How Jackboy and EMPIRE Used Marquee for His Single to Prime Listeners for the Album

Let’s talk about the power of singles. Every time an artist releases a new song, they’re not only satisfying the desires of their hardcore fans, but they’re also giving more casual listeners an opportunity to go from dipping their toes in the music, to diving deeper into the artist’s catalog while building the anticipation for future releases. Every new single is a chance to convert a casual or lapsed listener into a highly engaged fan who is primed for a full-length project.

Starting today, artists and their teams can use our Marquee tool to not only promote their new albums and EPs but their singles too. Now, via Marquee, artists and music marketers can notify their core audiences, in app, when a new track drops on Spotify.

We piloted this new capability last year with a select group of artists and teams, one such artist was Pompano Beach, Fla. native Jackboy, who, at the time, was gearing up to release his third (!) project of 2020, Love Me While I’m Here, in December.

The rapper, who is a member of Kodak Black’s Sniper Gang collective, is signed to indie powerhouse EMPIRE. His team at the label and distribution company was tasked with maintaining the momentum of the young artist whose videos and tracks had been going viral since his breakout song “Grimace” debuted in 2017. Under Kodak’s wing, but certainly not in his shadow, Jackboy has since carved out a niche for himself as a budding rap superstar and an entertaining personality on social media.

“Jackboy was somebody who is really prolific — and a lot of artists are — but we noticed that his fanbase was actually pretty receptive to him dropping frequently,” says Teff Mogus, Jackboy’s product manager at EMPIRE. In 2020, with live performances and touring not being the option for fan development they once were, the only way for a relatively new artist like Jackboy to keep people’s attention was to be both productive and ubiquitous. “His whole thing is pressure: ‘I wanna apply pressure.’” Mogus explains alluding to Jackboy’s aggressive release strategy (and, coincidentally, the title of one of his hits).

Jackboy already had a lot of music recorded and was recording even more, with the intention of flooding the market with full-length projects, but Mogus and EMPIRE’s Vice President of Digital and Creative, Moody Jones, saw an opportunity to maximize his music’s impact by strategically releasing singles: “He wanted to do 14, 15-track projects], Mogus recalls. “[But] we wanted to give him a chance to ramp up and actually promo a project that was coming out, as opposed to dropping a project and then marketing it through music videos. With streaming, we’d put a single out, and that gives it a chance to be the sole focus for your fanbase, and it makes them anticipate a full project. He liked that.”

The single they chose to promote with Marquee was “Aggy.” Released in late October, the song includes multi-platinum hitmaker Tyga and was the perfect opportunity to both attract new listeners who are fans of Tyga and reactivate those who hadn’t listened to Jackboy in a while. “Having a song with him and Tyga on it increased the probability of converting those listeners into fans right away, especially because the song is also really good, and the song had a video,” says Jones. Their strategy paid off — approximately 100,000 of Jackboy and Tyga's U.S. listeners saw a full-screen recommendation of "Aggy," and each converted listener streamed the song three times, on average. And, fans showed no intention of stopping — 29% of listeners who streamed the single saved it to their library or added it to a personal playlist. "The average streams per listener and the intent rate from the Marquee promotion showed that fans would continue to stream Jackboy beyond the campaign and build momentum for the album,” adds Jones. Today, "Aggy" is still the top streamed single from Love Me While I’m Here.

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 release to audiences in the US or Canada, submit your information here.

–Spotify for Artists