music industry<\/a> than Mjeema Pickett, the music-streaming service\u2019s global programming head for R&B and soul music. Pickett \u2014 who spent more than a decade in radio and video programming before hopping over to Spotify in 2015 as part of the company\u2019s push for more expert curation \u2014 oversees flagship playlists like \u201cThe Newness\u201d and \u201cAre & Be,\u201d the latter of which has 5 million followers and is widely known as a career-launcher for young artists. From her desk in Spotify\u2019s Los Angeles office, Pickett is a one-person gatekeeper between record labels and music audiences, tasked with deciding what\u2019s hot in R&B and soul, what\u2019s not, and what should be.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s the first thing you do every day?
<\/strong>I get the day started with prayer \u2014 and coffee. A lot of times I will have meetings as soon as I wake up, since I\u2019m on West Coast time. On my commute into the office, I\u2019m usually listening to one of my personal Spotify playlists, which always put me in a good mood.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Once I\u2019m in the office, I\u2019ll get another cup of coffee \u2014 then I\u2019ll check our playlist submission tool, where the artist-submitted songs for the week come in. I listen to music there but also will take a look at the playlists from the previous week and see how those songs are performing. I spent several hours each day updating playlists. Sometimes I leave the office for a studio session to hear music before it\u2019s released, which helps me wrap my head around what an artist\u2019s vision for their album is like. And then a lot of the day is also deciding if a new song fits into one of my playlists or not.<\/p>\n
How do<\/em> you decide? You\u2019re in charge of R&B and soul for Spotify, but musical genres are less clearly defined than ever before.
<\/strong>Sonically. I listen for what the sound is. Also, even though a lot of the lines are blurred, a lot of it is also audience-based \u2014 so if we can determine what audience the artist wants to target and what their vision is, that can determine where the song goes. Who do they want to hear it? And is that the best audience for it? At the end of the day, even though we have partnerships with artists, we want to serve the audience and make sure Spotify users get the experience they want.<\/p>\nEach playlist of mine also has its own theme and its own hypothesis. For example, \u201cThe Newness\u201d is where new releases go. \u201cSoul Coffee\u201d is for Sunday morning and you\u2019re getting up and going about your day, cleaning up around the house. There\u2019s one for more mellow songs. There\u2019s one for moodier ones. \u201cAre & Be\u201d is the global R&B flagship playlist, so the bigger hits and the ones that get the most reaction will go there.<\/p>\n
Do you work closely with the heads of the other playlists at Spotify?<\/strong>
We\u2019re all on the same global team, so we share music, share ideas. And we also work on campaigns together, like the one we just did for Black History Month, to figure out how what kinds of playlists will work for those programs.<\/p>\nSo is there ever a case where one song can be added to two or three different genre playlists?
<\/strong>That can happen, yes. If it\u2019s a great song. If we find a song that fits so many different pockets. It actually happens a lot! Since we can see all the analytics, if a song is performing great on one playlist, it could be part of the development process to put it in a bigger playlist with more listeners and grow the audience.<\/p>\nHow much of a song do you listen to before you can form an opinion on it?
<\/strong>I listen all the way through, because I know that\u2019s what an artist would want. I know they are sensitive about their art and I want to respect that.<\/p>\nI\u2019m sure artists are vying for your attention all the time.
<\/strong>Artists will go to all lengths. My DMs look like a war zone. But I can\u2019t respond; I have to just encourage them all to go through the submission tool, because that evens the playing field. Mondays are craziest because we\u2019re coming off the weekend with all the new data in.<\/p>\nDo you work on projects outside of playlists?<\/strong>
I do. Last summer, we had a big jam session in New Orleans during the Essence Festival to celebrate Spotify\u2019s \u201cAre & Be\u201d playlist reaching 5 million followers. It was a pretty dope event. Raphael Saadiq, PJ Morton, Wale, Mario and a bunch of other artists performed. It was an effort between our editorial, music marketing, artist and label relations, and talent relations teams. It was one of the things that was like, \u201cThis is why we do it.\u201d Love and music.<\/p>\n\n\u201cMy side hustle in college was making slow-jam tapes for my homeboys going on dates. It\u2019s always been my passion to curate for moments.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In a previous interview, you mentioned that you grew up listening to music from traditional formats like radio and television. Did you ever think you\u2019d end up at something like Spotify?
<\/strong>Never. When I was growing up, this did not exist. But music was my first love and I was basically growing up already making playlists as a hobby. My side hustle in college was making slow-jam tapes for my homeboys going on dates. It\u2019s always been my passion to curate for moments, so I love working with playlists. Radio is curation \u2014 but each playlist has its own hypothesis or theme. And there is more opportunity to put stuff out there because you don\u2019t have time limits, and we have more room to play with a song.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s the best piece of advice you\u2019ve ever gotten in your career?
<\/strong>To learn as much as I could, to ask questions, and to follow the doors that are opened. You have to work at it, and you have to know it\u2019s going to be a marathon. There have been times I\u2019ve been discouraged, but I knew deep down that this is what I was born to do and that I\u2019d just have to keep pushing through it. I would give everyone this advice. I don\u2019t want to pay attention to outside forces; I just want to keep moving forward.<\/p>\nWhat do you do to unwind after work? Do you have a particular routine?
<\/strong>Sometimes, actually, unwinding is just me riding home in silence. The silence helps me just come down from everything \u2014 all the information from the day.<\/p>\n via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the third installment of Rolling Stone\u2019s series At Work, in which we explore the fast-changing music business from the perspective of a different industry leader each week. Read the first here and the second here. Of Spotify\u2019s thousands of employees, there are few more sought-after by the music industry than Mjeema Pickett, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 10:14:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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