Who is behind MusicMinutes?

Hi, I'm Paul Nicholls, a fully independent pop artist from Rotherham, England. With a background in Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering (MEng, Chartered status) and a lifelong passion for music, I've walked the exact path many of you are on right now!

At 18, my band split up, and I went solo. That's where the grind really began and since then I've invested over 10,000+ hours in learning music production, recording, mixing, mastering and most importantly marketing my own music. Skip to numerous perfectionism years later of becoming happy with my own voice recordings, I released my single “Falling”, which quickly racked up over 300,000 streams and landed on thousands of playlists. Today, my total Spotify streams exceed 1 million and it still feels like the start of a journey with a lot to look forward to.

Every one of those streams came from my trial and error, making all the mistakes there is to make when it comes to marketing my music. Organic playlist placements were always a main part of my promotion and help to give the Spotify Algorithm the right signals. While promoting my own music, I spent countless hours manually hunting for real curators using the Spotify API the year before launching MusicMinutes. It worked, but it was incredibly time-consuming and frustrating. So I built MusicMinutes: a constantly updated database of thousands of genuine playlist curators who likely accept free submissions from independent artists.

I solo developed MusicMinutes to share the value of my personal project to help other small artists grow on Spotify without them getting scammed or wasting money.

The Problem MusicMinutes Solves

Getting your music on Spotify playlists is still one of the most powerful ways for independent artists to grow. Around 31% of users discover new music through curated playlists, yet most small artists waste hours searching for real curators or fall for botted playlist companies with paid “guaranteed placement” scams.

MusicMinutes removes a lot of that pain whilst keeping the personal network building aspect. We do the hard work of finding, verifying, and quality rating playlists so you can focus on making great music and sending personalized pitches to those top quality playlists in your genre.

How MusicMinutes Helps You

• ✓Updated daily database of real curator contacts (email + socials + other links)
• ✓Quality scoring that helps you avoid botted or low-engagement playlists
• ✓Search by genre, mood, similar artists, or keywords
• ✓Export contacts to Excel/Google Sheets for easy outreach and note taking
• ✓Focus on free, organic placements, never paid promotions
• ✓Built by an artist who has actually succeeded with the same method

Why Artists Trust MusicMinutes

Unlike many playlist tools that push paid placements or include fake/botted lists, MusicMinutes was created from real-world experience. We only include bot-free playlists that have the potential for providing real organic listener growth. Every contact is verified so you spend less time chasing ghosts and more time landing placements.

This is the tool I used to grow my own music, now available to help you do the same.