Spotify has released a new tool, which allows artists to pay to have their music promoted on the site’s homepage.
The new marketing feature – named Showcase – was announced last week (September 13), when Spotify shared a blog post confirming it will be offering artists a new way to target potential listeners.
The feature works by allowing the artist to select a song, an EP or an entire album to appear on the site’s homepage and cater the promotion to a specific demographic of listeners.
Musicians will then be able to choose a headline for the Showcase banner – to declare whether it is a new release, if they’re currently on tour, if the song is a deep cut or currently gathering a lot of streams – and the final Showcase recommendation will appear as a banner at the top of the home screen.
The streaming app has also claimed that the users who see a Showcase banner are six times more likely to listen, and that users will be able to create multiple campaigns for the same release.
“Artists and their teams want even more flexibility when it comes to surfacing the right music to the right fans at the right time,” read the blog post. “Whether that’s reaching new listeners with a trending song, engaging super listeners with an anniversary album, or targeting previously active listeners with a reminder of your tour.”
Showcase also lets artists separate their audience into different categories and take care of their campaigns to reach different types of listeners. These variations include “active audience”, (referring to users who have intentionally played a song over the past 28 days), “super” (those who are the most dedicated), “moderate” (who stream less frequently but still intentionally) and “light” (anyone who has streamed a song once or twice over the past 28 days).
It also outlines that to use the new tool, artists will need to meet a certain criterion – including having accumulated at least 1,000 streams over the past 28 days in one of the available target markets. From there, those eligible can set their budget within customized limits and see a detailed breakdown of the engagement from each campaign.
Find out more about the new Showcase feature here.
In other Spotify news, earlier this month the streaming platform denied rumours that users could repeatedly listen to their own 30-second song to receive monthly royalty payments.
The claims arose after finance analysts at JP Morgan previously stated that subscribers to the streaming service could make $1,200 (£960) a month by listening to their track on repeat for 24 hours a day.
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