I’m going to get straight to the point today since I’m excited to talk about what happened at Spotify’s Stream On event this week and what you need to be jumping on.
1. There is now going to be a “swipe-able vertical feed” which will be video-based and play previous of music. It will replace the carousels you are used to today and makes the app “feel alive”.
2. There will be a new pre-save featured that can capture fan interest months before a release, called Countdowns. No longer will we have to use third party apps to create pre save pages – we can now do it right in Spotify. Over the next few months, this should become an option for all artists on Spotify to use! Fans who pre-save a release will be notified when the song or album comes out. Spotify’s data indicates that 80% of pre-savers return to the platform to stream the song or album during their debut week.
3. Discovery Mode and Smart Shuffle will begin to roll out for all users (I have already seen this pop up on my Spotify app), helping new artists get discovered through algorithmic recommendations.
4. I’ve already mentioned Marquee in my best of 2022 tools post, which they claimed that on average, Marquee is 10 times more cost effective at getting listeners to stream your music on Spotify than ads on the most popular social media platforms. But I’m more excited about their new feature that will be rolling out called Clips – which will allow artists to post 30-second videos to their profiles. Get on the waitlist for that here.
5. Concert Listings and Fans First – You will still need to use Songkick to highlight your concert dates on your Spotify profile, however, they are going to now surface your upcoming gigs in the ‘Now Playing’ view and fans can say they are interested, creating a more personal gig calendar for the user and more data for you as an artist. Fans First is also important for artists because this will help you target your top listeners to get exclusive offers from you.
This is only the beginning of what I gathered from the event, but all in all it’s very exciting and you’ll see Spotify changing a lot this year. Get on the waitlists and start brainstorming how you can start using these new features for your upcoming releases!