Earlier this year I started the Clip Bait playlist on Spotify. There’s now nearly 50 brilliant artists featured on it.

It’s a labour of love that tries to help talented unsigned artists by giving them a little bit of free publicity and some recognition of their work.

Here’s the article I posted onto the Radio section of my website which explains how I choose which artists go onto the playlist and those that don’t:

Since I started the Radio section of my website I’ve reached out to a lot of artists asking them if they want to be featured on my website, on my social media channels and on my Spotify playlist Clip Bait.

A lot have seemingly ignored the offer, in fact far more have ignored it than come back to me. In itself that’s a puzzle to me. The offer is quite simple, if you are on Spotify and better still if you have a website I’ll promote your music if I like it.

There are no strings attached, it doesn’t cost anything and I’ll put your music in front of thousands of potential listeners. But it seems that most artists aren’t interested in that, which I find really strange. If you don’t want people to hear your music what are you releasing it for?

Having said that there’s a lot of artists who have got in touch with me and in all honesty I really appreciate them taking the time to do that. But a key component is that if I’m going to promote their music I must like it in the first place.

I recognise that’s a purely subjective thing and having someone say that they don’t like your music enough to promote it is unlikely to win friends and influence people, but it’s vital that I make that call, however unfair it seems.

I’ve heard some really good music, well recorded and performed, that just doesn’t do it for me and I have to turn those artists down. Clearly they’re not pleased by that but it’s no reflection on their music, it’s just personal taste. And how boring would life be if we all liked exactly the same things?

Looking through my stats I turn down more artists than I feature and I’m sorry about that but I feel it’s important to impose a criteria to what I’m doing.

On the plus side I’ve come across some amazing artists who are producing, to my ears at least, some quite exceptional music and I would ask everyone to take some time and listen to their brilliance on the Clip Bait playlist.

And to those artists sitting on the fence, what are you waiting for? Send me links to your website and Spotify page and I will promote your music – if I like it.