Wavo Blog: This series shares information that’s most relevant to music marketers around the globe.

Adrian Burger has written recent opinion editorials for Music Ally, Music Business Worldwide, and Trapital. He leads lafter.io, a creative management boutique, and is a former employee of Wavo.

Wavo: I really enjoyed reading your article for Music Ally. In your own words, what is the music streaming attribution problem? 

Burger: As marketers working in a recorded music context, oftentimes the goal is to drive streaming and, simply put, it's very difficult to directly track streams that are generated from social media ads. 

This is a big problem and the lack of direct attribution data leads to, in many cases, flawed and less provable approaches to driving streams from social ads. Some try to identify metrics that in theory measure streams by proxy; the classic example of this is centering the ‘click’ action as a strategy. We have done some research in the past at Wavo to determine that these are not the most engaged audiences and that these click audiences aren’t often converting to streams. But there’s a sense in which one can actually hide in a way behind the lack of hard streaming data and it’s hard to know definitively the outcome of a streaming campaign that lacks attribution.

Wavo: In your opinion, what’s the alternative to a clicks based approach - a fan acquisition model to drive streaming?

Burger: For driving streams directly from music advertising, Spotify Ad Studio is my personal favorite ad platform because Spotify is the only platform that provides directly attributable streaming data. In my experience, Spotify ads create streams at a cheaper rate than social media-to-streaming ads – which I think makes intuitive sense because you’re simplifying the listening process. On Spotify, users are already in the mode of listening to music at the moment that they get that ad, and don’t have to change platforms to stream a release.

And this leads to a second point, which is that even when you want to ultimately drive streaming, you’re still going to want to focus on different metrics than just immediate streams if you choose to advertise on social media networks. One has to acknowledge user behavior patterns and the fact that not everyone will immediately click on an ad and stream something.

Let’s say you scroll across an ad for an artist that you are a fan of, you may not interrupt your scrolling to listen immediately but may well be prompted to go listen to that project in full on your own time. I like the idea of targeting already engaged audiences on a platform like Instagram to ensure you’re reaching people who have already expressed interest in your artist. That’s less of an immediate conversion focus and more a case for awareness building – allowing people to consume the product when and where it makes sense for them.

Wavo: Right, if you want music video views it’s most cost effective to advertise on Youtube. If you want to grow on Instagram, use boosted posts on Instagrams. If you want to stream on Spotify, advertising on Spotify.

In the article you also mentioned that if someone is already aware of an artist they might be more likely to take the prompt and stream on their own time. Are you a fan of a different social media approach for established vs non-established artists? Let’s say, someone who’s recently signed compared to someone who’s consistently charting?  

Burger: In order to retarget on social media you need to have a fan base in the first place. For an established artist I would recommend sticking with those ‘warm’ audiences because of the relative ease of converting existing fans to active streamers. If you have ten million Instagram followers, the first priority should be making sure you’re reaching those people. And if you’re a developing artist, then I think that gradual fan acquisition – more so than expecting immediate streams from cold audiences – should become the priority for your digital marketing spend.

On social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the key is creating content that comes across as authentic to that artist. Music videos are a great creative format that won’t ever go out of style, but increasingly what I see working well on a placement like IG Reels, YouTube Shorts or TikTok is more DIY-type content. E.g., an artist talking to the camera in a minimally produced way. One indication that a content piece could perform well as an ad is if it’s performing well organically – if, e.g., you post something on TikTok and it does well without spending a cent.

Wavo: That makes sense. Because if it resonates with your existing audience that’s going to resonate with the people out there who are similar to your existing audience.

Have you ever heard of Spotify Marquee ads?

Burger: Yes, I’ve run a bunch of those and I'm a huge fan. I think that’s the exact premise of reaching those warm audiences, and in a streaming context too. I’ve found Spotify Ad Studio audio ads are very effective from a fan acquisition standpoint, while from a fan retention and reengagement standpoint I consider Marquee to be the more effective approach. With Marquee I’ve had some releases where on average people are playlisting or liking several songs each from an album. So not only are you getting people streaming the music but you’re reaching the superfans who are going to stream over and over and add say 10 songs from an album to their playlist(s). That’s another awesome tool Spotify's rolled out and if other streaming platforms can create similar products it’d be great to see.

Wavo: With Wavo Labs we’ve been looking into marquee ads, I’ll link some case studies we’ve published here.

One great feature of marquee is that they reach premium users who are a more valuable audience. Previously premium users on Spotify had been unreachable through advertising on the platform. So you can use audio ads for fan acquisition, for reaching free-tier users, and you can use marquee for premium tier users and also your established fans.

Burger: Another interesting point for the Spotify Ad Studio ads to keep in mind: I’ve seen cases where Discover Weekly streams are increasing in the weeks following a campaign. The beauty there is that Discover Weekly is totally algorithmic and so has nothing to do with a human at Spotify having to playlist you. In addition, Discover Weekly is tier-agnostic, so you could be reaching significant sums of premium users via free-tier ads in a roundabout, longtail way.

Also, I’ve once seen the ‘Fans Also Like’ section on Spotify of an artist noticeably change through the course of a campaign to include artists whose listeners I’d been targeting in said campaign. This addresses a recurrent problem I’ve noticed - that artists may struggle when their current music doesn’t match the genre of earlier releases. Say they had made electronic music in the past and now make bedroom pop, all their algorithmic links and recommendations may still be electronic. I’ve seen Spotify ads utilized to start introducing not only new listeners but ideal new listeners who are more aligned with the new releases from an artist.

Wavo: That’s really interesting,  using ads to recontextualize an artist. I’ve never thought of that. You can shape what you want your fan base to look like. 

What are your thoughts on integrations? In the article you reference Linkfire’s partnership with Apple Music where there’s obviously some limiting factors in terms of accessibility, streaming attribution and how that integration can be used.

Burger: Sure there are limitations, but to me these DSP-link service partnerships represent a huge step forward. The Linkfire/Apple Music restrictions like needing a minimum amount of daily listeners to unlock detailed streaming data, can prove prohibitive for developing artists with limited marketing budgets. That said, if you’re an A-list superstar I think it can start to become really, really interesting and informative. For smaller artists, I think it becomes harder to peel out the same level of insight. But I can say in full disclosure that I pay for Linkfire as an independent artist manager working with smaller acts, under the premise that some streaming attribution data for social media ads is far better than none.

Wavo: What do you think the future looks like for partnerships between music DSP’s and advertising tools like Linkfire, and what would be the future you’d like to see?

Burger: Something I expect to persist is this on-platform focus because at the end of the day every DSP has a vested interest in music marketers spending money directly with them as opposed to other major social platforms. I think it’s no surprise that Apple Music is the first to be open to start integration, because they don’t host their own advertising. That said, if Linkfire is able to get a Spotify deal across the line I think that is going to be hugely impactful. There will always be a desire to reach fans when they are on social media so I think there is more integration coming and when it does come it will be really valuable. The more data the better. Especially for independent artists, it’s important to ensure that when you’re spending money you’re getting a tangible return on your investment. And data gives you the confidence to know you aren’t wasting your money.

Wavo: One of the coolest things that Linkfire currently offers is the ability to track and retarget users who click out to specific DSP’s. For example we can run an Instagram ad that links out to Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music, and we can create unique retargeting audiences of people who followed through to their favorite DSP. That way, next time we serve them an ad we can send them a link directly to their preferred DSP and skip the landing page entirely. It doesn’t help with attribution but we can infer a lift in streaming by reducing the barriers to listening.

Another promising feature that Linkfire is working on right now is featuring a Spotify follow button directly on the landing page. This would allow music marketers to drive attributable Spotify followers via social media advertising.

Wavo: In the article you talk about some of the Machine Learning that Wavo uses, and you talk about benchmarking as well. I think benchmarking is a really interesting topic - can you speak a little bit about the importance of benchmarking in making investing in artists more predictable?

Burger: I think it’s really important to have something to compare your results against so you know in relative terms how successful your campaign is. And when you have that data, you can parse through it – is there a specific creative that does better, how do releases compare against one another, etc. That’s how you can identify what to do differently next time and what to replicate. Benchmarking makes things more predictable.

Wavo: Last question: you talked about the music streaming attribution problem: what’s the next biggest problem music marketers are facing?

Burger: I think another issue is the short-term vs long-term focus of advertising. A lot of the advertising that happens now with recorded music is around the release of a single or EP or album, and doesn’t make use of an ‘always-on’ approach where you might have ads constantly serving and being updated to reflect different moments in an artist's career. I think one consideration is how we in recorded music can start to think more like commercial brands do, where there’s a focus on staying top of mind. An emphasis on general awareness and ubiquity, rather than exclusively focusing on immediate actions like a stream or concert ticket sale.

Growing, maintaining and utilizing an audience funnel via a Video Views goal for social media advertising ensures that folks are kept engaged. That’s thinking years down the line, versus always building campaigns around a moment and then turning ads off immediately thereafter and letting audiences expire. You’re laying the foundation for first week streaming success with more regular campaigns - and with this you’ll have a clearer sense of who your fans are: who to target first, who’s most likely to support sales.

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