Marquee Strategies: 6 Ways to Amplify Your New Release

Since it launched, Marquee — a full-screen, sponsored recommendation of your new music to listeners who have already shown interest in your music — has been enhanced so that there are now a variety of ways to use it to meet your specific needs.

• Release Types: Promote new albums, EPs, or singles
• Timing: Start campaigns up to 21 days post-release
• Targeting: Select your reachable audience — or choose from lapsed, recently interested, and casual listeners.
• Geographies: Reach listeners in over 10 markets, including Austria, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States

Artists of all sizes have used Marquee to drive focused streaming of their new releases. Listeners who see a Marquee are over two times on average more likely to save a track from the promoted release for future streaming. And, Marquee is not just about the new release: Listeners who engage with a Marquee are three times more likely on average to stream from older releases.

Let’s take a closer look at six ways artists have been using Marquee to achieve the most common new release goals: maximizing engagement overall (campaign engagement strategies), and driving engagement from specific parts of your audience (fan development strategies). Plus, learn how to measure success for each goal.

Campaign Engagement Strategies

1. Albums & EPs — Let’s Get Loud

Make a huge splash right when your new music drops by starting your Marquee on release day. Since Marquees go live at midnight on the campaign start date, you can reach people who are most likely to listen in a big way.

• Targeting: Your reachable audience
• Start date: Release day
• Case study: Wolf Alice’s team turned to Marquee to maximize engagement for their latest album, Blue Weekend, by starting their campaign on release day, generating two times more streams per listener than benchmarks. Read more here.

2. Amp up Pre-Release Singles

Use Marquee to promote a series of singles ahead of your album. Targeting recently interested listeners — people who listened to your music in the last 28 days — around release will help you build momentum before your album drops.

• Targeting: Recently interested listeners
• Start date: Up to four days after release day
• Case study: bbno$ built on the momentum of his 2019 viral hit “Lalala” by using Marquee to promote three singles in the lead up to 2021 album Eat Ya Veggies, increasing his active streams by 40 percentage points before the new release dropped. Read more here.

3. Strengthen Your International Rollout Strategy

You can take your new release global by using your Spotify for Artists audience data to determine your top markets, and then targeting the right listeners from among the dozen-plus markets where Marquee is live. Staggering your campaign start dates will help maintain momentum and capture another wave of listeners who didn’t see it release week.

• Targeting: Multiple countries
• Start date: Staggered across markets
• Case study: Spotify RADAR artist girl in red ran a staggered multi-market Marquee campaign that helped her release maintain momentum across continents. Read more here.

Fan Development Strategies

Which listeners do you want to turn into bigger fans? Marquee targets people based on listening history and only reaches listeners who have not already actively streamed the release.

4. Re-engage Lapsed Listeners

Perfect for the times when you haven’t released new music in a while or want to encourage intentional, active streaming.

• Targeting: Lapsed listeners
• Start date: Up to two days after release day
• Case study: When the pandemic disrupted promotion plans for Lecrae’s first album in two years, he and his team turned to Marquee to reactivate lapsed listeners, driving 35% re-engagement and 80,000 saves and playlist adds. Read more here.

5. Turn Casual Listeners Into Fans

If your goal is to use Marquee to deepen relationships with listeners, target people who already listen but have potential to stream more.

• Targeting: Casual listeners
• Start date: Up to four days after release day
• Case study: After Beach House's 2015 tune “Space Song” unexpectedly went viral last year, they had a newly expanded audience that they engaged with Marquee, driving 24% of casual listeners to save a track from their album and 20% to stream from their catalog. Read more here.

6. Activate Listeners Post-Release

Since Marquee’s targeting excludes listeners who have already actively streamed your new music, start a Marquee up to 20 days later to reach listeners who likely want to hear you but who may have missed your release date rollout.

• Targeting: Your reachable audience
• Start date: 1 to 2 weeks post-release day
• Case study: Read how Kaskade used Marquee to promote the single “Miles to Go” a week after the track’s release to make more listeners aware, resulting in more than 20% of Kaskade or Ella Vos fans saving the track. Read more here.

Measuring Success

1. Identify the metrics that matter most for hitting your goal.

Success looks a little different depending on your overall goals. For the campaign engagement strategies (1, 2, and 3 above), look at your streams per listener, plus your listener conversion rate — the percentage of people who saw your Marquee and listened to the promoted release. For the fan development strategies (4, 5, and 6 above), look at the intent rate — the percentage of your listeners who saved a track from the promoted release or added it to a playlist — plus how listeners engaged with your other releases.

2. Check in on your results as they update and 14 days after the campaign ends.

After each Marquee, you’ll receive reporting on how the people who saw your campaign responded to your music. You’ll start to see metrics about 24 hours after your campaign starts, and until 14 days after your campaign ends — this is when all metrics are finalized.

3. Measure the metrics that matter.

Benchmarking can help you understand how your Marquee performed. To benchmark against previous Marquees, visit your Spotify for Artists dashboard, click on the Campaigns tab, then choose “Download Results.” Your Spotify for Artists dashboard is also the place where you can compare how your Marquee audience engaged with your release versus your total audience. From your dashboard, visit the Release Details Page by going to the Music tab, clicking on Releases, and then clicking on your new release.

To learn more about using Marquee, including how to get started, visit the Marquee site here.