Spotify Showcase!
Quick! Everyone check your Spotify for Artist! It’s Showcase time!
If you haven’t been keeping tabs on every artist’s favorite DSP, Spotify has unveiled a shiny new ad placement entitled “Showcase.”
What is Showcase?
Marketed as a powerful placement suited towards catalog releases, Showcase allows artists to place an ad right on the Spotify homepage of their listeners. Much like Marquee, Showcase is based on an artist’s fanbase, making the new placement one of the best ways for artists to ensure all their fans know about their release. With a minimum spend of $100, Showcase offers an accessible starting point for artists looking to invest more in themselves and streaming on the platform.
While still relatively new, Spotify’s blog provides some solid best practices and instructions on how to get started using Showcase.
What’s the difference between Marquee and Showcase?
Marquee and Showcase both allow artists and their teams to put their music in front of active and lapsed listeners, but they serve different purposes. Marquee ads show up as a pop-up when a user opens Spotify. It’s only for music released in the last 15 days, and the only headline option is “New music for you.” Showcase, on the other hand, puts your release in the middle of the Spotify homepage. You can advertise any release, new or old, and there are multiple headline options, ranging from broad phrases like “You might like” to specific shoutouts like “On tour” and “Seasonal vibes.”
What’s next?
The introduction of Showcase shows that Spotify is recognizing its role as a music marketing platform, not just a streaming platform. It makes sense to advertise music directly where they listen. It’s also consistent with Spotify’s recent pushes via Clips and Video to encourage artists to communicate with fans directly on Spotify instead of on separate social media platforms.
The big limitation of Showcase is that it can still only reach active and lapsed audiences. Showcase is a tool for strengthening an existing fan base, which limits its utility for artists who are trying to grow. Spotify Ad Studio lets you target fans of similar artists and genres, but only on Spotify’s free tier.
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