Spotify Case Study - December 2019
With Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” campaign upon us, I’ve chosen my case study to be on Spotify’s marketing of this campaign. Spotify had 7 million users when it first launched back in 2009 but fast-forward a decade later and the company now boasts to have around 248 million active users, of which 113 million are paid, subscribers.
I’ve been an avid user of Spotify for the best part of 2009, I am, however, not a premium user. I do and painfully endure the ads. Although, maybe after writing this case study, I might be converted. But we'll see...
Spotify’s marketing for the wrapped campaign is unique. They have their annual marketing campaign which comes around at the beginning of December each year - sometimes around the 6th. Their marketing usually consists of embarrassing billboards that have cringeworthy blasts from the pasts of its users. Another feature is that Spotify listeners will receive their wrapped campaign, which is personalized, and it consists of their listening habits from the past year.
Spotify used billboards in various countries/cities back in 2017/18, and they were shown all over social media from Facebook to Twitter. I liked that they used billboards for such a cult thing of people’s music tastes. Something that is so private, and personable and then they showed this in various places.
I seem to recall the billboard below doing its rounds on social media. This created a storm on socials, and I remember a load of my friends posting about this and seeing a lot of messages on Twitter regarding this particular billboard.
I was first introduced to Spotify from my older brother. He was studying music and showed me this cool app that I could download onto my laptop and ‘stream’ music. I was quite confused at the time, I eventually caught on and I kind of liked the process. He showed me how to create ‘Playlists’.
However, I never actually used this function.
After enjoying Spotify for a couple of years I never knew of the whole “Wrapped” campaign until I saw it more on social media and I just had to know what awful songs I was listening to and thus could make a change on my music habits.
Back in 2017, the Wrapped campaign was under a different name, as it was first titled ‘Year in Music’. The team at Spotify then wanted to change this name into something, fresh, new and fun.
Then that was when Spotify Wrapped was reborn.
I remembered the microsite, for this as once again, I found it out on social media. I just had to get involved. I remember clicking on a link and being taken to the microsite. A microsite is really what it says it is, it’s a micro-website, that consists of just one scrolling webpage.
This was a very jarring site, with the colours (as shown in the screenshot above and below), but it seemed to work for Spotify and their angle at this time. The site then took the listeners on a journey of their listening habits from the past year.
With the new angle of their microsite, you were then greeted by different stats on your music taste. These varied from several songs that you’ve listened to, your most listened to artists, and that of your top genres. Back in 2017, I listened to music for 7,229 minutes - which is a solid 5.0201 days.
I listened to 898 different songs and I listened to 400 different artists. I also explored 11 different music genres. I don’t think I could even list 11 different music genres...
Below are some screenshots from the 2017 version of Spotify Wrapped.
Everyone in 2017, received the same last goal which was to be brave enough to share your listening history – I really liked this as it’s something that Spotify are trying to push out, especially with this campaign.
I think with these campaigns Spotify’s goal was that its listeners would share their personalized music habits. I sure know I did, I shared the last image - infographic on my Facebook. I like being able to share my music taste with my friends. I don’t listen to music for a long time, but I want my friends to know how many minutes I put into the app. I then want to know how much my friends put in. Also, I really like showing people my top artists and top songs for that particular year.
Then you fast forward to 2018 – and it’s still more or less the same. They had a microsite again for this year, and it looked far more impressive.
The 2018 campaign was a rather good one for me, it was mostly the electronic duo Daft Punk leading the race in my music. I believe they came up trumps for nearly every category that I can recall. What can I say, I enjoy the French Electro duo and what of it?
Below are some screenshots from 2018’s Wrapped.
Then another fast-forward to 2019. This year Spotify didn’t create a microsite, which is a little unfortunate. I enjoyed their websites and found there to be a joy with this process. But this year, they had animated cards within the Spotify app. I liked this as it was within the app on your smartphone.
Below are a few screenshots of my 2019 Wrapped.
On December 3rd, Spotify released a blog post to their website titled ‘The Top Songs, Artists, Playlists, and Podcasts of 2019—and the Last Decade’. They start by mentioning how we the users reflect on the past 12 months of our listening habits and that we can’t wait to see what songs/artists we’ve overplayed in the past year.
They then follow on by stating that Post Malone – singer/songwriter has come top with being the most streamed artist with over 6.5 billion streams. I find it crazy knowing that I’m one of the people who’s made an artist go to the top of their platform, along with billions of other people.
This is Austin Post’s– real name of the rappers, first time hitting this milestone within the Wrapped campaign and he did it in 12 weeks, after dropping his ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding’ album.
The second most listened to artist was Billie Eilish, the incredible 18-year-old and 5x Grammy Winner. This year she had dropped her album ‘When we all fall asleep, where do we go?’ - this went above and beyond and managed to receive 6 billion streams. Billie is the first female artist to have her album to top the Wrapped most-streamed category. I must admit, Billie did make an appearance in my Wrapped’s top songs.
I think the only complaint I have with the Wrapped campaigns is that you don’t have access to this data. You don’t have access to your data from previous years. I only have them because I took screenshots, as I never knew if I might need it again. I still think it would be nice to go back and look at the previous years’ data and check out the microsites on your listening habits.
Other than that, I always look forward to the Wrapped campaigns and I can’t wait to see what they do next.