Need to Know:

We want to make it easier to find and share songs from the 49th state. MusicAlaska’s goal is to elevate the Alaska music scene and support Alaskan musicians. We want to hear our artists everywhere, from radio stations to glacier tour buses to gift shops.

When we use these playlists, Spotify pairs up Alaskan bands and suggests them more often. We’re leveraging that process to lift up local voices.

Spotify is only for personal, non-commercial use. Businesses need to get their background music through a distributor that pays appropriate musician royalties. Soundtrack Your Brand is Spotify’s partner service, designed for businesses, and any Spotify playlist can be dragged and dropped into their interface. We plan to work directly with more such distributors in the future, but this Spotify-compatible option is our phase one. Learn more about rules for businesses here.

So, yes! Please! Use these playlists any and everywhere, with an appropriate license for the space.

Depending on your workplace, it might not be OK to play songs with explicit lyrics. So be sure to make note of that as you choose which playlists to use. Let’s not get anybody an FCC fine.

We have a long list of playlists we can’t wait to put together, but we also want your suggestions! On our submissions page, scroll down to propose a new playlist theme.

Vibes sometimes work better than genre, since musicians so often transcend genre. “Rainy day” might be more inspiring than “acoustic rock,” for example.

We found your music in our research! And we like it! We want everyone to hear it! Consider us like local radio DJ’s, hunting for artists and choosing what we think fits into the theme of a particular show.

We hope you’ll trust our instincts, but if you really wish we’d highlighted a different song, you can get in touch. And remember to submit your new work whenever it comes out!

The playlist project is open to community submissions, and those submissions are vetted by volunteer Alaskan musicians and DJ’s. Those same volunteers get the playlists started.

Because it’s a real human checking on submissions, and often a volunteer, it may take a couple weeks to get confirmation that a song you’ve submitted has been playlisted. But we prefer working with real humans!

Guidelines for the playlists come from an advisory board of trusted community music curators. The current advisory board can be found on our “About” page. You can read the playlist guidelines here.

In general, a submission (or one of several songs submitted by an artist) will be approved by MusicAlaska, as long as a song is part of the Alaska music scene and appropriate for playlist guidelines.

We invite up to four playlist recommendations per song, but we’ll probably only add a song to one or two playlists where it fits the best. Another song by the same artist might be approved for an additional playlist, to avoid oversaturation.

If we are sent many tracks by the same artist, we will have to choose a few, so that the playlists don’t become dominated by specific voices.

We’ve discussed this a lot, and decided it comes down to being part of the Alaska music scene at the time a song was released. So:

Did the band break up long ago, but they worked and played here in their heyday? That’s Alaskan music.

Were the songs created and performed while the artist lived here, even if they had to move away later? That’s Alaskan music. (Though a later album by that same artist might not be, depending.)

Has the band moved Outside for a certain kind of music career they couldn’t have here? In that case, the question is: do they still claim Alaska? Do they still write about Alaska? Are they returning regularly and prioritizing hometown shows on tour? That’s Alaskan music.

Did the band name themselves after something in Alaska because they thought it sounded cool, even though they’ve never been here? Nah. Not Alaskan music.

Spotify makes playlisting and sharing very easy compared to other platforms. We’re not particularly Spotify fans — in fact, we’re hoping for better, from an artist perspective — but it’s a logical starting place. If they’re algorithmically making money off of our artists, we’ll train that algorithm to work for Alaskan artists.

We’ll focus on other platforms in the future, like Youtube, Bandcamp, Apple music, and Soundcloud, though not all make playlisting easy.

Volunteer energy will get us to new platforms sooner, so if you want to see that happen, submit some songs, share the playlists, and contact us to volunteer!

We have three simple goals:

1) Playlisting: listening to and organizing songs
2) Research: seeking out more artists, past and present
3) Outreach: getting these playlists heard in more places, and helping more artists (or their estates) get their work online for the public to hear it

It’s an easy lift, perhaps 1-5 hours per month. That said, we are looking for steady, self-motivated folks who can reliably stick with it for the long term. If that’s you, contact us for more details.

MusicAlaska is part of the Alaska Independent Musicians’ Initiative (AKIMI) and the Northern Culture Exchange, which are graciously supported by the Atwood Foundation, the Alaska State Council for the Arts, the Municipality of Anchorage, and more, along with direct donations from supporters.

While we are excited to work with community volunteers, the back-end infrastructure of this project is being built to last by working musicians who are being paid a fair hourly wage, thanks to this support. Expansion and maintenance of the playlists are part of our future budgets. Paying artists to work on elevating the arts is key to a sustainable project.

If you’ve recorded music that you want to share more widely, you want to sign up with a digital music distribution service and a performing rights organization. This is easier to do if you’re in touch with all the copyright holders involved.

The two largest and oldest digital music distribution services are Tunecore and CDBaby. There are many smaller businesses, like Distrokid, Landr, Ditto, and more — though as you choose one, remember that the company distributing your music may be doing so for decades, so you’ll want to trust them to be around for a long time.

Here’s a guide to the different kinds of royalties involved and a comparison of some of the major services. Here’s some useful advice to help you determine whether you need a music publisher or if you can simply be your own music publisher.