As global director of streaming and digital sales at Secretly Group, Emily Puterbaugh is grappling with the same challenges as everyone working with artists and music in the modern streaming era.
“The current landscape sees more artists than ever creating and releasing music, which has led to a hypercompetitive market. As a result, it’s grown increasingly difficult for artists to cut through the noise and gain visibility,” she tells Music Ally.
“Cultivating a dedicated fanbase is paramount. Labels and artists are constantly challenged to find creative ways to find new audiences and engage with fans. We also have to be strategic about what content we’re creating to support a campaign, and how we’re utilising it – all while keeping up with a rapidly evolving landscape.”
Puterbaugh and her team’s job is to stay nimble while seizing opportunities, and dealing with sudden challenges as they arise during campaigns.
“We’re monitoring performance and adjusting our plans in real time in order to maintain momentum long past a release date,” she says. “For us, success isn’t just about first-week numbers but about fostering long-term growth and helping our artists build sustainable careers.”
In recent years, Spotify in particular has talked a lot about its ‘two-sided marketplace’ strategy, with tools – a mixture of free and paid – for artists and the teams around them to grow their audiences and engage existing fans on its service. The company recently launched a ‘New Releases’ guide to encourage this activity.
Secretly has been using the full range of those tools: ‘Countdown Pages’ to get fans excited about new releases; short videos for the DSP’s ‘Clips’ feature; its ‘Showcase’ homepage advertising format; and its recently-launched ‘Listening Party’ functionality.
The mix of how these tools varies by artist. For one with a very engaged fanbase online, a countdown page was a key place to gather them, while also teasing the visual identity of the new album with Clips – music videos and behind-the-scenes footage included.
This was then followed up with a listening party on the day of release, and a Showcase ad campaign in the week after – “to capture fans who were actively listening to the artist’s catalogue but might not have been aware that there was a new album”.
Puterbaugh says that for another artist, their countdown page hosted “song explainer” clips for each pre-release single, talking about the meaning and inspiration behind the track.
“These clips deeply resonated with fans since it gave them a glimpse into the artist’s creative process in a way they hadn’t gotten before,” she says. The pre-release work was followed up by a campaign using Spotify’s ‘Marquee’ ads to further boost first-week streams for the artist.
One lesson here is that countdown pages – which Spotify has just opened up to all artists with more than 5,000 active listeners – are not just about signing fans up to pre-save an album and showing them a ticker. Yes, they’re important for first-week streams due to the push notifications that pre-savers get on release day, but there’s more.
Puterbaugh says that Secretly sees them as something that “allow artists to immerse fans in the visual world of an album with content that would typically only be available on social sites: a living, breathing space that we’re able to update throughout a campaign, enticing fans to revisit the page multiple times during a rollout.”
“On recent campaigns, countdown pages have generated anywhere from six to 30 times more Spotify pre-saves than our off-platform buy links,” she adds. “On average, we’ve found 70% of pre-savers went on to stream the album in week one, which has been instrumental in helping us reach our charting goals.”
Of all Spotify’s tools, it’s ‘Showcase’ that Puterbaugh’s team has found itself using a lot. She says that the strategy around this involves two buckets.
“The first bucket is for re-engaging existing or past listeners, using it as a post-release sweep to capture everyone who is a fan of the artist but hasn’t listened to a new release. This has been useful for artists who have a deep catalogue that fans are still actively engaging with,” she says.
“The second bucket is for more developing artists who have an opportunity to find new fans. Showcase has helped us reach these untapped audiences by allowing us to target potential fans. It’s proven to be an effective tool for our artists at various stages in their careers.”
While listening parties are a newer feature on Spotify, Puterbaugh has been impressed so far. One artist recently hosted one on release day for around 3,000 of their top fans on the platform, playing their new album, talking about the music in the chat section, and then holding a live Q&A with fans at the end.
“Listening Parties have been an incredible way for our artists to talk directly to their fans and establish genuine connections that last beyond the event itself,” she says. Which is actually an interesting point: these are the kind of direct connections that haven’t been possible on Spotify (or, indeed, most big western services) for most of streaming’s history.
As Puterbaugh said, the key to all these campaigns is constant monitoring of what’s happening, what’s working, and then reacting accordingly. Her team spends a lot of time in the Spotify for Artists dashboard.
“For example, if follower growth, collection streams, and discovery streams are growing, it signifies that we should be investing more in a release,” she says. “This may lead to our team creating additional assets like official music videos, live performance videos, and Clips as needed.”
“We will aim to capture new audiences through a Showcase campaign. If a track starts to over-index within radio, we may opt it into Discovery Mode. It all comes down to maintaining momentum and doing everything we can to make the most out of an organic moment in real time.”
Looking to the future, Puterbaugh has one suggestion for an area where she would like to see streaming services investing more time and money.
“There’s a big opportunity for DSPs to better integrate with social platforms since that’s where so many fans are finding new music,” she says. “Whether it’s through cross-platform integrations, or in-app tools and advertising, we’re always looking for more ways to widen the funnel for discovery and prioritise fan engagement.”
