Music streaming has been the top revenue driver for the music industry, followed closely by live music. Spotify is the biggest of the music streaming platforms and is the hub for over 200 million active music fans. These fans are already engaged and are more likely to turn a listening experience into a live experience. In 2018, Spotify generated over $40 million in ticket sales for 700 artists. For venues and event promoters, this means an audience that is more likely to buy tickets to an artist they know they listen to.
One of Spotify’s newer features, Ad Studio is a self-serve ad platform that allows venues and promoters to advertise upcoming shows to Spotify’s freemium users. Spotify is the perfect tool to add to your current marketing mix and gain an extra layer of exposure to another type of fan, one who is actively listening to the artist that is coming to your venue.
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How Spotify Ad Studio Works
Spotify lets you tap into their database of over 200 million listeners and promote your events directly to music fans. In Ad Studio, you can create audio ads and target based on demographics, genres, mood-based interests, and the fanbases.
For your event, you will need to specify your targeting based on the artist and affinity artists. Our, in-house digital marketing agency, Rockhouse Partners, also recommends preliminary artist research to find affinity artists, the ideal geographical parameters, and age range to target. If it’s an artist you have had at your venue before, you can verify similar artists through the Etix Purchase Correlation report.
Another important step is choosing when you should implement Spotify Ads. Spotify Ads are great for increasing event awareness, which is important at the beginning of your event lifecycle, close to your onsale date, and at the closing period, which is 1-3 weeks before event. These are the periods when awareness is more important, especially if you are in the closeout period and you have a show that is not selling as well as you had hoped.
For your audio ad, you will need an image, ticket link, and a transcript of your ad. Make sure you add a partner Id to the ticket link to track your conversions. If you prefer not to upload your own audio, Spotify allows you to choose one of their voice overs with background track included. These ads are then served to non-subscribing users between song plays based on your targeting parameters.
Benefits of Spotify Ad Studio
- Strike through the noise and promote directly to a database of engaged listeners of the artists that come to your venue or event.
- Increase venue and event awareness, and draw new customers to your venue
- Increase your email list, and turn them into new ticket buyers into loyal concert goers.
- Pinpoint your best audience with targeting features that are driven by listening interest and behavior.
- Target across desktop and mobile devices, depending on where your target audience spends the most time.
Spotify Ads in Action with the Clyde Theatre
Once a vacated movie theatre, now transformed into a premier music venue in the heart of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Clyde Theatre produces over 100 concerts annually, ranging from country music to alternative to niche genres. Since opening in 2018, The Clyde has built up its presence in the Fort Wayne area through a full-funnel marketing campaign and some assistance from the Rockhouse Partners team.
For each concert The Clyde creates a front-end and back-end campaign that generates big buzz during announcement, momentum buildup with mid-cycle giveaways, and an ending ticket sales push. The marketing channels include a street team to flyer, radio promotions, Facebook and Google Ads, and even a little TV. Depending on the concert and the primary demographics, The Clyde focuses more on the channels where they know the fans will be.
This was The Clyde’s strategy for an alternative rock show for the band, “I Prevail.” Using Spotify, they created a target audience based on the band’s listeners’ affinity artists and the opening act to reach a younger fanbase that may not have been aware of The Clyde. The ads ran during the closing period right before the show, generating a high number of impressions. Adding Spotify Ads to the marketing mix helped reach more younger fans and increased the number of newcomers to the venue — people drove over 150 miles from Cincinnati, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois to attend this show.
