Whats the deal with Spotify's Campaign Kit?
Spotify’s Campaign Kit bundles Marquee, Showcase, and Discovery Mode with minor updates and expanded availability. These tools offer integrated marketing options within Spotify but vary in reach, cost, and effectiveness compared to paid social ads.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
Today we’re going to talk about what Spotify’s Campaign Kit is, and if you should use it.
The first thing you need to know is that Campaign Kit is essentially a rebrand for the following tools with a few minor updates:
Marquee
Showcase
Discovery Mode
Editorial Pitching
Marquee now gives you the ability to change the color, Showcase will have four new headline options and both are being given to artists in more countries. Discovery mode now not only includes Radio & Autoplay but also ‘Mixes’ such as Your Daily Mix and others.
These are all music marketing tools that are built directly into Spotify - but are they any good? Let’s talk about it.
First, i’ll walk through the tools then i’ll give you my recommendation for how to use them…
Spotify Marquee
Spotify claims that Marquee is 10X more effective than paid social media ads. Spoiler alert, they’re wrong, in terms of cost and engagement paid social ads are much better. However Marquee is still a wonderful tool to have.
Marquee is a pop-up that opens when a user first opens the mobile app that promotes a new song. It used to only be for retargeting, meaning you couldn’t gain any new fans with it, but now they’ve recently opened it up to newer audiences too.
You get access to Marquee once you have around 5,000 streams in the past 28 days in one of the countries that supports it, and the artist must live in the handful of countries that have the tool.
Spotify Showcase
Spotify Showcase is a relatively new tool. It shows up on the home page of the Spotify mobile app and it can be used to promote new or old songs (or albums). You only need 1,000 streams in one of the target countries that support it (which is a ton of countries), but Showcase is only available to US based artists now.
Showcase is primarily used to find new fans, unliked Marquee which started off with retargeting only.
Just like Marquee, it’s still not as good as social media ads like Meta ads. With Meta ads people actually hear your song and see you before they click and convert so the quality of audience you get is much higher than Marquee or Showcase. However - still a wonderful tool overall.
Discovery mode
Spotify’s website says you need 25,000 monthly listeners for Discovery Mode, but they’re actually wrong. Most artists get access with between 5k-15k monthly listeners. I know multiple projects that have gotten access in this range, and even a few with less than 5k monthly listeners.
Discovery mode is ‘free’. When you opt songs in they’ll receive bonus promotion in Radio & Autoplay algorithmic recommendations. However Spotify will take 30% of the royalties from the Radio & Autoplay streams during the duration the campaign is active.
Most of the time using Discovery Mode is a no brainer - it grows your audience for free and actually causes you to make more overall than if you didn’t use it.
How to use Campaign Kit tools
Here’s my recommendation for your first time testing out these tools:
Run a $100 Showcase campaign in the US or other Tier 1 country
Run a $100 Marquee campaign in the US or other Tier 1 country
Opt in your music to Discovery Mode
The reason we’re doing $100 in Showcase and Marquee each, is because its the minimum budget. This is really just to test the effectiveness for you and your music at this time.
In fact even if Showcase and Marquee work great for you, i’d still only do $100 in each for each new song you have. The reason is we want to compare how this does in comparison to your Meta ads campaign.
If your Meta ads are much worse than your Showcase / Marquee in terms of cost per listener, you’ll run more Showcase / Marquee and take off some ad budget
If your Meta ads are equal or better than your Showcase / Marquee in terms of cost per listener, you likely won’t do more Showcase / Marquee
Discovery Mode works great for most artists. I would look to see at least a 50% increase in radio listeners / streams, but most artists see at least a 100% increase in listeners / streams while in Discovery Mode.
Pay attention to which songs do better and worse, and month over month you can opt songs in and out to try and get the best overall results as possible.
New Content
When you're running ads to promote your music on Spotify, you have 3 main options: sending them to the track, your profile or a playlist. Each have their own pro's and con's, but one of them works best for triggering the Spotify algorithm.
Here are the top 5 mistakes music artists make with their ad campaigns.
Spotify's new changes to Marquee make it drastically more useful, especially for smaller artists.
In this video I show how much music artists get paid per stream across different streaming platforms, countries and over time.
News
Here are some music industry news highlights from the past week.
The UMG vs. TikTok battle expands, no end in sight
According to study, A&R’s use Spotify more than any other tool for music discovery
Warner Music Group is building an app for superfans
Flowers by Miley Cyrus is officially the biggest song of 2023
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency. Forbid Media specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.
1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or Alex Bochel here.
My Links:
🌍 MusicFunnels - Best website / store / funnels for music artists (get your 14-day FREE trial!)
💿 Partnered Projects - the best Spotify playlist service
🧑💻 Consultations
🎬 Get 15% off Melodist music distribution with code ANDREW15 here
Discount / Affiliate Links:
►► FeatureFM - use code ASOUTH30 for 30% off annual plans!
If you’d rather just purchase the e-book, or physical book or audiobook you can do so here.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Music Marketing Monday! Please give your feedback using the poll below.
In case you’re curious what platform i’m using to run this newsletter, it’s called beehiiv.
Turn Meta ads into real streaming growth
Learn the campaign structure Andrew uses to promote songs without guessing at every step.