Executive of the Week: Spotify Global Head of Editorial Sulinna Ong

As global head of editorial at the biggest music streamer in the world, Sulinna Ong has plenty on her plate — not least of which is overseeing the programming of Spotify’s playlists across genres, territories and fandoms. And this past week has been a big one for Ong and her team, as they revamped Spotify’s flagship K-Pop playlist, K-Pop ON! (온), with a new name, a massive marketing push and a focused plan for new content catered to fans of the genre that has expanded significantly around the world in recent years. And the push has already started to pay off: daily streams and listening hours for the playlists grew 40% week over week, according to Spotify, and the playlist moved into the top five of the company’s most-streamed playlists, which Ong says is “a first for the playlist and the genre.”

Ong has also overseen another big initiative that rolled out this week: the revamped EQUAL hub timed to International Women’s Day (March 8), which focuses on initiatives to promote equity for women in music around the world. This year, that meant a series of Spotify Singles covers from up-and-coming female artists; the “With Love” podcast playlist, which includes recordings from 25 women from different backgrounds sharing love letters to their past selves “during a pivotal moment in time, or to someone who changed their life in a moment”; and the EQUAL Non-Profit Playlist Shelf, which includes playlists curated by five global non-profits focused on gender equity. And the success of each rollout earns Ong the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.

Here, Ong lays out the plans behind the revamped K-Pop ON! (온) and EQUAL initiatives, as well as her plans for where Spotify’s editorial can go moving forward. “One of our main goals in our playlisting strategy is to create a truly borderless music consumption ecosystem,” she says. “Our bread and butter is discovery, and we are laser-focused on exporting local artists and genres to a global audience, as well as focusing on local artists in their home markets.”

You guys relaunched your flagship K-Pop playlist, K-Pop ON! (온), with daily streams and daily listening hours growing 40% week over week. What key decision(s) did you make in helping make this happen?

K-Pop fandom is a tightly-knit, inclusive and supportive community that loves to get actively involved with the artists and the genre as a whole. With our relaunch we wanted to create a destination that would add to that community and integrate with it. That’s a key pillar in our approach to curating many of our playlists around the world — harnessing a community of fans and giving them a central home on Spotify to engage, discover and become lifelong listeners. We’re already seeing concrete results in real time, with the K-Pop ON! (온) playlist making it into our top five most-streamed playlists this week, a first for the playlist and the genre.

How are you positioning this playlist to take advantage of the global fascination with and growing fandom of K-Pop?

K-Pop has obviously been a key genre for fans in Asia for a long time, but over the last few years it has seriously exploded across the globe. K-Pop is not just about the music, but a movement encompassing an entire world of fandom, fashion, community and more. With last week’s relaunch, our aim was to further build it out as an audio destination that will be fully relatable to long-time fans, as well as being a destination for potential new fans to pique their curiosity.

As for the playlist name change from K-Pop Daebak to K-Pop ON! (온), that was part of our global approach to how we disseminate music and enable discovery. The new name combines the Korean word “온” meaning, “100,” or “whole,” with the English word “on” to display the action of “turning on.” So K-Pop ON! (온) embodies the idea that “K-Pop is always on 100 for the whole world.”

What was the marketing strategy behind the relaunch — how did you promote it around the world?

As well as the obvious strategy of on-platform marketing, we have also pursued a strategy of out-of-home advertising on billboards globally, including a wide swath of K-Pop artists. We had NMIXX showing in L.A.; BTS, aespa and NMIXX in NYC; ATEEZ, Red Velvet, NCT DREAM and more in South Korea; aespa, SEVENTEEN, BLACKPINK and more in Indonesia; BTS, NMIXX and IVE in Japan; and BTS, TWICE and ENHYPEN in Toronto.

In the coming weeks you’ll start to see video clips of K-Pop artists on the playlist, utilizing our Spotify Clips functionality, which we’ve found is a great way to increase fan-artist engagement. And really, this is just the beginning. Our focus on the K-Pop genre will span the rest of this year and beyond. In the coming months, you’ll see further original content based on fans’ favorite artists and songs, new ways for fans to discover music and connect with friends and artists on Spotify and partnerships within the industry and beyond.

It’s also been one year since Spotify launched EQUAL, and there was a series of new content and initiatives launched this week for International Women’s Day. How has that brand grown and why is it important for you?

We see EQUAL as a 24/7/365 focus area, as we are constantly striving to reach gender equity across our playlists, marketing and the music industry at large. Over the last year, we have highlighted a main EQUAL artist each month globally, as well showcasing 35 female artists from around the world each month on our Times Square billboard. We’ve also updated our EQUAL hub on Spotify and opened up the program to new markets including those in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan, further expanding these artists’ reach and audience base worldwide. In the first year of EQUAL alone, we’ve seen EQUAL playlists receive almost 60 million streams across all 184 markets where we’re live, with EQUAL artists being added to over 1,000 additional Spotify playlists within the first month of joining the program.

What feedback have you gotten from the EQUAL initiatives in the past year, and from these new ones that just launched?

We are committed to equity for women in music and artists and industry partners recognize this. So the feedback from our EQUAL initiatives has always been incredibly positive and continues to be. The recent launch in the Middle East and North Africa has been covered by numerous press outlets, raising wide awareness of female artists across the region, which is vitally important.

Two-time Grammy nominee Arooj Aftab is our first Artist of the Month for EQUAL Pakistan. Arooj has been making waves around the world since her track “Mohabbat” made it into Barack Obama’s summer playlist. She feels passionately about issues that Pakistani women face in the industry and makes for a perfect candidate to carry the EQUAL Pakistan torch.

In what areas do you want to expand Spotify’s playlists and editorial moving forward?

One of our main goals in our playlisting strategy is to create a truly borderless music consumption ecosystem. Our bread and butter is discovery, and we are laser-focused on exporting local artists and genres to a global audience, as well as focusing on local artists in their home markets.

Since becoming Spotify’s global head of editorial I’ve devoted much of my time to broadening our playlist strategy on a worldwide scale. We’ve prioritized collaborative curation through our Global Curation Groups, and having this wide swath of voices and local experts spread around the world is now crucial to our playlist curation. With this approach we’ve been able to create playlists based on the expertise of editors all around the world, who work together to pinpoint emerging artists, sounds and trends early and often, giving us the ability to elevate them and be on the pulse of culture. We are always striving for wide representation across our playlists, be it gender, race, language, genre and so on — so you will see us continue to expand in this area as well. We prefer to think of our editorial philosophy as being about collective expertise and collaboration, rather than being individual gatekeepers, and I believe that will continue to impact the music industry in a positive way in 2022.

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