Music-streaming service Audiomack has launched a new feature in its mobile app, but it’s not for listeners: it’s for playlist curators. Specifically the 350-plus people who are part of its ‘Tastemakers’ program.

The program launched in late 2024 as a way to recruit independent curators to make playlists for Audiomack. In return they get a verified badge on the service; the ability to message their followers; and now the new Audiomack for Tastemakers feature in the app.

Its focus is on analytics: engagement stats for the playlists they have created and published, from stream impact and save impact (how many streams and saves they have sparked) through to 30-second stream rate (the percentage of listeners who listen to songs for at least 30 seconds) and finish rate (the percentage who listen to the end).

These are the kinds of analytics that in-house curators at Spotify, Apple Music and other big services have access to, but Audiomack is opening them out to the independent community of curators that it has been building.

“It’s about giving you tools to see: do people like these playlists? Do they like particular songs in your playlists?” co-founder and CMO David Ponte told Music Ally in an interview ahead of the app’s launch today.

He stresses that this is not about making Audiomack’s tastemakers follow data rather than their instincts, though. “You can go with your gut,” he says. “But then have that validated with these stats.”

Since its launch in beta, Audiomack’s ‘Tastemakers’ program has pulled in curators from across the world, as Ponte explains.

“We have them in the US; in Sāo Paulo, Brazil; in Lagos, Nigeria; in Accra, Ghana; Dar es Salaam in Tanzania… I have someone in Kingston, Jamaica who’s in the clubs listening to what the DJs are playing and seeing how people are dancing to it,” he says.

“We want people who are experts: who are passionate about the different genres and scenes that are bubbling up in different geographic regions,” he continues.

“We give them special privileges to help them create a community around that passion: like messaging people who follow them to say ‘I’m DJing at this club in Zanzibar this week, come along if you like. my playlist…’ We want to be a home for these types of curators.”

When Music Ally spoke to Ponte in September, Audiomack had just seen 10% month-on-month growth in streams generated by its tastemakers’ playlists, including a 15% spike in Nigeria and 14% in Canada – “so it seems to be working!”.

These curators are recruited via an application form, but Ponte says that Audiomack is very carefully, well, curating its curators.

“We turn a lot of people down for the tastemakers program because they’re not really bringing anything to the table,” he says.

“They might just have a playlist with all the popular songs on. That might work if you’re curating for a party, but I’m looking for something different. Are you filling a content gap for us that needs filling?”

“I don’t need someone to make a ‘Verified: Afrosounds’. It’s one of the biggest playlists on our platform, it does billions of streams. So we already have that! But if you’re giving me, like, the best Liberian music? We could use a playlist like that…”

He cites another example of a tastemaker who launched a ‘Crime Noir’ playlist, focusing on hip-hop songs that would work brilliantly in crime movies. “I love that! We did some marketing around it, and it’s starting to get some traction…”

Can artists be Audiomack tastemakers? Ponte says yes, but he warns that many artists aren’t quite up to delivering what the company is looking for: playlists that have a strong focus, are thoughtfully sequenced, and dig deeper than the obvious tracks.

“Sometimes when we ask artists to make playlists for us, they’re terrible! That doesn’t mean that they are not a curator: it’s just a different assignment,” he says, before a perfectly-timed comedy pause. “And a lot of the time, they just put all their own songs on there…”

Ponte is buoyant about the launch of the Tastemakers analytics, and the continued expansion of the program – with plenty of ideas about other features that can be added to build even stronger communities around these curators in the future. Meanwhile, the growth of Audiomack itself is also a source of pride for its co-founder.

“We’ve been hitting all-time highs. We just hit 47 million monthly active users and we’re at about 12 million daily active users,” he says. “I’m excited. I’m excited about a lot of things!”