How Mt. Joy Used Spotify’s New Marquee Audience Segments To Grow Their Fan Base

In this piece, we explore how the Philadelphia-based folk-rock group, Mt. Joy, was able to utilize Spotify’s Marquee feature to draw in new and lapsed listeners and deepen their connection to fans

Guest post from Spotify For Artists

We take a look at how the Philly-bred folk rock band used Marquee’s expanded targeting capabilities to turn casual and lapsed listeners into dedicated fans.

Listeners are great, but big fans are even better. As an artist or label team, you want every new release to make listeners more engaged. It’s your chance to turn your audience into active listeners — people who intentionally stream your music, rather than passively listen in the background. With Marquee, you can draw listeners in with your new release and use it to deepen their relationship with your music.

When we first introduced Marquee, it helped to amplify artists’ new releases by reaching their core audience — listeners who have shown interest in their music with actions like streams or follows. These are the listeners who are primed to become bigger fans. 

Artists and their teams have asked us for even more robust ways to connect with the listeners most aligned with their marketing strategy, so we launched Marquee’s audience segments capability. Now, your Marquee campaign can target either your core audience or specific parts of your core audience defined by their different listening behaviors: 

We’ve been testing segments for some time, and today, we’re excited to announce them broadly and share how artists like Mt. Joy are already using segments to strategically turn their listeners into more deeply engaged fans. 

Mt. Joy’s release strategy

For months, folk rock band, Mt. Joy, had been working with their label, Dualtone Records, to release their second album, Rearrange Us. Leading up to the release, they dropped a series of singles to increase their visibility, warm up their fans, and get a chance to gain visibility on algorithmic and editorial playlists.

Mt. Joy’s team at Dualtone knew that pre-release singles would lead some of the band’s audience to the album, but not all of them. Their goal was to engage their North American listeners who had the potential to become bigger fans.

Once their album dropped, the Mt. Joy team turned to Marquee’s new audience segments to activate their broader marketing strategy. To start, they worked with Spotify to understand how segments mapped to Mt. Joy’s audience. Based on the biggest opportunities, they chose to engage two segments of listeners. First, they targeted casual listeners — since they likely had heard and enjoyed the band’s singles, but hadn’t yet converted to active fans. Second, they targeted lapsed listeners — for fans of their first album who hadn’t been effectively reached with their pre-release campaign.

Mt. Joy’s success

Marquee guided Mt. Joy’s audiences into intentional streaming sessions of Rearrange Us — 18% of casual and lapsed listeners who received a Marquee streamed from the album, with an average of 10 active streams per listener. On top of that, lapsed listeners didn’t just stream during release week, they also showed intent to continue engaging with the album — 14% of lapsed listeners who saw a Marquee saved or playlisted at least one track from the album.

Connecting with us

As we continue to make Marquee even better, we’re excited to share more updates, so follow along on our site and LinkedIn page. If you’re interested in using the Marquee beta to promote a new album or EP with audience segments, submit your information here.

–Spotify for Artists