Using Spotify Analytics to Drive Streaming and Growth

Sara Mekinc

Jan 11, 2022

Music marketing was once notorious for spending a lot and hoping for good results, but data analytics have changed all that. Now, your every marketing effort is trackable. Once you know your way around Spotify analytics – or any data analytics, for that matter – you can spend your budget wisely, use the channels that yield the maximum ROI, and “growth hack” your Spotify releases as you go.

Here’s how to do it step by step.

Step 1: Understanding Spotify analytics and why you need them

When thinking about analytics for Spotify, think about the data that gets captured each time you hit the play button. Spotify monitors which track is being played, for how long, is it being skipped ... And that’s just the beginning.

Spotify analyses all this data and compiles it into information you can use to understand your audience and how well your music resonates with them. If you monitor the Music and Audience tabs in your Spotify for Artists dashboard, you’ll be able to examine how each track performs, see whether it’s being added to playlists, and view details about your listeners.

Pay attention to these stats: top-played tracks, playlist adds, listener age, gender, countries, cities and “Listeners also like”. This kind of information is essential for the next step: “growth hacking” your releases with Spotify analytics.

Step 2: Using analytics for Spotify growth hacking

According to a recent marketing survey, only 30% of marketers use analytics or form data-driven decisions for promotion. This provides you with a big opportunity, as savvy use of Spotify analytics can give you an upper hand in successfully promoting your playlists and tracks – and more streams mean more profits.

Here’s how you can start.

✅ Create a Spotify playlist you want people to listen to. Mix your best tracks with tracks by other artists that have a similar vibe. This way, you can promote your playlist to fans of those artists and (sub)genres. See this article for handy tips on Spotify playlists.

✅ Next, set a target audience. Sponsored posts that speak to the right people will save you money. Use the stats mentioned above to paint a picture of your typical listener. We’ll look at an example in the next chapter.

✅ Create Facebook and Instagram ads. With Facebook’s Ads Manager, you can create ads exactly as you need them, pinpointing locations and interests, testing ad designs, etc. It’s not always easy, but it’s well worth it.

✅ Know how much you can spend on marketing. Set realistic and attainable goals, such as “I’ll invest $100 to get 1000 Spotify streams in one month.”

✅ Set up your Ads Manager account – you’ll need a Facebook page and a credit card.

✅ Make sure your social media profiles are in order – take care of your profile photos, artworks, bios, etc. Attractive social media profiles will make visiting your Spotify playlist more convincing.

✅ Drive people to your Spotify playlist with attention-grabbing ads. Go for two main placements: News Feed and Stories. Videos are popular, so think about creating attractive 15-second clips with music. Keep your texts short and to the point.

✅ Do A/B testing. You won’t know right away what kind of messages and content your target audience responds to the best. You can change one element of an ad (color, call-to-action, text, etc.), run different versions, and see which one performs better. Check out this article if you want to learn the ropes.

You can advertise to both your existing and potential fans. Digging into your stats really pays off, and Spotify analytics can help.

Step 3: Learn from UMEK’s example

Let’s look into UMEK’s Spotify analytics insights for a visual example.

When creating and targeting ads, think about who your (potential) listeners are, what languages they speak, and what they like to do. Imagine their typical day and how your music fits into it.

In UMEK’s case, if we imagined his average fan based on analytics, it would be a 30-year-old guy from Berlin who also follows Charlotte de Witte and Alan Fitzpatrick on Spotify.

When creating the ad, we’d determine the age bracket (spanning 10–15 years) that represents UMEK’s fanbase the most. The 18–44 group would work, but we can narrow it down further to a core audience of 20- to 34-year-olds.

Even though we can see that the base is predominately male, we’d select both genders. The audience can be defined further according to interests.

When choosing the countries to target, based on the monthly streaming map, Germany is definitely the place to be. European countries don’t come as much of a surprise, but there are also others where UMEK’s fanbase is strong, such as Mexico. If you check the Social Media analytics as well, you’ll see that the map of Instagram followers is similar, with the strongest presence in Spain. We could also narrow our targeting to the city level.

We’d then also look at the various interests of potential fans. If you want to promote your new releases on Spotify, the correct targeting could be an intersection between the following interests, as we assume your target audience in this case are fans of Electronic music:

1.     Electronic artists and festivals (such as Tomorrowland)

2.     Electronic magazines and larger websites (Discogs, DJ Mag, etc.)

3.     DJ equipment (Pioneer, Ableton, etc.)

Step 4: Use retargeting to boost your promotion

Once your campaign is running, keep monitoring your analytics for Spotify and other social media channels. You’ll see whether people are interacting with your Spotify playlist, and which ads brought them there. You’ll also be able to create a custom audience by targeting people who’ve already engaged with you via Facebook or Instagram.

Start your retargeting by looking into these stats:

✅ Video ad views. You can promote your video ad directly to generate views, and then retarget another ad to the individuals who’ve viewed at least 10 seconds of your video.

✅ If you have a list of emails that you can use (for example, people who signed up for your newsletter), you can download a template under the “Customer list” tab and import it back into your Ads Manager. It will automatically be anonymized and synced with Facebook’s data.

✅ Based on your custom audiences, you can later create lookalike audiences with similar characteristics on different markets (e.g. your custom audience is created for Spain and you’d like to create a lookalike in Portugal, because your listeners also hail from there).

By paying attention to analytics and adapting as you go, you’ll start seeing results on your Spotify profile, and probably other channels as well. This brings us to the final step.

Step 5: Use a platform that combines Spotify analytics with other important stats

To save valuable time and effort, look up tools that can help interpret your Spotify analytics. Better yet, use a platform that does the heavy lifting for you, while at the same time conveniently tracking all your social media and streaming metrics in one place.

Try out Viberate’s Spotify analytics, where you can track and examine your own Spotify stats along with those of other artists releasing on Spotify. You can track the performance of all your Spotify releases, filter out thousands of Spotify playlists by genres and followers, and gain useful insights. You can also look into an artist you respect and see if there are any patterns you could learn from to reach your goals faster.

Give it a go and see what music data can do for you. Start your free trial here.