How Indigo Waves hyped their latest release, Mirror, and tripled their monthly listeners with the help of Discovery Mode

When Austin Oestreich and Matt Mink first crossed paths in college, a simple trip to the mountains with their guitars sparked a thought: “Oh, we should make music together.” That spark became indie band Indigo Waves, a project that’s carried them through graduation, fatherhood, and, most recently, their first European tour. With their dreamy surf-rock sound, the duo continues to capture both the depth of their friendship and the joy of making music.

Since 2023, Indigo Waves have been using Discovery Mode to grow their audience and get their music in front of new listeners. With its no upfront cost, Discovery Mode was a valuable tool for experimentation, and they saw their listenership skyrocket. “It was like, hey, I'm just going to turn this thing on, let's see how it does,” says Mink. “Then, we doubled our listeners, and we wondered if we'd hit 100K listeners. And then it happened, and then 200K, and then 300K.”

Discovery Mode quickly became a key part of their marketing strategy, as the band has continued running campaigns monthly, selecting new and catalog songs. Oestreich mentions, “I feel like it’s helped our motivation, and it’s helped push us to release more frequently. Me and Matt just got back from tour, and we’re immediately like ‘Okay, let’s get back in the studio.’” The band’s strategy has been including new songs in Discovery Mode once the songs meet eligibility criteria, and then, they check key Discovery Mode performance metrics monthly, particularly focusing on the listener and intent rate metrics to understand how Discovery Mode helps them grow and engage their audience.

Using Discovery Mode across the release cycle for Mirror

For Indigo Waves’ new album Mirror, which dropped on March 7, 2025, Discovery Mode was an integral part of their release strategy, from spotlighting pre-release singles to sustaining post-release momentum. Paired with tools like Marquee and Showcase, they quickly reached the milestone of 350K monthly listeners during their release month, their highest monthly listeners to date.

Building pre-release excitement

In the year leading up to Mirror, the band dropped singles from the album every few months (6 in total), each included in Discovery Mode and paired with its own Showcase to build anticipation around the upcoming album. “It's partially a pre-release strategy and partially just how we write. We try to give space for each single to have its breath before we come out with another one,” says Oestreich. Discovery Mode helped increase the reach of these new singles, with several songs seeing more than 5x lift in listeners after the first month of being included in Discovery Mode.

Increasing album engagement

By the time Mirror dropped in March 2025, Indigo Waves had over 77K monthly active listeners (22.4% of their total audience). To further drive engagement with Mirror, the band used Marquee and Showcase, selecting the Showcase headline “New music”. In parallel, the band continued to run Discovery Mode campaigns featuring singles from the album as well as catalog songs. To maximize the release moment, they highlighted the album on their artist page using Artist Pick, making sure they were finding all ways to get their new music heard by listeners. This holistic strategy helped them grow their monthly listeners by over 25% in the release month alone, with super listeners accounting for over 20% of the monthly active listeners who streamed their album.

Extending the moment

To keep momentum going post-release, they selected songs from Mirror for Discovery Mode once they became eligible, along with songs from their catalog, to continue growing their monthly listeners. The band also created Canvases for each of their songs, a tool they’ve consistently used, in order to share the band’s personality as well as promote their European tour that spring. The band even added their merch to Spotify, allowing fans who couldn’t catch them in person to buy vinyl, t-shirts, and hats. With this approach, Indigo Waves hit the road with an audience that was hyped about their new release and sold out venues across Europe, where fans were excited to catch Mirror live.

Now, back home from their tour, Mink says, “We’ve been strategizing what's next for us. We’ve set goals for ourselves and we've talked about what direction we want to go next.” With that in mind, Oestreich’s main advice for other artists and a motto they have for themselves is, “Don’t be afraid to make a bad song. Just keep creating. The more you write, the more you learn, and that’s how you get to those great albums.”

Indigo Waves on their European tour

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