I’ve Changed My Mind About Spotify Showcase

When I last wrote about Spotify Showcase, I had effectively sworn it off in favor of Meta ads.

I couldn’t target warm audiences, Spotify blew through my budget in the blink of an eye, and the results were mediocre.

Instead, I opted for Marquee, but at some point they added a requirement of 5,000 monthly active listeners in your target market.

To clarify, we’re talking monthly active listeners, not just monthly listeners.

I’ve currently got 17K monthly active listeners, and apparently less than 5K of them are in the US. It must be close though, because I was able to run a Marquee campaign to the US at the end of July.

My collab with UAP wasn’t doing so hot with Meta ads, so I thought we should try a Marquee campaign. That wasn’t available, but I was able to target warm audiences in the US with Showcase, and I was pleasantly surprised with what we got for $37.51.

You can click to enlarge any of these screenshots:

3.1 streams per listener with a 21% intent rate is pretty damn good, though it is a 4-track EP. I used to insist on 25%, but I’ve shamelessly lowered my standards.

I mathed that out to 325 streams which will earn us $1, but I know better than to expect positive short-term ROI when promoting to Spotify. In the long run, who knows?

So we tried Showcase campaigns to five more countries (again, click to enlarge):

Even the worst performer got 3.1 streams per listener. While the audiences in the Germany and Australia campaigns were technically warm, I had to open them up to Programmed listeners, who only heard my music through Autoplay or algorithmically generated playlists like Release Radar and Discover Weekly.

The warmer the targeting, the better the results.

No surprise there.

More importantly, it didn’t blow through my budget in a day. Spotify took its time and spent $222 of our $500 budget across the five sub-campaigns.

And so when the two-year anniversary of my last album rolled around, I figured I’d give it the Showcase treatment.

In the US, I got 211 listeners for $87.42, with a 15.2% intent rate and 3.6 streams per listener. In the UK I picked up 73 listeners for $40.66 with only a 9.6% intent rate, but 5.8 streams per listener.

I didn’t really know what to expect promoting an old release, but Showcase again showed restraint and spent only two-thirds of my budget, which was the minimum allowable ($100 per country).

I don’t want to bore you with charts and numbers (I know, too late), but I have to share my top performer: my new album.

My US campaign got 226 listeners for $65.41, with 6.5 streams per listener and a 28.3% intent rate. And 683 saves!

So I ran it to 7 more countries (don’t forget you can click to enlarge):

In aggregate, Spotify spent $189 of my $700 budget with a 17.8% intent rate. It did especially well in the UK, so I took a leap of faith and launched new campaigns to the US and UK with default targeting.

That means Spotify gets to choose, and so far it’s been fairly discriminating. The intent rate is lower, but so is the cost per click. Here’s what I’m seeing in the UK so far for $174.24:

253 listeners, 3.7 streams per listener, 10.3% intent rate, and 349 saves. The US campaign isn’t doing as well, which is unusual, but it’s only $72 in.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with these results. It’s especially nice to have Showcase as an option when your Meta campaign is failing.

In almost all cases, I chose the headline “Getting buzz” to invoke a whiff of FOMO, though I couldn’t find any data to suggest that it outperforms other choices such as “You might like” and “Recently released.”

Be aware that in order to run a Showcase campaign, you need 1000 streams over the past 28 days in the country you want to run the campaign in.

Albums and EPs perform better than singles, as you might expect, but there is one benefit to running Showcase campaigns on singles: they only go out to premium accounts, because only premium accounts can select individual tracks to play.

As a result, the royalty rate is higher and the listener potentially more valuable. But again, it’s not like you’re going to turn a profit anytime soon!

Have you been using Spotify Showcase and/or Marquee? Share your results and thoughts in the comments!