Spotify turns up the volume on marketing itself

By Rosie Baker | 18 June 2014
 

Spotify is plotting a marketing assault to raise its profile in Australia and differentiate itself in the cluttered music streaming market.

Spotify will follow a similar approach it has taken in the US and the UK where is has been rolling out digital videos that aim to target the millennial generation.

Kate Vale, Spotify Australia managing director, said: “We're planning a lot around how we get our name out there in the market this year so I think you'll see Spotify in the marketplace a lot,” adding that it will do more  marketing of its own brand and service than it has done previously in Australia.  

“It's going to be a really interesting campaign, and will really stand out,”  she said.

The music streaming platform has 70% of the streaming market  share of a select group of music streaming sites, according to Nielsen, but Frankel said it's “not complacent” about that lead, and knows it must invest in marketing itself and its points of difference.

There are more than 30 rival streaming services in operation in Australia and Spotify's biggest point of difference is that it claims to be a social network – not just a streaming platform. It's this that it will lean on in marketing.

Creative director Richard Frankel, said: “We've spent a fair amount over the last year thinking about what differentiates us and which part of the audience we should double down on and speak to. As a utility we are kind of like Switzerland - all of our audience segments are growing well, the older demo is one of the faster growing but the sweet spot is in the millennials. It's a really passionate segment and as a market power – probably the biggest financial cohort since the baby boomers. There's some really strong spending power there.”

The service conducted a large-scale qualitative and quantitative research project to find out what those users need and want from Spotify, and it came down to freedom.

“What they care about deeply is their freedom, their entire lives are connected and done so in a way that there have expectation to always do what they want whenever. It often gets seen as a sense of entitlement, but its actually freedom. They tend to care very deeply about social causes but another aspect is the in authentic over-sharing that goes on.

“That is where curation becomes a really relevant part of people's lives. It's because of that that our platform becomes a really beautiful metaphor for that. It's not expert driven its curated the audience drives what we do.  What we've done in marketing Spotify is build a series of online films that describe the social behaviour of the audience and lets the viewer watch how Spotify is used within that framework.”

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