PlaylistScout: from a Chrome extension to a product with 300+ users
PlaylistScout finds the email a Spotify playlist curator left in their description, so an independent artist can pitch the people who asked to be pitched. I built it, priced it, and marketed it to more than 300 users.
The problem
Playlist curators want to be pitched. Their emails are hard to find.
An independent artist trying to get a song onto Spotify playlists has one real lever: pitching the people who run them. Many curators say how to reach them, but they say it in the playlist description, so finding a contact means opening playlists one at a time and reading.
Existing tools do this for you, but charge monthly credit-based prices that suit a label better than a musician releasing one song. I saw a gap in who the product was priced and worded for.
The product
Search a genre, get a lead list
PlaylistScout searches Spotify playlists by genre, mood or sound, reads each description, and pulls out the email address or Instagram handle the curator left for submissions. The result is a lead list you can export or pitch from, in about ten seconds.
Find
Email, Instagram, and podcast & host search, with an eight-variation advanced search and a multi-genre sweep on paid plans.
Qualify
A quality score per contact, saved leads, and daily alerts on saved searches so new curators come to you.
Pitch
CSV and Excel export, an outreach email writer, and analytics to see what is working.
From extension to product
I rebuilt it so it could be a business
PlaylistScout began as a Chrome extension with a paid tier. It worked, but an extension alone has no accounts, no recurring revenue, and no way to be found on Google. So I rebuilt it as a web app and turned the extension into a thin client of it.
- Accounts and billing: Firebase Authentication and Firestore, with Stripe subscriptions and a self-serve billing portal.
- Plan sync: Stripe webhooks keep each user's plan in step with what they have paid for, tested in Stripe's test mode before going live.
- Security: Spotify credentials live on the server only, never in the browser or extension.
- One product, two surfaces: the extension now signs in to the same account as the website.
Positioning and pricing
Priced for the month around a release
Most artists need a tool like this for a few weeks around a release, not all year. So the plans are built around that.
| Free | Pro | Label & Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0, no card | $6.99 a month, or $40 a year | $60 a year |
| Contacts shown per search | First 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Playlists scanned per search | 50 | 500 | 1,000 |
| Searches per day | 10 | 500 | 2,000 |
| Saved leads | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Artist profiles | 1 | 3 | 10 |
The decision I would defend: the free plan returns real contacts from real playlists instead of a locked preview. A musician can verify the tool works before spending a cent, which is what makes a first-time buyer trust a new product.
Getting to 300+ users
A search-driven content engine, not a launch day
A product like this is found by people typing what they need into Google. So the marketing is the website itself:
28 pages built to be found, by type
From the site's sitemap of 35 pages. Each one targets a specific search.
The copy speaks to one person: an independent artist with a song ready tonight. The headline, “Find the curators. Get their emails. Pitch your song tonight,” says what the product does and how fast, in that order.
Stack
What it is made of
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