How Spotify Used Simple Data to Create an Exciting Marketing Campaign
Nostalgia is a pandemic that we all have accepted, and now and then, we wistfully look back at those times with better music. But could we have had access to such a large amount of music anytime in the past?
If you wanted to see Vivaldi conduct Four Seasons, you had to be a noble and travel to Venice’s finest opera, and who could be sure of the sound quality? But now, Vivaldi is just a part of your study music playlist.
“It’s technology married with liberal arts and humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” – Steve Jobs.
Music streaming apps like Spotify are a godsend for music enthusiasts worldwide, with their millions of song offerings. While Spotify uses cutting edgy technology to enhance the experience of music listening, their content marketing strategy is a lesson to learn. Read on to see how Spotify used simple consumer data in a viral marketing campaign that made the brand a part of new year traditions for the younger generation.
Start Music
Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media service company founded in 2006. It is the world’s largest music streaming service provider, with 433 million active monthly users and 177 million paid subscribers as of 2022.
Spotify has emerged as a preferred music streaming platform for millennials, and its rise to success has been quite incredible. It provides music on an international platform where users can listen to their favorite artists, and musicians can make their playlists, promote their music, and be discovered by new listeners.
Off-key
Daniel Ek founded Spotify with the simple idea of countering music piracy and helping music artists get their compensation ethically. And even though Spotify has a wide range of music, artists, and personalized song suggestions, it has faced stiff competition from tech giants like Apple Music and YouTube Music from its inception.
These competitors were the early movers in the digital music streaming industry and have deep pockets thanks to their parent companies. And while Spotify could not take them on with a big war chest, it has relied on its proficiency in using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to make music streaming better in personalized playlists and music recommendations.
But despite its tech wizardry, Spotify still struggled to stand out from the crowd of rival streaming applications. It realized that it needed a viral marketing campaign to get the attention of its millennial audience, who were known to shun traditional advertisements. A marketing campaign targeted at the current tech-savvy and social media-proficient generation.
It's a Spotify Wrap!
Spotify started doing wrapped for its users in 2016, and it instantly became a viral trend on Instagram. The wrapped campaign allows Spotify users to view a compilation of data about their activity on the platform over the past year and invites them to share it on social media. Wrapped data includes the user’s most listened songs, artists, and music genres.
Every year, millions of Spotify users share their Spotify Wrapped on their social media profiles. Music enthusiasts are known to wait for the Wrapped to flaunt and compare their music taste. In the app store, the Spotify app has historically seen a jump at the end of the year after the wrapped is released.
Spotify Wrapped is a creative combination of machine learning and people’s music taste. People love this form of advertising because it is personal. This campaign didn’t speak about Spotify or what it offers to users. Instead, it talked about the users and their changing music tastes. This personalization made Spotify Wrapped a viral hit.
With the success of the annual Wrapped, Spotify came up with a full decade of Wrapped in the year 2020. They put together the past decade’s hit tracks in a single playlist and recreated the magic. The reception was splendid, and the campaign won various international awards like the People’s Voice Awards for Music and Webby’s Best Data Visualization Award.
Fine notes of Spotify Wrapped
- Data is not boring. It is just that most data are represented that way. Spotify’s wrapped is a lesson on how to use data and statistics to create engaging content for users. Using the data to speak about consumer behavior, Spotify received a hugely positive response.
- Understanding consumer psychology has helped Spotify create this campaign. Music is strongly associated with memory and nostalgia. And Spotify used the power of technology to interpret the musical journey of users. It added a unique emotional value to the content.
- Spotify utilized the power of social media in this campaign and earned free publicity by encouraging customers to flaunt their Spotify wrapped on their social media platforms. Spotify’s marketing team describes this phenomenon as a “FOMO effect,” where the exclusivity nudges the non-users to join Spotify.
Tune in for more
Spotify’s success with wrapped was a result of researching consumer behavior and tailoring a content strategy according to them.
Talk to our experts today if you are looking for a content strategy to grow your business.
