Spotify announces beta launch of audience development tool for artists, self-serve ‘Marquee’ ads

As part of its news announced at its live event today, Spotify announced a set of new creator tools and resources, including the expansion of Marquee, the launch of a tool called Discovery Mode" into beta testing, the opening of the Canvas looping visual feature to all artists and its plans to expand its Spotify for Artists platform to be available in 25 additional languages.

Marquee, launched in 2020, is a tool that allows artists and their teams to promote their new releases through full-screen, sponsored recommendations to both free and paid subscribers. Spotify says that users who see a Marquee pop-up are twice as likely to save the music.

Now, Marquee will be available as a self-serve buying experience for artists, allowing their teams to book campaigns at any time, as easily as they update their artist profile.

This self-serve feature will launch in the U.S., and this summer will expand outside North America, to the U.K. Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, before rolling out more broadly.

Spotify is also launching a beta of its audience development tool, Discovery Mode, a feature that lets artist teams select the music they want to prioritize for discovery, including through Spotify's recommendations. During its pilot testing, this feature helped labels achieve higher royalty payments through the expanded discovery, the company claimed.

It will also require zero upfront budget to get started.

Finally, Canvas, the artwork feature that shows looping visuals as the music plays, will also now be available to all artists.

Image Credits: Spotify

Along with the news of Spotify's global expansion to 85 new markets, Spotify's dashboard for artists will also expand to include support for 25 more languages.

From providing new ways for artists to express themselves, to creating more chances to be discovered, to giving artists the ability to pitch their music for playlist consideration, we continue to iterate based on artist feedback, building new ways to surface artists to new fans," said Spotify's head of Marketplace, Charlie Hellman, about the expansions. We're seeing greater adoption of our tools by artists and labels of all sizes, and we've just scratched the surface of what's to come," he added.

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