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I get asked a lot about why musicto seems to be working, it always comes back to the idea of creative collaboration. I wanted to write something that explains what creative collaboration means in the context of the musicto community.
The original idea behind musicto was to build and monetize playlists. Get a large enough audience inside Spotify and you had something of value that artists would pay for. Each playlist was essentially a blog on the musicto.com website - curators submitted a track a week with a dedicated write up, it was published on the website and they then shared the post to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The track was also added to their playlist across the major streaming platforms.
It was essentially an SEO play - at one point we were publishing over 40 unique articles a week on the website and traffic was growing. We attracted the attention of artists for playlist submissions and
musicto started as a group of individuals, each of whom was growing their own playlist. We weren’t really a community in the true sense of the word. We were more like a group of people with a common interest and a shared goal, but no real relationships between us.
At the time, there was no necessity for friendships or deeper connections to form as they had little impact on the core reason people were there—growing and monetizing playlists. The more people we brought in, the more unmanageable it became. Accepted group behaviors dropped off, and the cost of providing the platform got too high.
What I thought was a community in reality was a group of individuals working toward a similar goal, motivated by personal desires.
But then something happened almost by accident. Two members of the group had a slack "fight" - disagreement over optimal strategy had led to a perceived personal attack, resulting in the kind of post that made everybody feel bad. And yet - because I knew them both and was able to moderate - they elected to listen to each other, resulting in a new level of understanding and the agreement to make a playlist together.
Through the process they started to get to know each other and—more importantly—began to respect each other’s opinions, tastes, and experiences. Through this collaboration, they discovered a shared love for certain music and similar experiences around particular tracks. They moved from a place of mutual disdain to a place where they genuinely became friends.
This was the first collaborative playlist published on the website.
What makes this type of creative collaboration so powerful is that it doesn’t require a high level of skill or talent to get started. If you’re a musician and you want to collaborate with other musicians, there’s a certain baseline skill set that’s required. Likewise, whether it’s writing an article, building something, rowing a boat, there needs to be a minimum level of competence for a collaboration to work.
But collaborating together to make a playlist, the barrier to entry is close to zero. You don’t need to be an expert or a musician, all you need is a love of music and some time.
The beauty of collaborative playlist-making is that it requires both parties to bring their differences to the table. Your unique tastes, your experiences—things that might otherwise separate you—are exactly what make the playlist special. You end up with something new and unique that required both of you to make.
When a person from a different cultural background adds a regional track, the other counters with something from their youth, and by the end, they’ve got this crazy mash-up of genres and styles that could never have been made by one person alone.
And the best part is that it’s tangible. It exists on Spotify, on Deezer, on Amazon—it’s a real, published playlist. It’s not just some fleeting conversation that disappears. It’s a record of your collaboration, and you can always go back to it.
When someone adds a track and tells you why it means something to them, they’re giving you a glimpse into who they are—not because they have to, but because they want to. People want to connect. If a song resonates with someone personally, they’ll want to share why, and that opens the door to connection.
Suddenly, you’ve got a shared experience, a point of commonality—even if you come from different countries, cultures, generations, or backgrounds. You have this shared connection around a song, and it’s not about liking each other more—it’s about recognizing a shared humanity. And the more points of connection you find, the less likely you are to see the other person as “different” or “other.”
That’s the power of creative collaboration. When you collaborate, you create something that neither of you could have made alone. You learn about each other, discover shared points of interest, and end up with a unique product. And when it comes to something as simple and accessible as a playlist—one of the most common pieces of media out there—it opens the door to meaningful connection.
This is what’s happening within the musicto community. People from different nations, cultures, generations, and backgrounds are making playlists together—creating something unique and authentic that no algorithm could replicate. And through that process, they’re learning about each other, finding common ground, and building something that can be shared across the world.
That’s the power of creative collaboration.
Andrew McCluskey
