Most marketers expect a boost in music streaming during a concert tour, especially in cities with tour stops. People going to concerts tune in – and then dive in – to explore an artist’s catalogue.
Fantasy Records, part of Concord Music, thought they could push the envelope a little further in support of the Nathaniel Rateliff single “You Worry Me” and grow streams around tour dates. Could they leverage Spotify and iHeart audio ads, a.k.a the new radio spot, and remarketing ads, to boost streaming in cities with tour stops
The Experiment
To find out, they partnered with found.ee to create the perfect experiment. After a rigorous selection process, the team isolated several markets, with special attention to Philadelphia and Boston.
The team ran the following ad sets in Philadelphia:
• iHeartRadio audio inventory targeting listeners of radio stations in those markets
• Spotify Audio Advertising targeting fans of the band
• Remarketing advertising targeting fans of the band
Boston was the control city, and received no ad support.
Anyone reading to this point is probably thinking, “well, of course the tour city with ads running should show an increase in streams — consumption grows in tour cities anyways”. That’s right. Or at least that’s the generally accepted truth: “Tour = increase in consumption.” So instead the team focused on the rate of acceleration in stream growth. That is, how fast the streaming growth went from X to Y actually happened. If all of the tour cities were going to grow in stream consumption (if that’s the generally accepted truth), and with so many variables, this would be the closest thing to isolating the true effect of the advertising.
The Results
The advertising strategy, along with the unique targeting capabilities of the advertising channels, resulted in a minimum increase in the rate of acceleration by 74% in each market, and increased the overall consumption in those markets.
For Philadelphia, the result was even higher – 100% increase in the rate of acceleration. A truly spectacular result.
And the efforts created a halo effect. Streaming of “You Worry Me” grew by 16% in the experimental group and contributed to an 8% increase in overall streaming of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. Powerful and easy.
For a deeper dive, and the full methodology, check out the entire case study on Hypebot. To run a similar ad campaign, log in or sign up to found.ee.
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