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Spotify's Image

Spotify is one of the leading music streaming platforms in the world. It has about 406 million users and is one of the most user-friendly platforms I’ve ever been on. Anyone who uses Spotify is ride or die, they will defend Spotify, and for good reason. They are ahead of the game on so many levels and it doesn’t seem like they are going to slow down. Something that recently came to my attention is the issues artists have with Spotify. Spotify is a service for the people, so when I found out that people had problems with them I was genuinely shocked.

In 2019, music companies Sosa Entertainment LLC and Pro Music Rights LLC (PMR) filed a lawsuit alleging that Spotify “blanket-banned” the tracks of their signed artists. They also claimed that they, “deliberately and maliciously blacklisted from its platform the Plaintiffs and their founder, Jake Noch, along with each and every single artist, composer, and writer associated with the [companies]”. 

Spotify then countersued saying that nobody listened to those artists anyways and that the listens they were getting were the companies that “directed third parties to create millions of fake Spotify accounts, and deployed these fake accounts to artificially stream his and [the companies] content up to hundreds of thousands of times daily, and upwards of hundreds of millions of times in total.” This is a serious allegation and CEO of both above-mentioned companies, Jake Noch, asked the federal judge to dismiss Spotify’s claims because they are “procedurally defective” and “legally deficient.”

This isn’t the only time Spotify has been in hot water. Just recently, Spotify refused to take down Joe Rogan’s podcast, “Joe Rogan Experience” after he made false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. Old clips from his podcast revealed him using racial slurs repeatedly and laughing at jokes about sexual exploitation. Spotify makes a ton of money off of Joe Rogan’s podcast, so odds are they won’t take it down. Famous artists such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and David Crosby, are protesting Spotify by removing all their music from the platform.

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Spotify has seen a ton of bad publicity the past couple of years but is still paving the way for music streaming services. It uses social media as well as mainstream media, such as billboards and other physical ads, to campaign and market itself. One of the most popular campaigns Spotify has is its Wrapped campaign. Spotify wrapped is a campaign started in 2016. To give a rundown, Spotify uses individualized data to create an annual collection personalized for each user. It comes out on December 1st every year. The Spotify Wrapped consists of your 5 most-streamed artists, genres, and songs. Users tend to share their Spotify Wrapped on social media, which has led millions of people to promote Spotify on their accounts. 

The 2021 Wrapped had a few new features that included: The Movie, Your Audio Aura, and Playing Cards. The Movie feature pairs your top songs with scenes from popular movies. For Audio Aura, they worked with an aura expert to make an algorithm that matched your music taste with a color of aura. Play Cards is a game they made that you share with your friends. Spotify gives a few statements about your listening habits from the year and your friends have to guess which is true and which ones are false. 

One of the first times they did an interactive campaign was in 2016. It was called Thanks 2016, It’s Been Weird. This campaign was kind of the birth of Spotify Wrapped. Spotify went into this idea with the intention to interact with users through listener behavior and music culture. One billboard in London said, “Dear 3,749 people who streamed ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It’ the day after the Brexit vote, Hang in there.” and another billboard in America said, “To the person who played ‘I Took a Pill in Ibiza’ 52 times on the 9th of February, Everyone celebrates Pancake Day differently.” I think this campaign is a cute way to interact with users. 

Spotify's Thanks 2016, Its Been Weird campaign

Last year, Spotify also launched its Only You campaign. The campaign was made to make users feel special or unique. Spotify uses statistics and lets users see what people who have similar tastes listen to. It allows people to connect with other people who have similar interests and also introduces them to new artists that may be right up their alley. They also added a new feature where the user would pick three artists that they would invite to their “Dream Dinner Party” and Spotify would make a personalized playlist for each musician. The most recent campaign they started was the Blend feature. This feature allows multiple users to make a shared playlist. My friends and I use this feature all the time to make custom playlists that we know everyone will like. It makes it so everyone in the car has the aux. 

Spotify's Only You campaign

Even though Spotify has been under fire, they approach streaming services in a progressive, modern way. They use the data they already were collecting to make campaigns personal to each person. They use trending topics to their advantage. Interacting with users and giving them a place to be heard is something other platforms have lacked. They give people a reason to talk about them positively. Its marketing campaigns have been so successful because they prioritize community and they nurture individuality.