Case Studies
Anyone can claim to know how to market music, but can they prove it? We can.
After 4+ years of researching, testing, tracking, and obsessing over our Spotify marketing methods, we'd like to share a deep dive into all the analytics behind how our marketing services trigger the Spotify algorithm, and to what effect.
Here's our "Core 4" Spotify strategy: 1) long-term playlist support + 2) short-term, highly targeted Spotify campaigns + 3) genre-specific artist collaborations + 4) discovery mode = absolutely explosive results.
One of the single, most valuable things you can do as an Artist to grow on Spotify (in our experience) is to get your music on as many relevant (genre specific) playlists as possible, specifically ones that:
1) Fit your niche genre really, really well
2) Have lots of songs from popular artists and similar artists in your genre, whose audiences also fit your music
3) Allow your music to stay "play-listed" for very long periods of time (ideally 12+ months)
If the playlists are a great fit for your genre and you can stay on them for an extended period of time, your music data gets associated very quickly with your ideal 'Similar Artists' and 'Ideal Listeners', which causes the Spotify algorithm to take all the accumulated streaming data, perfectly match your music to your ideal listeners and fans, and start boosting and recommending it via algorithmic playlists like Radio and Discover Weekly. And all of that leads to even higher save rates and listener rates and gets your music added to even more listener created playlists, which fuels the algorithm even more.
THIS is why our long-term marketing features like ArtistPool and Anthem Silver and Anthem Gold have been SO effective for our artists, because we help get their music placed on great fitting playlists for a long period of time. And then our Short-term campaigns like Spotify Bundles, Spotify Ad Studio Campaigns, and Launches provide huge, highly targeted marketing bursts when needed, and they greatly speed up the growth process. When combined, our Long-term and Short-term marketing features are a wildly powerful duo.
Below you can view 2 types of case study results:
1) Deep dives into a variety of artists' individual data, and
2) Collections of past campaign results for specific marketing features.
These examples include screen shots and data from Spotify For Artists, so that you can see the actual, up-to-date results. *We will continue to frequently update this Case Studies page throughout the year as we collect more artist data.
ARTIST CASE STUDIES: (click on a name to artist analytics)
1. Mass Anthem (CCM/Worship)
3. Anaiah Nikole (CCM/Worship)
4. Shawna Starbird (CCM/Worship)
6. Genavieve Linkowski (CCM/Worship)
7. Remnant House (CCM/Worship)
9. Anthem Worship Español (Worship)
10. Mariannah y Diego (Spanish Christian Pop)
MARKETING FEATURE CASE STUDIES: (click on a feature to view past campaign results)
1. Anthem Collabs (coming soon)
2. Spotify Bundles Campaigns (coming soon)
3. Anthem Silvers (coming soon)
4. Anthem Golds (coming soon)
5. Spotify Ad Studio Campaigns (coming soon)
Mass Anthem
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Overview (updated 11.21.23)
Genre: CCM/Worship
Album/Project: Waymaker Worship (11 song album)
Start Date: Oct/Nov 2020
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 200k
Peak Monthly Listeners: 2.4M
Current Monthly Listeners: 2.4M+
Pre Campaign Followers: 16k
Current Followers: 50k+
Pre Campaign User Playlists: about 20k
Current User Playlists: 300k+ current (growing at 500-1k per day)
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 880k+ total
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 100M+
Algorithmic Streams: 77%
You can view Mass Anthem's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Mass Anthem is a well known band in the Christian music scene. We started working with Mass Anthem to market their Waymaker Worship album back in late 2020, because it wasn't performing as well out of the gate as their past album releases. At that time their Spotify monthly listeners was bottoming out at around 200k, which was the lowest it had been in years. The strategy for Mass Anthem was to get their Waymaker Worship music on as many worship Spotify playlists as possible and keep them there for as long as possible, with the goal of triggering the algorithm, and we did this with our yearly Anthem Gold campaigns.
Spotify Results
This project launched June 2020 and was getting around 50k total streams per month. After 1-2 years of consistent worship playlist marketing across roughly 30-50 playlists, it did a 5x to over 250k monthly album streams, with over 50% generated from the algorithm. Although much of the growth was initially seen in the top 2 songs (Stupid Deep/Sinking Deep, Above All/All In All), the remaining 9 singles all did a minimum 2x-3x on average as well.
Then, in January 2023, Waymaker Worship album did a 16x again from 250k monthly streams to 4M+ (that's an 80x from where they started!), with Above All/All In All jumping to 80k+ daily streams and every other album song doing between 6k-50k daily streams each.
Today, (5.5.23) Mass Anthem has over 2M+ monthly listeners (started at 200k, a 10x), their music now sits on 200k+ user playlists at any given time (growing by 500-2k+ per day), their Waymaker Worship album gets between 9M+ streams per month (a 100x-200x from 50k monthly streams pre-marketing), 5 songs from Waymaker Worship album hit the top 100 streamed CCM songs on Spotify ... at once ... (Above All/All in All hit #13, Goodness of God/O Praise the Name #78, Because He Lives/Because He lives #79, Build My Life/Living Hope #87, The Blessing/Doxology #97), the full album now consistently trends on Spotify, and they're gaining around 100 new Spotify followers every day (2k-3k total per month).
We fully expect Mass Anthem to cross 3M+ monthly Spotify listeners (at LEAST) by mid to late 2023, and the sky is the limit from there.
Takeaway
Even though they had a large following at the time of the release, it still wasn't getting streamed enough to perform well with the algorithm. And the songs weren't initially on very many listener playlists. But two years of consistent placement and streaming gave Spotify enough data to start recommending their music to the ideal listeners. It's also worth noting that we didn't anticipate Above All/All In All being the top song, but you never really know which song is going to hit!
Note: Spotify's Discovery Mode was only added into the equation for the first time in April of 2023, and Above All/All In All didn't get it activated until May of 2023, months after the HUGE algorithm jump.
MASS ANTHEM CONTINUED
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Other Singles
In addition to the Waymaker Worship results above, Mass Anthem also had songs they weren't focused on marketing hit at the same time the algorithm picked up on the other songs. Reckless Love was released in 2018 and was getting around 4-5k daily streams. It did an 10x-15x to now getting between 60k and 70k daily streams, it sits on 50k+ playlists at any given time, and it crossed 20M+ Streams. King Of My Heart / Pieces / No Longer Slaves, I'll Find You / Hills and Valleys, and I Have This Hope / Control / By Your Side all also experienced similar results.
Note: Again, these songs weren't even intentionally marketed, BUT because all the other worship music was getting picked up by the algorithm, this one got swept up with that data once all the new worship listeners started finding the music. You never know what's going to hit!
SioVera
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Overview (updated 11.21.23)
Genre: CCM/Worship
Album/Project: Worship Songs (10 song album) + 2 Single Anthem Collaborations (1 English, 1 Spanish) + Adoracion (10 song Spanish translation album of original Worship Songs album)
Start Date: Sep 2020
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 0 (brand new artist)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 430k
Current Monthly Listeners: 430k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 0
Current Followers: 4k+ (growing at 15-30 per day)
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 0
Current User Playlists: 11k+ (growing at about 25-50 per day)
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 23.2k total
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 2.5M
Algorithmic Streams: 70%
You can view SioVera's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
SioVera is a Christian music worship and pop artist that released her first worship album in 2020. She was a completely brand new artist at the time, with zero following and zero music released across any platform. Here was our strategy:
Step 1: Get her music on as many worship Spotify playlists as possible and keep them there for as long as possible, all with the goal of getting her music associated with her ideal worship artists. For this we used our yearly Anthem Gold campaigns, and got her initially placed on around 30-50 playlists.
Step 2: Collaborate SioVera with larger artists in her genre. We collaborated her with Mass Anthem and Anthem Worship/Anthem Worship Espanol for her original worship single, 'Known', and later on a Spanish collaboration with Mariannah y Diego.
Step 3: Activate Spotify's Discovery Mode later into the marketing process via our music distribution to supercharge the algorithm.
Spotify Results
SioVera showed consistent and steady growth up until the second year, when the algorithm suddenly spiked to over 57% across all her music as a whole, causing a 3.5-5x from around 2k-3k monthly listeners to 10.6k+ monthly listeners. The majority of her songs all "hit" the algorithm at the exact same time. Coincidence? No such thing.
Next, we collaborated her with larger artists via The Anthem Collab for her song 'Known', which took her up to about 28k monthly listeners the month of the release. This song is the first time she hit the editorial playlists, and this is still one of her highest performing songs to date.
And THEN, in March of 2023 we activated Spotify Discovery Mode via our Music Distribution, which launched her up to 45k-50k+ monthly listeners, with 64% of her Stream Sources coming from the Spotify algorithm, and her 'Worship Songs' album did a 10x from 400 daily streams to 4k+ daily streams. After this, she released a solo single with no collaborations, and she landed her first editorial playlist on her own, which means she's officially on the editorial radar. She is also now on over 8k user playlists. Since then we've done an Anthem Collab for Presencia Aqui (Known), and that landed both Novedades Cristianas AND Exitos Cristianos (almost 600k followers), which means she officially has the attention of the editorials now, so much that she was the face of Exitos Cristianos (600k followers) for her Adoracion album release.
Takeaway
Her music wasn't originally on a ton of playlists (30-50 in our network), and most of her songs were on less than 100 total playlists. But the playlists she WAS on were a great fit. And she definitely didn't have a ton of followers, and many of her songs had been performing at very low levels for almost 2 years. But the algorithm eventually gathered enough data to begin recommending her music to her ideal listeners, which is when she started to take off and crossed 10k+ monthly listeners, and then the collaborations and Spotify Discovery Mode shot the algorithm up to 100k+ monthly listeners, and now she is about to hit 300k monthly listeners.
Note: These days Spotify's Discovery Mode usually gives the average artist a 20-30% boost in streams on their songs due to the fact that so many artists are now utilizing it (as they should), but when we combine Discovery Mode with year-round, genre-specific playlisting and genre-specific collaborations, we've gotten absolutely insane results for our artists, just like SioVera.
Prediction
We wouldn't be surprised to see her cross 200k+ monthly listeners before the end of 2023. Her Worship Songs album is following the exact same trends and patterns as Mass Anthem's Waymaker Worship album, so we expect similar results! By early to mid 2024 we expect her to be one of the biggest Spanish CCM artists on Spotify. (Just wait and see. We're gonna make some moves for her. 👀)
Anaiah Nikole
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Overview (updated 11.21.23)
Genre: CCM/Worship
Album/Project: Promises (10 song album)
Start Date: Aug 2021
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 0 (brand new artist)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 75k
Current Monthly Listeners: 75k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 0
Current Followers: 1k+
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 0
Current User Playlists: 2.1k+
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 3.8k total
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 1M+
Algorithmic Streams: 49%
You can view Anaiah Nikole's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Anaiah Nikole is a Christian music artist that released her debut worship album, Promises, in 2021. She was a completely brand new artist at the time, with zero following and zero music released across any platform.
The strategy for Anaiah was simple. Get her music on as many worship Spotify playlists as possible and keep them there for as long as possible, all with the goal of getting her music associated with her ideal worship artists, and we did this with our yearly Anthem Gold campaigns.
Spotify Results
Anaiah showed consistent and steady growth throughout her first year, and at about month 6 of her second year is when the algorithm suddenly spiked to over 63% across all her music as a whole, causing a 2.5-3x from about 3k monthly listeners to just over 10k+ monthly listeners. Many of her songs "hit" the algorithm at the same time, showing a 40-75% algorithm source of streams rate.
Then, in April of 2023, we activated Discovery Mode via our Anthem Distribution, and as of today (5.25.23) she has over 20k monthly listeners (we started with her at ZERO btw) and is still showing steady growth. She's also about to break 1k total playlists for her album, and a couple of her songs currently have HUGE save rate spikes to over 1k per month.
Note: she has released almost ZERO new music since this one project. All the growth is coming from the consistent marketing we're doing for the Promises album.
Takeaway
Very similar to SioVera, Anaiah's didn't start on a ton of giant playlists, and many of her songs were initially on less than 100 total playlists each. But the playlists her music is on are a great fit. She also doesn't have a ton of followers. But again, the algorithm eventually gathered enough data to begin recommending her music to her ideal listeners, which is when she started to take off. This goes to show that music is never "too old" to start performing well. It just takes some time and data!
Prediction
We wouldn't be surprised to see her cross 50k-100k monthly listeners in 2023. Like SioVera, Anaiah's music is following the exact same pattern as Mass Anthem's Waymaker Worship album, and we expect similar results!
Shawna Starbird
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Overview (updated 11.21.23)
Genre: CCM/Worship
Album/Project: More To Me Worship (10 song album)
Start Date: Nov/Dec 2020
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 0 (brand new artist)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 75k
Current Monthly Listeners: 75k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 0
Current Followers: 465
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 0
Current User Playlists: 1.5k+
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 3.3k total
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 400k
Algorithmic Streams: 60%
You can view Shawna Starbird's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Shawna Starbird is a Christian music artist that released her debut worship album, More To Me Worship, in late 2020. She was a completely brand new artist at the time, with zero following and zero music released across any platform. Our goal was to get her music on as many worship Spotify playlists as possible and keep them there for as long as possible, all with the goal of getting her music associated with her ideal worship artists, utilizing Anthem Gold.
Spotify Results
Shawna's growth throughout her first year was a little slower than the rest of the case studies, but the algorithm eventually began to pick up around year 2 for her, keeping her around 5k-6k monthly listeners. Then, in April of 2023, we activated Discovery Mode via our Anthem Distribution, and she is now over 11k+ monthly listeners (up from zero) and is still showing steady growth. You can see that the algorithm is starting to build momentum and test out her top 3 songs which is a tell tale sign she's in for some really solid growth this year. She's now consistently over 30k monthly listeners and is primed for some big jumps in the near future.
Note: she has released ZERO new music since this one project. All the growth is coming from the consistent marketing we're doing for the album.
Takeaway
Very similar to SioVera and Anaiah, Shawna didn't start on a ton of giant playlists, but the playlists her music is on are a great fit. She also doesn't have a ton of followers. But again, the algorithm eventually gathered enough data to begin recommending her music to her ideal listeners, which is when she started to take off.
Prediction
We wouldn't be surprised to see her cross 100k+ monthly listeners in 2024.
Anthem Worship
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Overview (updated 11.22.23)
Genre: CCM/Worship
Album/Project: All Singles
Start Date: 2022
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 0 (brand new artist)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 300k+
Current Monthly Listeners: 300k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 0
Current Followers: 6k+
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 0
Current User Playlists: 30k+
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 13.5k total
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 1M+
You can view Anthem Worship's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Anthem Worship was designed as our own "Anthem version" of Elevation Worship, a collective to grow and feature other incredible worship artists in our community. The entire strategy is built around primary collaborations with Mass Anthem, Anthem Worship, and the featured artist + our long-term playlist marketing + occasional extra marketing campaigns via our One-Offs. But for the most part, this was designed as a launch pad for new artists to be used in combination with long-term playlist marketing.
Starting Jan 5 2024, we will be releasing music every 2 weeks for the entire year to see how quickly we can grow AW to 1M+ monthly Spotify Listeners. You'll notice in the audience screenshots above that when we release consistently + we maintain consistent playlist marketing support for each new song, we essentially double in streams/listeners off every new release. In addition to original music, we will also continue releasing tons of covers of either brand new, highly relevant worship songs (ex: Praise by Elevation Worship) or timeless older worship songs that never die (ex: Oceans by Hillsong United).
Spotify Results
AW hit 100k monthly listeners (with just 5 single songs released) on Nov 24, 2023.
The first releases in 2022 and 2023 definitely had slower starts than the latest releases in 2023, but even those songs still show steady and consistent long-term growth (Before Me is a great example of this, which started at around 250 daily streams and now does around 800 daily streams), and they are now performing at all time highs. This just goes to show that even older music that didn't "hit" right away still has life in it.
The latest few releases like Praise and We Crown You hit 8k-11k streams organically right out of the gate on day 1 and are performing VERY well (organically), even before turning on Discovery Mode. Praise hit 140k streams only 2.5 weeks in, without any paid marketing or Discovery Mode.
We've also learned that when a video of a song goes viral on Instagram, it quickly grows the streaming of the song across all DSPs at once (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. -- although for Christian music it seems the biggest effect is on Apple Music and not as much on Spotify). So as we begin to focus more energy into social media marketing for our artists, we expect to see steadier increased growth across all platforms. Praise (feat. Genavieve) went viral on IG about a week into the release, and it caused the song to immediately improve in performance on Apple Music (Spotify was already crushing it before this, so there really weren't any changes there). It's save rate is over 6k on Spotify, and it has been shazamed 2k times (in just 2.5 weeks).
Takeaway
Collaborations are proving to be the greatest shortcut to growing as an artist on Spotify, but it's important to note that:
1) We are using Mass Anthem's Spotify success and audience to push listeners to Anthem Worship and the featured artist, so collaborating with large artists is most ideal.
2) It is still crucial to have long-term playlist opportunities for the songs, because that is what helps sustain the growth after the first month hype dies down.
Prediction
1. Anthem Worship will hit 1M+ monthly Spotify listeners in 2024, likely around quarter 3 or 4, but it may happen sooner.
2. Our latest release of Praise feat. Genavieve Linkowski will likely explode once Discovery Mode is activated, so we wouldn't be surprised to see that start to do 20k+ streams per day and break into the top 100 CCM streamed songs on Spotify (songs released in the last 3 years).
3. Anthem Worship is going to perform wildly well in Multi-Tracks and within CCLI once we start getting into original worship music.
4. This is the next Elevation Worship-level worship collective.
Genavieve Linkowski
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Overview (updated 12.1.23)
Genre: Worship
Album/Project: All Singles
Start Date: Sept 7, 2023
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 9,737
Peak Monthly Listeners: 300k
Current Monthly Listeners: 300k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 4,234
Current Followers: 11k+
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 2,556
Current User Playlists: 30k+
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 30.4k total
Pre Instagram Followers: 38k total
Current Instagram Followers: 150k+ total
You can view Genavieve Linkowski's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Genavieve had a lot of success in music prior to us working with her (2 top 40 seasons on American Idol + 270k YouTube subscribers for her music covers + 38k followers on Instagram), but it didn't translate to her streaming platforms. She only had about 10k monthly Spotify listeners. But she also wasn't clear on her vision. She was doing a mixture of secular/mainstream covers and CCM/Worship covers, and it was confusing her brand and the algorithm. So our very first move was to have her to decide on one genre to pursue entirely, and she chose Worship.
Once she was committed to doing only worship music, we came up with a very simple, 4 move strategy:
1) Non-stop, genre-specific collabs with Mass Anthem and Anthem Worship (1 per month for 1 year straight)
2) Non-stop, genre-specific worship playlisting
3) Tons of highly popular worship covers, either evergreen songs or recent hits, but with unique sonic twists
4) Tons of high quality, viral worthy, short form content
Spotify Results
Right out of the gate our first collaboration cover of Gratitude became her biggest song, and we followed that up with Praise by Elevation Worship, which absolutely erupted on Spotify with 10k streams Day 1, and 200k streams, 8k saves, 4200+ user playlists, all in the first month alone (keep in mind this is JUST organic, no additional ad spend). Then, about a week after the release, the song started to majorly hit on Instagram, racking up 8M views across 4 different videos (all organic). This also caused the song to shoot up to about 1k daily streams across Apple Music, which can be a difficult platform to grow organically, and has boosted her followers to 150k+.
You'll see that with this model that every new release with us acts as a "stair step" in her streaming data, and every song continues to build off the previous releases, compounding the streams/followers/user playlists.
Takeaway
Collaborations are proving to be the greatest shortcut to growing as an artist on Spotify, but it's important to note that:
1) We are using Mass Anthem's Spotify success and audience to push listeners to Anthem Worship and Genavieve, so collaborating with large artists is most ideal.
2) It is still crucial to have long-term playlist opportunities for the songs, because that is what helps sustain the growth after the first month hype dies down. Praise was already doing record numbers on Spotify well before it went viral on Instagram.
3) Relevant covers are a huge shortcut to growing an audience on Spotify
4) Genavieve is proof that artists NEED to be creating viral worthy content for social media
Prediction
1. Genavieve will easily pass 1M monthly listeners in 2024 with this strategy.
2. Praise will likely be getting over 100k daily streams on Spotify within the next year (we've seen it happen before) due to continued consistent playlist marketing, social media content, and highly searched SEO
Remnant House
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Overview (updated 2.27.23)
Genre: Worship
Album/Project: All Singles
Start Date: Jan 21, 2024
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: about zero
Peak Monthly Listeners: 100k
Current Monthly Listeners: 100k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 21
Current Followers: 128
Pre Campaign User Playlists: under 100
Current User Playlists: 1.8k
You can view Remnant House's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Remnant House is a brand new worship duo that we decided to help launch using our strategy bundle:
1) Collab with Anthem Worship and Mass Anthem via Anthem Collab
2) Long-term, genre-specific play-listing
3) Consistent use of Spotify Ad Studio campaigns via our One-Offs, to quickly drive targeted listeners to the new releases
Spotify Results
After just 2 song collaborations ('Praise Your Name' and 'New Heart' (2 originals)) released in only just 39 days, plus the use of our One-Off Ad Studio campaigns, they hit 100k monthly Spotify listeners.
Takeaway
Our strategies work even with a brand spanking new artist.
Prediction
1. Remnant House can easily break half a million monthly listeners with 8 more collabs + playlisting.
2. Remnant House will leverage this new platform to lock in a major management deal, major label deal, and a major booking deal (we're helping them on this right now!)
Us Of Grace
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Overview (updated 1.9.24)
Genre: Worship
Album/Project: Sing My Soul: A Worship EP
Start Date: Oct 15, 2023
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 152
Peak Monthly Listeners: 15k
Current Monthly Listeners: 15k+
Pre Campaign Followers: 163
Current Followers: 243
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 2
Current User Playlists: 429
Lifetime Total User Playlists: TBD
You can view Us Of Grace's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Us Of Grace released a 5 song worship EP called Sing My Soul: A Worship EP, back in 2017, but for the past 5 years it's been completely dead on Spotify. It was only generating them 152 monthly listeners and about 5k total streams in the last 12 months. It had zero algorithm traction, and it was literally on only 2 user playlists.
However, it's a super high quality and well-produced album, so we decided to use it to prove that ANY high quality music on Spotify, whether newly released or a "dead EP" from 2017, can perform well with just 2 things: 1) long-term, genre-specific playlisting and 2) Spotify Discovery Mode.
Strategy:
1) First get the songs added to as many relevant worship playlists as possible for a few moths and start giving Spotify the correct listener data
2) After a few months of collecting the streaming data, active Spotify Discovery Mode
Spotify Results
After 3 months of adding the 5 songs to as many worship playlists as possible, we got Us of Grace up to 10k monthly listeners. The algorithm streams rose to 10% as a whole (started basically from zero), and each song started to perform at around 200 daily streams. Then, we turned on Discovery Mode and the songs essentially doubled to 300-600+ daily streams, and the save rates and playlisting rates have been steadily increasing, including their followers which now grow at around 1-2 per day (used to be zero or negative).
Takeaway
This goes to show that it literally doesn't matter if a song or album is old, because when it comes to Spotify, there's no such thing as too old of music, only music that never collected enough accurate data for Spotify. With over half a billion monthly Spotify users, there's always a brand new audience waiting to discover your music.
Prediction
We wouldn't be surprised to see Us of Grace get up to 50k monthly Spotify listeners this year off just this 5 song EP and reignite their excitement to release new music to their new and growing fan base.
Anthem Worship Español
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Overview (updated 12.4.23)
Genre: Spanish CCM/Worship
Album/Project: All Singles
Start Date: 2023
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 0 (brand new artist)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 50k
Current Monthly Listeners: 50k
Pre Campaign Followers: 0
Current Followers: 1k+
Pre Campaign User Playlists: 0
Current User Playlists: TBD
You can view Anthem Worship Español's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
Anthem Worship Español is the Spanish half of Anthem Worship, a collective to grow and feature other incredible worship artists in our community, specifically via Spanish worship music. We have a significant reach to the Spanish worship editorials via Anthem Distribution, so we've decided to double down on this new niche. Here's the strategy:
1) Tons of nonstop collaborations with our artists, to give their English music a brand new Spanish audience. Covers and originals.
2) We are utilizing Spotify's Spanish Worship editorial playlists pretty hard for this.
3) We are also growing Spanish Worship playlists for long-term playlist support.
2024 will be a very big year for AWE, bc any song we do in English for Anthem Worship will be translated into Spanish for an AWE release via our Anthem Translators.
Spotify Results
AWE hit 40k monthly listeners off just the first song, Presencia Aqui, being playlisted non-stop by 2 editorial playlists + some long-term playlist support. We'll have more to report on in 2024.
Takeaway
Artists need to realize there is a HUGE Spanish audience that is just waiting to become fans of their music, they just need to learn to sing well in Spanish and then have their English songs translated. We're going to prove that this is a killer strategy to get more than one release out of every song.
Prediction
1. AWE very well could break 1M monthly listeners in 2024, given the number of songs they will be releasing.
Mariannah y Diego
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Overview
Genre: Spanish CCM/Pop
Album/Project: All Singles
Start Date: Feb 2022
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: just under 10k (about 600 daily streams)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 124k
Current Monthly Listeners: 80k-90k
Pre Campaign Followers: 477
Current Followers: 1747
Pre Campaign User Playlists: less than 1k
Current User Playlists: 3.3k
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 23.9k total
Algorithmic Streams: 62%
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 5M
You can view Mariannah y Diego's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Strategy
The strategy for M&D was the same as with the rest: get their music on as many Spanish worship Spotify playlists (and Christian music mix playlists) as possible and keep them there for as long as possible, all with the goal of getting their music associated with her ideal Spanish Christian artists. They first signed up for ArtistPool, later on added Anthem Silver (which is where their first big algorithm push got triggered), and then they transitioned into Anthem Gold, which is where they currently are now and where they're seeing the bulk of their current growth from. Via Anthem Gold, we are running custom ads to their top Spotify audience locations to grow custom playlists filled with both their music and their top Similar Artists' music, PLUS we're running 24/7 Youtube ads to push their music videos, all of which has a supercharging affect on the algorithm and audience.
Additionally, in April 2023 we started utilizing our FB/IG One-Off feature for their song Entre Parades, which performed SO well that they now use the FB/IG One-Off for nearly every new release, or to boost high performing past releases.
Spotify Results
A few months into their Anthem Silver, the algorithm spiked and is now at 72% across all their music as a whole, and they did a 12x from about 10k monthly listeners to now between 100k-120k+ monthly listeners. This caused their music to get noticed by the editorial playlists for the first time, and now they consistently land the biggest editorials in their genre with their new releases, which accounts for about 11% of their streams.
As of May 2023, we have also been using our new IG/FB One-Off Campaign to run traffic directly to their single, Entre Paredes, which has caused it to chart in Miami, LA, and Chicago, and jump to their top streamed song.
(Note: In their followers tracking image it appears that they may have paid for fake followers at a couple points prior to working with TAC (you'll see the unusual, square looking plateaus that shoot up and drop down), but since marketing with TAC, you'll notice a healthy and consistent upward trend in followers. That's what you want!)
Takeaway
Very similar to our other artists, Mariannah y Diego's music wasn't on a ton of playlists (now 2.2k-8k playlists total, but only about 10-20 were originally from our playlist network, and their top songs are only on around 200-300 total playlists each), but the playlists their music WAS on were a perfect fit. And again, the algorithm eventually gathered enough data to begin recommending their music to their ideal listeners based off those playlist streams, which is why things started to take off.
Prediction
We wouldn't be surprised to see M&D easily cross 200k+ monthly listeners by late 2023.
Punch Parade
Click images to enlarge and scroll
Overview (Updated 5.30.23)
Genre: Pop
Album/Project: 5 singles, focused on Look At Me Now
Start Date: Dec 2020
Campaign Status: Still Running
Pre Campaign Monthly Listeners: 2k (about 200 daily streams)
Peak Monthly Listeners: 87k
Current Monthly Listeners: 40k-50k
Pre Campaign Followers: 247
Current Followers: 2k+
Pre Campaign User Playlists: <500
Current User Playlists: 15.3k+
Lifetime Total User Playlists: 104.4k total
Algorithmic Streams: 31%
Lifetime Artist Streams Generated: 4.25M
You can view Punch Parade's Spotify by clicking HERE.
Overview
Punch Parade is a mainstream pop band that began marketing with us in late November, 2020 (they started in that sad looking "canyon" in the first screenshot, right before skyrocketing). At the time, Punch Parade had just under 2k monthly Spotify listeners, and they'll tell you they felt pretty defeated after what they spent on music production and music videos. After we worked through their data, we found that they were sitting on a song with a SIGNIFICANTLY higher save rate than all their other songs. Even though it was only getting around 200 daily streams, we knew it was meant to perform MUCH higher.
Strategy
The goal of their marketing plan was to get their song with the highest save rate (Look At Me Now) on as many mainstream pop playlists as possible, so that their music would be associated with their ideal similar pop artists. For this we utilized our yearly Anthem Gold campaigns. In addition to that, we identified that their two biggest audiences for that song were located in Japan and India, so we also ran consistent One-Off Spotify FB ads promoting their music to those specific locations, and we grew playlists with their hit song at the top and the rest of their singles spread throughout.
Today, we mainly focus on One-Off Spotify FB ads so that we can find a much more specific pop audience. We've tested out the US with really great results, but our main target is still Japan. On top of that, we officially activated Spotify's Discovery Mode for Punch Parade in March of 2023, and that has consistently helped the algorithm growth as well.
Spotify Results
Fast forward about 2.5 years form their marketing start date with TAC and they broke 82k+ monthly listeners (currently around 80k), their music is on over 15k listener playlists, and Look At Me Now is by far their break-out single and gets between 5k-7k daily streams (about 150k+ per month), about 30% of those coming from the algorithm. We also helped them secure a significant publishing deal with the biggest and most prestigious micro sync music licensing company in the world, called MusicBed, in 2022 by leveraging their Spotify success (which in and of itself recouped the cost of the marketing and more!).
Results (Apple Music)
The Spotify marketing also spilled over significantly into all their other music platforms. Look At Me Now gained 134k+ Apple Music streams, 10k+ Shazams, and Punch Parade landed their first significant Apple Music playlist called TikTok by Digster Japan, all organically. Japan is also their top country on Apple Music.
Results (Amazon Music)
Look At Me Now gained 115k+ Amazon Music streams + their Amazon Music fanbase has now grown from 100 fans to 3.6k+ fans (188 Superfans), which is the most of any of their platforms. And this audience lines up exactly with their other platforms with Japan, India, and the US being their top countries.
Results (Youtube)
Look At Me Now has gained 200k+ organic Youtube views combined across their official music video, lyric video, and generic Distrokid video by Topic, plus they've gained just under 1,000 channel subscribers, which will soon become another revenue stream.
Takeaway
You only need 1 high performing song to break an artist in today's digital age! Punch Parade only had 5 songs released at the start of our marketing (now they have 10), and the top song, Look At me Now, has carried the band.
Prediction
We anticipate Look At Me Now to go viral at some point in the near future. It's already getting a lot of organic TikTok attention (which we've known would start to happen since day 1), and now we're more intentionally training the Spotify algorithm with more highly targeted Spotify FB/IG ads. We wouldn't be shocked to see this song 10-20x to over 100k daily streams within 2023 and truly launch Punch Parade's career in the pop space.
Conclusion
That's 11 different artists across 3 different genres (CCM/Worship, Spanish Christian Pop, and Pop) they all experienced the same results from triggering the algorithm with long-term, genre-specific playlisting + short-term one-off campaigns + anthem collaborations.
To sum all of this up, our experience and data shows that music is never too old to trigger the Spotify algorithm, AND most artists stop marketing their older music way too soon. If the music is of a high enough quality that it can compete with the best in its genre and the artist brand is solid, and it STILL hasn't performed well, it's because Spotify simply doesn't have enough accurate data on it to recommend it to listeners. And you can fix that with consistent, long-term, genre-specific playlisting, direct Spotify traffic streaming campaigns, and genre-specific collaborations.
If you're interested in getting similar results with you or your artist's music, we'd love to consider working with you! You can view all our marketing features HERE.