It not only about music rather about content including podcast for Spotify. As audio picks up as a medium of content, the music streaming app has upped its ante. Every year, it rolles out ‘Wrapped’ which is claims is its way of celebrating music. In conversation with BrandWagon Online, Neha Ahuja, head of marketing – India, Spotify talks about th year that was and its annual property ‘Wrapped’. (Edited Excerpts)
How was 2022 for Spotify?
This year, we have seen a huge growth in the number of new audiences that we’ve got on the app for music and podcasts. Also, the consumption per user has gone up significantly. It basically means that our users are streaming more music.
The role of music is to put grease in people’s lives and help them manoeuvre through tough situations. For instance, whether you’re stuck in a traffic jam, or you’re at the gym and not doing so well that day and it’s a crummy situation, music comes to your rescue. What we’ve done through the year has helped to make sure that we provide or sort of talk about moments, bringing the role of music into the lives of our listeners.
Compared to last year, the coming year, how’s your strategy going to be different?
We will continue to acquire new users because there’s much more to go for us. But at the same time, we will engage users more, which means giving them more moments and giving them more opportunities to consume more music. Not to mention more genres of music, and also, introduce new features besides introducing newer engaging opportunities which can help in user retention.
As for marketing, I don’t think that we want to pivot or change our communication at Spotify. Our communication is really about what is the role of music in your life and that’s what we play. We did that in our initial stages and even continued in 2022.
Our latest campaign, which was played during the IPL, stated, ‘Mood toh tabhi banega, jab Spotify chalega’. So, it’s really about what music does to you and how it really helps you manoeuvre through crummy situations in your life.
How do you go about selecting Wrapped? What is the idea behind it?
So ‘Wrapped’, at a global level for Spotify is in its eighth year. And for India, this is the fourth year. It was called Wrapped in 2015 when it launched globally, and it’s called Spotify Wrapped even now. The idea of the campaign is to be deep-rooted into the data that we see in our app. And that is what we have maintained through these eight years. So it’s not like it’s about doing different things.
It is about celebrating users’ consumption of that year. It’s also foundational in human psychology of lookback culture, which we all enjoy, right? So that is the psychology that we are playing on. So everybody wants to see how the year was, it is about the look-back culture that we celebrate.
So every year, we will bring in some new experiences for users. For example, this year, there was your music personality type. We introduced about 16 personality types which had been identified based on how a user streamed music, how loyal she is or how much new music she wants to consume, among other metrics. On the basis of the parameters of music consumption, we throw up a personality type that a user may have. This became like a badge that users could share on social media. So it helped us to build that seamless sharing on social media.
How do you maintain the quality of user experience as ad revenue continues to grow?
This is the fourth year of the Spotify Wrapped franchise in India. This has really become a cultural moment for users, creators, as well as for brands. It is that one annual marketing moment that everybody wants to jump in and celebrate. And consistency comes with just the anticipated buzz around that moment. Even before Spotify started talking about Wrapped 2022, there were millions of users, brands, and creators who were talking about their ‘Wrapped’ card in anticipation of what it would look like. I think it has become that subculture. As we all enjoy that look back through the year, it’s easier for the brands to seamlessly communicate with their users around this franchise.
