Performs Great!
For transparency, I work for a direct competitor of Omari, so please understand my perspective is that of someone who knows the ins and outs of promotion and the modern music industry landscape. I have been producing professionally for years and recently did an EDM cover I am quite proud of. At first I was worried the lyrics would be a bit too "spicy" for them, but, I am glad to see the positive intentions I put into the sound came off as intended to their curators. I only spent $77, my expectations were low, but once placed they put me in well over 100 playlists. I was shocked. Then...I started to get a bad feeling. A great many of the playlists made no sense. We're talking from "Best of" in non english speaking countries playlists. Calm/study lists for an uptempo dnb track. "Best of Tupac" haha. There was a brief moment I shook my head, Omari Omari Omari tsk tsk tsk. But...I waited to see what would happen. After a week, plays started piling up. I didn't get plays on every list, but, the same applies where I work, it happens. At first I saw only a handful of lists get 3 plays and assumed this was pointless, but, it started to pick up. Here's the thing. I agree with Omari that all playlists are equal on Spotify. Artists have a really odd perspective in my experience, that you can only promote directly to the exact niche your songs genre is in. Ask yourself...do YOU only listen to one genre of music? Personally, I listen to sad boi folk music. Movie soundtracks. 90s Chiptune OSTS. Illenium, Kaskade, Skrillex, Avicii. The Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Chase Mathews, Morgan Wallen, and the dozens of tracks a month I hit skip on when a friend sends something I don't like. You can not ever know what a listener also listens to. Plenty of people who listen to rap like EDM. The Philippines is not void of Pop fans. Not everyone listens to lofi when they study. In practicality, Spotify is built to understand people will skip. Just like YouTube. Actually, more people probably skip your song than play it, regardless how you promote it. Most YouTubers see the vast majority of initial viewers drop off in the 10-30 second mark. This is NORMAL. Most content on Tik tok gets swiped away in the first few seconds. THIS IS NORMAL. Skips are fine. If anything, what the issue is, are a majority of skips at 30 seconds, and we all know why that is. So claiming that there is no possibility for genre crossover, and being on a list not of your niche, is simply naive. You never know where your next fan is, or what else they listen to. Omari exposed me to an audience I otherwise would have ignored entirely, and I am already well past my initial min stream expectation. The SEO driven lists feel spammy, they look awful. Some have well over 1,000 tracks. But, you know, it works. I think I will less so view Omari's playlisting as a primary promo method, but as a wonderful addition to ad driven or custom tailored campaigns. Regardless if you run the ads yourself, hire Omari, a competitor-- doesn't matter. In my personal and professional experience, what I am seeing here would be highly beneficial as a supplemental promotion to an existing push. I really wanted to come on here and make the way they go about this look bad, but, I give credit where credit is due. Honestly amazing to see. I know all too well how crazy this landscape is.