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Dive Summary:
- Spotify this month launched its first global campaign of the year to highlight how its music and podcasts help inspire and connect people. The “Music, Meet Podcasts” campaign will be extended social, digital and out of the home (OOH), and is part of the launch of its “Listening Is Everything” platform for brands, according to an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
- The campaign includes a television commercial that will appear during ABC’s broadcast of the Emmy Awards, which will air at 8 p.m. ET on September 20. The 30-second hero ad features artists Khalid, Ariana Grande, Bad Bunny and Jemele Hill, along with Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski, co-hosts of “The Last Podcast on the Left.” Spotify also released a series of digital videos featuring artists and podcasters including First Lady Michelle Obama, Tove Lo, Calvin Harris, and Esther Perel. Spotify also added an in-app feature called “My Forever Favorites” so that people can share their favorite podcasts and music.
- The campaign comes as Amazon announced that it was adding podcasts to Amazon Music, the e-commerce giant’s audio streaming platform. The announcement was followed by a drop in the value of Spotify shares, CNBC reported. Amazon Music allows users in the US, UK, Germany and Japan to listen to podcasts at no additional cost at its paid and ad-supported subscription levels.
Dive Insight:
Spotify’s first global campaign of the year comes as the streaming audio wars continue to escalate and the company’s share value has been trending down over the past month after a period of significant growth during the first few months. of the pandemic, when people were staying home and streaming a lot of content. While Spotify’s user base is growing, it faces challenges as ad sales have generally been hit during the economic slowdown that came in the wake of the global health crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2MfrLsETNE
With its new marketing campaign, Spotify aims to show how its platform can work for brands. The company is showcasing the variety of programming that people can find on its platform, which increasingly includes exclusive series like “The Michelle Obama Podcast” and “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Spotify has invested heavily in podcasting acquisitions and licenses in recent years to differentiate its service from its rivals as the podcasting audience continues to grow.
Spotify, whose global audience grew 29% to 299 million people in the second quarter from a year earlier, faces increased competition with Amazon Music’s push toward podcasting this month. Like Spotify, Amazon is creating exclusive podcasts to urge people to use its service instead of others. DJ Khaled, Becky G, Will Smith and Dan Patrick are among the personalities who will host shows for Amazon. The true crime and music podcast “Disgraceland” next year will only be available on Amazon Music rather than on multiple platforms now, The Wall Street Journal reported.
While Spotify has 1.5 million podcasts and Apple has over 1 million, Amazon launches with 70,000 titles, including “Crime Junkie”, “What A Day”, “Radiolab”, “Revisionist History”, “Planet Money” and “Stuff You Should Know” that are not exclusive to your platform. Amazon Music’s push towards podcasting follows the recent announcement of a partnership with sister platform Twitch to allow music artists to live stream performances on the Amazon Music app.
Meanwhile, podcasting pioneer Apple aims to grow the user base of Apple Music, a key rival to Spotify, by combining the audio streaming app with other services. Apple this week introduced the Apple One bundle that offers Apple Music, Apple TV +, Arcade, and iCloud storage as a basic bundle at $ 14.95 a month. Apple does not have an ad-supported tier that is free to listeners, limiting its audience to people who are willing to pay to listen to ad-free music.
In the US, the percentage of people who listen to podcasts at least once a month this year increased to 37%, or 104 million people, from 32% in 2019, according to a study by Edison Research and Triton. Marketers are catching on, and podcast ad spending next year is projected to grow 45% to $ 1.13 billion in the US, surpassing the $ 1 billion mark for the first time. time, estimated researcher eMarketer last month. That heady prospect will continue to attract investment from companies like Spotify, Apple and Amazon in podcasting.
