In September of 2023, Spotify for Artists announced its brand new marketing tool called “Showcase”. In their own words, Showcase “lets you promote the releases you want, when you want, to the listeners you want to reach”.
But what is Showcase? How does it work, and how can it benefit your music career?
In this guide, we’ll cover all these topics and a lot more to ensure you make the most out of Showcase. Let’s dive in 👇
1. What is Spotify Showcase?
Spotify recently unveiled its brand-new promotional tool called “Showcase”.
In a nutshell, Showcase is a mobile banner appearing at the top of the Spotify homepage. It displays anything you want, from a classic album to a recent release.
It appears as a sponsored recommendation, similar to what you might see on Instagram:
Best of all, you can personalize the headline message to fit the release you are promoting! Want to promote an upcoming show? Why not write “On tour”. Or if you’re building hype for an upcoming release, you could write something like “Releasing music soon”.
Based on your campaign settings, Spotify will automatically push your Showcase to likely listeners. These could be “old” listeners who haven’t listened to your music recently, or new listeners who have never checked you out yet.
Showcase comes amid a study from Spotify showing that “catalog” tracks and charting more than ever:
Spotify defines a “catalog” track as a track that is older than 18 months. After that time, Spotify considers it has entered the artist’s catalog.
With that in mind, Showcase was created to give artists and their teams more flexibility around which tracks they can promote, when and to whom.
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Do you already have tracks on Spotify but they’re not getting the attention you hoped for? ⬇️
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2. How to Set Up Spotify Showcase
So, how do you go about setting up a Showcase campaign?
As of time of writing this article, Spotify Showcase is only available to artists established in the US.
However, this will certainly evolve in the future, and you can consult this page to check the full list of available markets (more on those later). If you are indeed in the US, then head over to the Showcase tab in Spotify for Artists. There, you will be able to configure and launch your own Showcase campaign.
Practically, a Showcase campaign starts at USD100. Every time someone clicks on your banner, a portion of your budget is spent. This runs for a maximum of 14 days, or shorter if your budget is already spent.
Spotify also excludes anybody who has already listened to your release from the campaign.
3. When Should You Use Spotify Showcase?
Here are a few ways you can use Showcase to promote your music:
- Don’t have any upcoming releases for a while? Why not promote an old track to re-engage with your listeners.
- Do you have a “seasonal” track (i.e. a summer banger or a Christmas song for example)? Use Showcase to push it in front of people.
- Wanna the celebrate the one-year anniversary of your first single? Why not leverage Showcase to do it!
- Have the streams of a recent release started to drop? Why not give it a boost with a Showcase banner.
| Read also: How to get more streams?
As you’ve probably understood, Showcase is not only about “which” tracks you promote. There’s also the question of “who” you will promote them to.
Luckily, Spotify has made things simple, splitting the potential audience of Showcase into 3 groups:
- Audience engagement, i.e. “active listeners”. Here, the Showcase banner will be pushed in front of your active audience. You can dial in the precise mix of super listeners, moderate listeners, and light listeners.
- Audience reactivation, i.e. “old listeners”. In this case, Showcase will target listeners who used to listen to you but have fallen off.
- Audience growth, i.e. “potential new listeners”. Finally, you can also decide to trust Spotify to target likely new listeners of your music.
It’s also interesting to note that you can only target one market (i.e. one country) per Showcase campaign.
4. How do you Measure the Effectiveness of Spotify Showcase?
As with all marketing campaigns, the idea is only as good as the result.
So, what kind of metrics does Spotify Showcase offer you?
Spotify breaks down these metrics into 3 buckets:
- Amplified listeners: these are already active listeners of your music who decide to stream your release after seeing the Showcase banner.
- Reactivated listeners: listeners who had stopped listening to your music, but became active listeners once again following the Showcase campaign.
- New active listeners: these are new listeners who had never listened to your music. Following the Showcase campaign, they started streaming your music for the first time.
5. Availability and Eligibility
As mentioned previously, Spotify Showcase has only just been rolled out. This means it is currently only available for artists based in the US.
Furthermore, you are also limited in the number of markets you can target.
A notable exclusion to mention here is the Asian market: you cannot target any listeners from Asian countries with Showcase. The full list of markets is available here.
Finally, another eligibility criteria relates to the number of streams. Indeed, you need to have had at least 1,000 streams in the past month to create a Spotify Showcase campaign.
Conclusion
That’s all for this guide on the new Spotify Showcase tool. We hope you have found it useful, and that we answered any questions you may have had.
You want to promote your music? ⬇️
What do you think of Spotify Showcase? Have you already used it, or are you planning on it? Let us know in the comments below! 👇