How Spotify Showcase Campaigns Help House & Techno Artists Grow
What are Spotify Showcase Campaigns?
A Spotify showcase campaign is a way to promote your music on Spotify’s Home and get promoted to both free and premium users. The majority of listens on a song happen in the first month of the song’s release. Using these Spotify Showcase Campaigns can get the song in front of more people at the best time for growth. How effective it is depends on multiple factors such as when the campaign goes out, whether you are targeting the right audience, and more.
How does it work?
The main goal of these Spotify campaigns is to get your music seen by people visiting Spotify’s home screen or homepage. It is a paid sponsored recommendation sent to the people they believe will click on it, using a variety of factors. They also allow multiple campaigns to be run at the same time. For example, if you want to promote a single EP and an album at the same time, or any other promotions you want to do. These campaigns offer greater visibility, especially when they are timed to coincide with a release.
When is the best time to use a Spotify Showcase Campaign?
The majority of playtime for a track is within the first month of a track’s release. Spotify Showcase Campaigns can be used in a number of ways to promote the release of a track. It can be used to promote older tracks in anticipation. It can also be used to promote the track itself or the release of an album. Spotify also has a program called Marquee. Marquee is a promotional tool that puts full-screen paid promotions for your new track to targeted listeners. Marquee can be used in conjunction with Spotify Showcase Campaigns to promote a new track.
But Spotify Showcase Campaigns can also be used to give new life to older tracks. Maybe you have a great Christmas or other seasonal track that you would like to promote. Or you want to show your new listeners your older catalogue. These campaigns can be a great way to reach your newer or older listeners.
Targeting an audience
These campaigns have the ability to target various audiences. These include active listeners, previously active listeners, listeners who have found your music through a playlist, autoplay, Discover Weekly and more. For active listeners, these include:
Super listeners - The listeners who constantly listen to your music.
Moderate listeners - Listeners who interact with your music directly occasionally.
Light listeners - These are the listeners who only occasionally, maybe one to two times a month.
You are also able to target previously active listeners, or listeners who have not listened within the last month and programmed listeners. Programmed listeners are any listener who do not actively click on your music but comes from other sources. These include playlists created by DJs, autoplay, Spotify’s Discover Weekly and more.
Starting a campaign
To run a Showcase campaign, you need to have at least 1,000 streams over the past 28 days in a target market. There is also a minimum budget of $100. They will only spend the budget when someone clicks on the track. There is a minimum of $0.40 per click. Each campaign will last until the budget is spent, or 14 days after the start of the campaign.
Campaign reports
Spotify supplies detailed reports for each campaign. This includes a variety of stats. These include:
Who listened to the track after seeing the campaign
If they were an active listener, a past listener or a new listener
If they added the song to a playlist
If they saved the song
Stats like how many people saved the song or added it to a playlist are important. It shows that they intend to listen to the track later. It also signals to Spotify that someone has intentionally clicked the save button and wants to listen to it later. These saves also help shape the algorithm Spotify uses to recommend music to a listener. Saves help get your music recommended to your listeners more. Find out more about how important saves are in this article from Indie on the Move.
Are they worth it?
The Spotify Showcase Campaigns are useful in getting people to see and to promote your music. This blog by Passive Promotion found that it was useful in promoting their new album. They got new listeners, and they also got over three streams per listener. But there are some restrictions to consider. They found more success promoting their albums and EPs over their singles. For their singles, they did note that only premium members were served those promotions, which means higher royalties per listener.
The restrictions on these campaigns can be quite restrictive, especially for newer artists. You need a minimum of 1000 streams over the past 28 days in a target audience. That means that if you have around 1000 streams, but they are spread out over multiple countries, then you won’t be able to run a campaign. Also, there is a minimum budget of $100 per campaign. There is a good chance you will not see a profit from the campaigns other than reaching new listeners.
Alternatives to consider
Spotify is the most important platform for many people when it comes to music. But there are other platforms you should consider. These include useful services on various music platforms that help artists, such as Amazon Music for Artists, Deezer for Creators, Pandora AMP, Apple Music and more.
Promoting your music should also be done on multiple social media platforms. Meta ads are quite popular for musicians to promote their music. Ads on YouTube and TikTok are also a good option if you want to run ads for your music.
How we help
If all of this seems overwhelming, we can help manage your marketing campaigns. We offer Spotify marketing services, which include placements on our playlists, targeted Meta ads and more. We also offer custom marketing services to manage your music over multiple platforms, not just Spotify. We will market you on Meta and other platforms, including SoundCloud, YouTube, and more. Contact us today!