Spotify’s Home feed currently offers recommendations based on a user’s past listening and the artists and genres they tend to veer towards. Moving forward, however, its recommendations won’t be totally organic.
The streaming service is now giving artists the option to pay to appear as sponsored recommendations to users. Spotify is calling the tool “Showcase,” billing it as a campaign tool for artists and managers to get their music in front of untapped audiences.
In its announcement of Showcase, Spotify lauded that new singles accrue most of their streams not immediately upon release but in the months following, citing that an average of “75% of a release’s first-year streams happen after the first month.”
The Home feed is the most popular tab on the Spotify app – it is also where the app first brings users upon opening it – and artists will be able to pay to have a sponsored banner at the top of the page. Spotify says that those who encounter a Showcase are six times more likely to stream the release. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like the sponsored music will be integrated into recommended playlists or in other spots on the app, so most of the content users see will still be organic.
Artists can promote music releases both new and old. Showcase banners will be shown in over 30 markets and artists will have the option to target select audiences based on how often they’ve already streamed their music in the past.
Showcase campaigns start at $100 USD and artists must already have 1,000 followers to book one. It also dictates that the artist’s or their team’s billing country must also be set to the US.
In other tech news, Apple unveiled the iPhone 15.
