<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nTraditional wisdom is that it’s best to advertise on the platform you want people to act on. Facebook ads for Facebook engagement, YouTube ads for YouTube views, etc. Asking people to leave the platform and hop over to another one creates friction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if we can achieve similar results to advertising on Spotify at a similar cost, I’m going to opt for the cake with icing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spotify Showcase Conclusions and Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Let’s start with the most obvious conclusion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At best, I’m paying $0.04 per stream. I’m likely to receive less than 10% of that back in royalties. One might argue that this post is an attempt to determine how to most effectively flush 90% of your advertising budget down the toilet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, those streams could \u201ctrigger the algorithm.\u201d They’ll almost certainly generate more streams in the future, which \u201cintent rate\u201d attempts to capture. But how likely are they to produce 9x more streams?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And sure, those listeners could end up buying something, but for me anyway, that rarely happens. No one has ever bought any<\/em> of my merch through Spotify, despite offering 25% off to my top listeners over the holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo why bother?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThat’s a question for you to answer, not me. I was just conducting research for this blog post. 😜<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But seriously, while I’ll admit to a certain air of futility around the entire project, my hope is that over time I’ll build an audience for my music on Spotify \u2014 one that will stream my new releases and add them to their playlists and listen to them for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To recap, here are my campaigns ordered by cost per stream:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nMarquee (Mexico), $0.04 per stream<\/li>\n\n\n\n Meta (tier 1 & 2 countries), $0.045 per stream<\/li>\n\n\n\n Marquee (US), $0.054 per stream<\/li>\n\n\n\n Showcase (US), $0.06 per stream<\/li>\n\n\n\n Showcase (Sweden), $0.11 per stream<\/li>\n\n\n\n Showcase (Mexico), $0.15 per stream<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\nRemember that in all cases, I was promoting a set of at least 11 tracks, not a single! If you direct people to a single, regardless of the campaign type, you’re going to see far fewer streams per listener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exception is Marquee, where you can and should choose to direct listeners to your official This Is playlist with the new single placed at the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on my results, here’s what I recommend:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For cold audiences (people who have never heard your music) in tier 2 countries, use Meta ads.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI paid $0.045 per stream to tiers 1 & 2 versus $0.15 per stream to Mexico, one of the cheapest tier 2 countries to advertise to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For cold audiences in tier 1 countries, it’s a toss-up between Meta ads and Showcase.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nYour results in Meta will depend on your skill at crafting ads, and for Showcase, how eye-catching your cover art is. Test, test, test!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For expensive countries like Sweden, Showcase’s $0.11 per stream is likely better than I can do with Facebook and Instagram ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For warm audiences, start with Marquee to every country available and be ready to pull the plug.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI look for at least 2.5 streams per listener and a 25% intent rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Follow up effective Marquee campaigns with Showcase, especially if you can customize your audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt doesn’t need to be right away! You can wait for an important event like the start of a tour or the anniversary of the release. Whenever you’ve got money to spend, Spotify is more than happy to oblige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not that you asked, but if I only had $200 to promote a release, I’d spend it on Marquee in the US. Beyond email and social media, I can’t think of a more cost-effective way to reach the people most likely to listen, where they’re most likely to listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you tried Spotify Showcase? How about Marquee? Spot any flaws in my reasoning? Share your thoughts in the comments!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Showcase is the newest campaign type in Spotify’s promotional arsenal, alongside Marquee and Discovery Mode. It inserts a sponsored recommendation on the home screen of the app, like so: You pay whenever someone clicks on it, typically around $0.30-0.40 depending on your targeting. Spotify reports that users who see the recommendation are 6x more likely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":9544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9532"}],"version-history":[{"count":83,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9648,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions\/9648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/passivepromotion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}