real-time activity streams which display live feedback from tastemakers all over the world is as exciting as it is compulsive viewing for label managers and artists alike. But what happens once that A-list tastemaker has left five-star feedback on your promo and your promo campaign is drawing to a close? Is that it?

Pre-covid, there might have been a chance you could find the DJ on YouTube, playing your promo in front of thousands of fans at a festival or on some videos uploaded by a fan who was in sweaty underground club in Glasgow, or your track might end up featured in a DJs chart on some website. You might be lucky enough to get radio play, blog support and so on. Opportunities for exposure were endless.

This is something the team at Inflyte have been preoccupied with over the past year or so. With clubs and festivals off the agenda (for now at least), DJ support and the content exposure that comes from these channels has changed significantly. Apart from live-streams where is this tastemaker support and exposure generated from once your promo is out there?

Artists have been shifting focus almost exclusively to the recorded side of their careers, which has fuelled a surge in new labels springing up and recorded output from artists previously too busy to make records due to touring seeing a marked increase. Of course this is not a complete picture, but it is a snapshot of how some sectors of the music business have responded to the worst crisis our industry has ever seen.

With this in mind, Inflyte’s new integrations with both Spotify and Apple Music is one solution that labels and artists will be keen to capitalise on. Tastemaker pre-saves (as Inflyte refers to them), take the functionality of a Spotify/Apple Music pre-save and roll them into a promo solution that’s tailored specifically for tastemakers using the Inflyte service to source new promos. It’s designed to fill that void in the promo timeline between delivery to tastemaker and release day on streaming services, while leveraging the immense social capital of high profile tastemakers who have considerable follower counts on these platforms.

inflyte playlist apple music

How it works is quite simple: labels embed a pre-save ID from Apple Music or Spotify into their Inflyte promo campaigns. Tastemakers can link their streaming services to their Inflyte account in order to have a regularly updated playlist of new releases they have rated on Inflyte. If a tastemaker leaves positive feedback on a promo that has pre-save enabled, they can download the files AND the release will automatically appear on the day of release in a special Inflyte playlist in their Spotify/Apple Music library. Unlike standalone pre-save services, tastemakers can preview audio, leave feedback and save to their streaming library, without any extra work to do. It’s completely seamless.

inflyte promo dashboard spotify apple music presaves

Inflyte’s combination of promo with tastemaker pre-save functionality is a solution that will have serious appeal for third-party playlisters, radio programmers and DJs who regularly curate playlists on streaming services, people who know only too well, the endless frustrations of trying to find new tracks they have been sent on promo, to share to their fans and followers, only to discover they have not been released on streaming yet. It will minimise the amount of releases that fall through the cracks at this stage of the promotional timeline, by having this unique promo playlist inside tastemakers’ streaming libraries, that enables them to directly curate their own public playlists from new releases they have personally rated while on promo at Inflyte.

spotify inflyte playlist

For record labels, it’s another really useful tool to add extra weight to their promo campaigns that will provide a deeper level of insight into how tastemakers are using their music and promoting it to their fans after the pre-release cycle has concluded. Labels can also use tastemaker pre-saves as part of a wider strategy to boost those all important release-day streams, which are a common pathway on to Spotify editorial playlists such as Release Radar and Discover Weekly if their algorithms pick up on the activity. Add some high profile tastemaker support into the mix and the chances of this happening improve significantly. 

All things considered, this is sure to be a hugely welcome development from the team at Inflyte who follow on from 2020’s major integration with Pioneer Rekordbox with yet another killer solution for their ever evolving promo platform.

For more information visit the Inflyte Knowledge Base:

Understanding Pre-Saves for Labels

Understanding Pre-Saves For Tastemakers