Consultant or influencer?

HumanPlaylistr is first and foremost a consultancy, helping customers with event and venue playlisting, operating in a collaborative business environment.

For individuals, I like to get to know their preferences, requirement and purpose of the event. For venues, I like to get to know the premises, customer experience, brand, vibe and ownership perspective. Whoever contacts me, I guarantee full commitment to research this side of the equation before I even set up a new playlist.

Whilst it means a substantial part of the work is not actually choosing music, I really enjoy talking and connecting with people to provide the service I want to provide. Meeting people, understanding their perspective, preferences and capturing requirements means I can match them to a mix of music they know combined with the unfamiliar. Providing total customer satisfaction through collaborative tools and meetings is, I believe, one of the joys of working as a music consultant.

I’ve worked with many IT vendors, pre-sales and consultants in my career. The very best were unassuming, solution-driven, friendly, professional, customer-oriented and honest. Being honest was critical, even if they thought they might lose business by not having exactly the right solution immediately. They never did lose significant business; lateral thinking and time usually overcame obstacles.

I’d like to bring that same experience to my customers.

I’m not an influencer.

At least, I don’t think I am currently, with a low number of followers. I’m clearly still in the startup phase. HumanPlaylistr is targeted at sectors that are effectively closed (hospitality, retail, travel, weddings) although I think there’s a real opportunity to refresh the playlist offering in advance of reopening – do get in touch for a no-obligation chat if you think I can help.

I’m not associated with any artists, labels or agencies. I promote my independence assurance on the pricing page. I’m not on anyone’s roster; I’m not paid to promote any tracks. I have no intention to promote any tracks in return for reward. I have musician friends who make really great music so I’ll use their music if it fits the customer requirements but it’ll be subject to the same stringent criteria as any other track and I’ll always highlight those tracks to the customer.

If you’re a musician reading this, you’re always welcome to tell me you’ve got new material out. Twitter is the best place. I’ll give it a listen and where appropriate add it to my library.

Existing influencers and playlisters.

I’ve been researching influencers and playlisters. At first glance I find their Spotify profiles intimidatingly massive. Sometimes there’s a landing page before bouncing you to the Spotify profile, but knowing where to commence your journey can be tricky.

These playlists are huge, some with thousands of tracks, sorted by date perhaps spanning a year or decade (I have my own 90s memories and 00s memories), others with obscure titles, a substantial proportion comprising artists I’ve never heard of.

Even though I found them hard to navigate, in short, I felt outclassed by these influencers and playlisters. Massive libraries with many followers dwarfed my playlists. My Spotify profile has a much smaller offering.

Luxury boutique.

Maybe smaller isn’t the right description though. In these much more extensive profiles I was getting lost. I didn’t know where to start, overwhelmed by the sheer number of tracks. I needed a guided tour. In many profiles there were no references to accompanying websites. Realising the value out of these humongous profiles was either someone else’s job or simply not the intention. This is not a poor reflection or criticism of those profiles. It takes work to make good playlists. It just made me think about the scale of future plans.

I like to think of my playlists and website as a luxury boutique. Everything’s laid out neatly, is of high quality, easy to find, priced, and value immediately visible. If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for there’s always scope for individuality. You won’t find a playlist of 1,000 tracks labelled, ‘Songs I liked 2016’ or similar.

I’ve tried to make my site a front end for all my playlists, explain what I’m doing and provide ways to find me. I have around 4,000 tracks saved in my Spotify account but only a small proportion is visible to the public. I have some lengthy playlists which are free to view and listen to, and form part of the shop window for longer playlists. I made the decision that the shop window was getting full so future playlists exist in public as a sampler and the longer playlists remain private. They contain differing ideas and genres and don’t really function as a playlist but will serve as a library when creating playlists for customers.

In fact, my playlists are heavily refined. I listen to them over and over again. I frequently revisit old playlists to add new tracks or remove tracks no longer available due to fluctuating licensing arrangements between Spotify and record labels. Final track selection comes down to a matter of taste, which brings us full circle. Consultant or influencer? Influencers build their profiles based on their own tastes whereas I aim to bring my taste in music to collaborate with customers’ tastes to create a combined output.

Made to measure.

Despite gaining the Spotify Pioneer label for 2020 (listening to tracks before they hit mainstream popularity) my mission remains to help customers with events and/or venues that require quality handcrafted playlists with all types of music. It doesn’t have to be the latest releases and my playlists span many years.

I once had a brilliant manager who said that quality work stands up on it’s own merits, the personal accolades will follow in due course. I’m aiming to make my playlists, the product, the best quality I can, easy to understand and enjoyable to listen to, standing up on their own.

My playlists can be tailored to your requirements. I do the heavy lifting of providing the infill to make the playlists of the right duration and then they are reviewed by customers.

If you’ve got something in mind and would like a free no-obligation chat, please do send me a message. I’d be delighted to hear from you for a free, no obligation, consultation.