Tag: fans

Share Your Top 5 Eras With Spotify’s New Taylor Swift ‘My Top 5’ Experience

July 26, 2023

Are you in your folklore Era? Or would you lean more toward your Lover Era? Taylor Swift has unleashed 10 studio albums, each evoking its own theme and journey for listeners. Fans around the world are currently celebrating each album’s distinct Era during the pop star’s global “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour.”

Now, exclusively on Spotify, fans can join in on the fun with My Top 5: Taylor Swift’s Eras. The interactive experience lets listeners curate their top Eras and share their picks with friends on social media. 

Here’s how My Top 5: Taylor Swift’s Eras works:

  1. Ensure your Spotify mobile app is up-to-date with the latest version available in the App store (v8.8.52).
  2. Visit https://spotify.com/top5 on your mobile device. 
  3. View Taylor Swift’s 10 Eras and then reorder them into a visual display, creating your personal Top 5*. 
  4. After, you’ll receive a personalized digital card (inspired by the poster for the “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour”) to share and compare your Top 5 with friends—and the world—on social. 

To make this even more special, Spotify listeners who are eligible will see their personalized Top 5 Taylor Swift Eras according to how they have streamed the star’s tracks on Spotify. 

This experience with Taylor Swift isn’t the first time we’ve enabled fan engagement with their favorite artist’s music on Spotify. Fans have also enjoyed My Top 5 experiences with other iconic musicians including The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, ROSALÍA, and BTS.

Drop everything now and share your My Top 5: Taylor Swift’s Eras here.

 

 

*This experience is available in 56 markets, including: US, CA, DE, AT, CH, SE, FI, NO, DK, PL, TR, ES, IT, UK, IE, JP, SK, AU, NZ, ID, TH, VN, PH, SG, MY, KH, LA, HK, TW, IN, IQ, SA, EG, QA, JO, OM, LB, KW, MA, LK, BD, PK, BW, BR, MX, BO, CO, EC, PE, VE, CL, AR, PY, UY, FR, NL; and 21 languages, including: English, German, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Spanish (ES), Spanish (LATAM), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Bahasa Indonesian, Thai, Arabic, Portuguese (BR), French (CA), Finnish, Norwegian, Danish, Vietnamese, French, and Dutch.

Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek Discusses the Economics of Music Streaming

March 18, 2021

Since its 2014 low, the music industry has grown by 44%, driven primarily by streaming revenues, which increased 500% over this same period. In 2020 alone, Spotify paid $5B+ and makes up about 20% of global recorded music industry revenue, more than any other streaming service. That number is massive on its own, and it doesn’t include the other music streaming services, or other sources of music revenue. 

Still, artists ask me all the time why they’re not making more money. If the music industry is generating so much, then where the hell is it going? These are fair questions. So, we’re launching a new site, Loud & Clear, to increase transparency and shed light on the complicated economics of music streaming. 

Streaming is thriving and has been key to helping more artists find a global audience. There are more artists than ever before. That’s awesome. It means new genres, more music crossing borders, and more artists finding new fans. It also means new artists joining Spotify every day, along with the entire history of music that came before them. More artists want to share their art, reach fans and earn a living from music. And it’s happening. 

From streaming on Spotify alone, we’re seeing growth from artists at all stages of their career: since 2017, the number of artists generating

    • more than $50K/yr is up 80%
    • more than $100K/yr is up 85%; 
    • and more than $1M/year is up 90%. 

Today, 57K artists now represent 90% of monthly streams on Spotify — a number that has quadrupled in just six years. This means that the number of the most listened to artists in the world is growing and more diverse.

Our goal is to help musicians that aspire to be, or are professional to make a living. It’s something we take seriously every day. Of course not every one of the millions of artists on Spotify have found the same success. That will never be true. Fans will ultimately decide who succeeds and thrives, but our focus remains clear: Continue to create more opportunities for more artists to reach more fans. 

We know we have much more work to do, but we’re confident in what we’ve built and the innovations we continue to deliver for artists and their fans. We’ll continue to empower the most talented artists in the world to turn their passion into a profession, grow the money paid to rights holders, diversify and expand the number of professional artists succeeding, and propel the music industry forward.

This Week on the ‘Spotify: For the Record’ Podcast, Tennis Champion Sloane Stephens and The Ringer Founder Bill Simmons Share How 2020 Changed the World of Sports

October 15, 2020

This year, we saw a shift in the world of sports as games, matches, and championships continued—largely without the spectators. But silent stadiums don’t only affect the fans; they also affect the athletes. Just ask American tennis player Sloane Stephens, whom we spoke to in the most recent episode of our podcast Spotify: For the Record. “Not having fans has played a really big role in a lot of people’s wins and losses—because before, you could rely on the crowd a lot more, and now you can’t at all. There’s nothing there. You have to create your own energy, and that’s really difficult.” 

Traveling during this time has also brought some new challenges, especially when it comes to finding the foods that help Sloane bring her A game. Prior to the pandemic, it was easy for the athlete to venture to restaurants and find diverse menu items that are a part of her healthy diet. But now, with many places closed or offering limited items, she has to plan ahead. “If I don’t get a good meal the night before my match, it worries me, wondering if I had enough of a certain food or vegetables. I didn’t realize how much of a big part food played in my mood and my competition vibe,” explains Sloane. 

The pandemic hasn’t just affected the champion’s tennis game—it’s impacted her work off the court as well. The Sloane Stephens Foundation, which seeks to educate and encourage young people about healthy lifestyles, proper nutrition, and participation in physical fitness activities, has learned to adapt its activities into successful online events.

“We’ve had to change a lot. We did our summer camp virtually, and we had a really good time with that. We started doing a lot of virtual fitness classes through Zoom so that our kids could see their teachers and coaches,” shares Sloane. “But I think it’s honestly for the best. The kids actually love it. And it gives them another outlet, which is also a really good thing.”

In this episode, we also talk to U.S. sports podcaster and The Ringer founder, Bill Simmons. Simmons shares how his team reacted to the constant changes in the sports landscape and what it’s been like for sports fans during this time. As he puts it, rooting for teams in your living room is quite different from experiencing the moment with people in a crowd. “Having that removed for seven months has been pretty disorienting. And it’s not the way we’re meant to be.”

In addition to Sloane and Simmons, this week’s episode shares perspectives from other commentators in the sports industry, including former India Women’s Cricket captain Anjum Chopra, Mexican sports commentator Marion Reimers, GIANT podcast host Owen Blackhurst, On the Whistle podcast host Zayn Nabbi, and British sports commentator Nick Heath. We also dug into the science of silence in sports with Texas Tech professor Glenn Cummins. 

Grab your headphones and get in the game with our latest episode, “Fans, Athletes, Podcasts: How 2020 Changed the World of Sports.”

 

This episode is no longer available as of November 2021, however you can get more great stories and news delivered audibly by following our podcasts, Spotify: For the Record, Spotify: Mic Check, and Spotify: Discover This.

He’s With the Fans: Jordan Gremli and Fans First Bring Artists Closer to their Audiences

November 7, 2018

Yumi Zouma is on the rise. Hot off the release of their new EP, the New Zealand band has served their soft, breezy indie pop to faithful fans from Auckland to L.A. On October 4, they hit New York to headline Brooklyn’s Elsewhere venue. But before they took the stage, the energy behind the scenes was buzzing. Unlike most pre-show nights on tour, they weren’t alone—thanks to Spotify’s Fans First program, the band was hanging out with an intimate group of their biggest fans.

Yumi Zouma performs at Elsewhere.

Spotify’s Jordan Gremli.

As their most faithful Spotify listeners gathered at the bar, Yumi Zouma’s new “EP III” played over the speakers. A group of about 90 fans grabbed drinks, snacked on gourmet pizza, and even chatted with band members. Eventually, the lights dimmed, and Yumi Zouma invited the audience to create an original song with them, Mad Libs style. Laughs, cheers, and some hilariously lame improvised lyrics soon filled the room—not exactly your typical Thursday night gig.

“The best part of this event is meeting and kicking it with our fans,” said Yumi Zouma’s Josh Burgess. “We’ve had great experiences hanging out with people that like our music.”

But how did it happen in the first place? Let’s rewind.

Meet Jordan Gremli, Head of Artist & Fan Development at Spotify. He leads a team of 15 members who work on programs and products with the goal of connecting artists to the right fans at the right time. One of those programs, Fans First, partners with artists to identify and reward their biggest fans on the platform. “We know a ton about artists and fans” Jordan says. “That’s how our team started two years ago. We realized we had all this listening data, and we said, ‘Why don’t we use this to help artists?’”

We tagged along with Jordan on the afternoon of the Yumi Zouma event, where his meetings included sit-downs with Artist & Label Marketing (A&LM) and the entire Artist & Fan Development (A&FD) team. From presales and invite-only events to merch campaigns, A&FD works with many teams across Spotify to pilot programs and nurture new ideas for artist-fan interaction.

When it comes to choosing an artist with whom to partner, an idea typically blossoms through collaboration with A&LM. The team builds shows (intimate concerts) and experiences (bowling, dance classes, baking, and more) around artists of all sizes. “We’re looking to pilot programs that can scale beyond the top couple of artists in the world, and can be useful for a Yumi Zouma, but also an Ed Sheeran,” Jordan explains.

Merch campaigns and presales keep the team equally busy. “We do dozens per week,” Jordan says. Recently, Fans First partnered with Nathaniel Rateliff to reward his Spotify fans with access to purchase a limited-edition t-shirt by the artist’s foundation, The Marigold Project. Proceeds benefited family farmers affected by Hurricane Florence. Clearly, Nathaniel’s fans share his passion for helping rural Americans: Fans First sold out their entire allotment.

Sometimes the relationship with an artist can last years. In 2016, Fans First paired with Rainbow Kitten Surprise and has since run multiple presales with them. Back then, RKS had 700,000 monthly listeners and sold just a handful of presale tickets. Now, the band has about 1.2 million monthly listeners and sells thousands of tickets. Maintaining consistent engagement while growing the band’s fanbase is always a huge goal of Fans First. “Even if the audience is smaller, it’s about getting that small group of people really, really into it,” Jordan explains. “They’re the people that will show up to concerts, buy merch, and then tell their friends. That’s how you grow an audience organically.”

The team uses listening data to help find and expand an artist’s audience. But the program doesn’t just apply to established superstars. “We’re not afraid to partner with artists when they’re just starting out, because we have the tools to help them at different points in their careers,” A&FD member Sarah Shields explains. “It’s about partnering with artists to fulfill their creative vision. We’re not just tapping into the bigger artists once they’re already famous.”

Jordan agrees that it’s just as rewarding to help developing artists connect with their fans. “When you’re working with a developing artist, you can say, ‘Hey, you have a smaller audience but it’s really passionate, and it’s over-indexing in Memphis, Minneapolis, or whatever city’ and they use that information to plan their first tour. Then two years later, when they come back and say, ‘Now we’re doing this bigger tour, what’s changed?’ we can show them how their audience has grown. That’s something you couldn’t do 10 years ago.”