How to use Spotify's Campaign Kit to get more streams in 2025

Want 2025 to be the year your music career reaches new heights?

Good, because you're in the right place!

For most artists, Spotify sits right at the centre of your streaming revenue. You might have a good audience size on other platforms too, but when someone says 'music streaming' most of us (including your listeners) think 'Spotify'.

Which is why we're excited to be diving into Spotify's Campaign Kit features and how they can help you reach new listeners, reengage existing listeners, and turn your listeners into die-hard fans.

What is Spotify's Campaign Kit?

Campaign Kit is Spotify’s built-in marketing platform for Spotify Artists.

Marketing your music can feel tough. There are so many platforms out there, so much marketing advice, and so many routes you could go down to help your music reach new listeners.

Should you be running Instagram ads?
Building a website?
Paying for Google Ads?
Putting an ad in the local newspaper?
Investing in billboard real estate?

All of those things could work - but they all have one thing in common: they’re not necessarily reaching listeners when they’re actually listening to music.

Spotify’s Campaign Kit positions itself as a solution to that problem. A way for you to target listeners who you can be somewhat confident will like your music when they’re actually listening to music, i.e. when they’ve got Spotify open, streaming songs, and actively looking for new music to sink their teeth (ears) into.

Accessible from within your Spotify For Artists account, Campaign Kit is ideal for independent artists who want to promote their music and stay in complete control of their advertising spend, too.

Unlike Meta Ads Manager and Google Ads Manager and many many other advertising platforms, you don’t need to be a qualified marketer with 20+ years of experience or a literal rocket scientist to understand and manage your own advertising within Spotify’s Campaign Kit.

Campaign Kit consists of 4 core marketing tools to help you grow your Spotify streams.

Campaign Kit: Playlist Pitching

Spotify has thousands of editorial playlists with millions of followers and even more listeners. Getting your music into one of those editorial playlists gets your music in front of potentially millions of listeners. Spotify claim that tracks featured on editorial playlists cansee a 50% boost in engagement in their first week of placement - which, no matter how many streams you get in average week, is a big increase.

Within Campaign Kit, every Spotify artist can pitch their upcoming releases to Spotify’s editorial team for the chance to secure placements in editorial playlists. Creating a standout pitch isn’t an easy task, and Spotify themselves state that only around 20% of all pitched tracks end up featuring in one or more editorial playlists - but submitting a pitch is the only way to have a chance of being featured in an editorial playlist.

📣 If you're distributing your music with Identity Music, we can handle your Spotify playlist pitching for you! Send us the details of your release, the inspiration behind it, and anything else that might catch the attention of playlist editors and our team will craft a pitch that stands out from the crowd.

We've been pitching music for our artists for years and consistently get releases featured in high-profile playlists. Read about how to create the perfect playlist pitch here and follow us on Instagram to see our playlist successes.

✅ Best for... growing your audience by reaching new listeners.
🏆 Measure your success in... number of New Listeners.

Campaign Kit: Spotify Discovery Mode

If you’re eligible for your tracks to be in Spotify’s Discovery Mode, Campaign Kit is where you can do that yourself. We’ve talked in depth about Discovery Mode in our Guide To Spotify Discovery Mode - but for the uninitiated, here’s a quick overview.

Spotify’s Discovery Mode is a campaign feature that you can opt your eligible tracks into to boost their appearance in algorithmic placements, i.e. places determined by the Spotify algorithm. Discovery Weekly, artist Radio, Release Radar and DJ are all examples of algorithmic placements, where the tracks featured in those places is determined by an individual user’s listening preferences, tastes and behaviours.

Discovery Mode allows your tracks to feature more prominently in these algorithmic placements. It won’t mean your tracks show up in places they wouldn’t have shown up without being opted into Discovery Mode - but in places where you would have shown anyway, your tracks will appear higher in the track listing, making it more likely that your tracks get heard by new listeners.

📣 Spotify's Discovery Mode can be incredibly valuable to your growth - but only if it's managed properly, to ensure that the extra revenue Spotify keeps from your Discovery Mode streams (30%) is more than balanced by the extra streams you're gaining.

If you're an Identity Music distribution client, we do this management for you. We actively manage Spotify Discovery Mode on your behalf, making sure that your eligible tracks are opted in when Discovery Mode will benefit you and opted out if that benefit wanes. If you’ve got releases with Identity Music that you’d like to consider Discovery Mode for, reach out to our Client Management team and we’ll happily advise you.

✅ Best for... growing your audience by reaching new listeners.
🏆 Measure your success in... number of Streams, number of New Listeners.

Campaign Kit: Marquee

If you listen to music on Spotify, you’ve probably seen a Marquee ad already, without realising what it is.

A Marquee in Spotify’s Campaign Kit is a full-screen sponsored recommendation, specifically for new releases. It features as a pop-up on the home screen of Spotify for both free and premium users, with the goal of grabbing their attention and encouraging them to click through to your release to listen to it.

Marquee campaigns are sponsored ads that you can choose the targeting and budget of. They’re restricted to new releases (the campaign must start within 21 days of the release date of your album, EP or single) and run for 10 days, or until your budget is spent. At the time of writing (February 2025), Marquee campaigns are available to be run by artists based in 11 territories (Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, UK, USA) and can target audiences in 44 markets.

✅ Best for... re-engaging your audience, promoting new releases.
🏆 Measure your success in... Reactivated Listeners, Amplified Listeners.

Campaign Kit: Showcase

Showcase is a sponsored feature on Spotify’s homepage where you can feature new releases or older catalogue (while Marquee can only be a new release). It sits just under the 8 recently played cards, meaning you can capture listener attention right at the moment they’re choosing what to listen to.

While clearly the few weeks after a release drops is an important moment to capitalise on, Showcase was introduced by Spotify as a response to the fact that 75% of a release’s first-year streams happen after the first month. Showcase campaigns allow you to keep the momentum of your new release going or resurrect interest in an older release to bring your catalogue to new fans.

Like Marquee, Showcase campaigns allow you to choose the targeting and budget for your campaign. They run for 14 days or until your budget runs out and are charged on a Cost Per Click basis, meaning that you only get charged for people who actually click on your Showcase ad, rather than being charged for people who see it but scroll past.

✅ Best for... re-engaging your audience, boosting older catalogue.
🏆 Measure your success in... Reactivated Listeners, Amplified Listeners.

Targeting the right audience with Spotify Marquee & Showcase campaigns

When choosing the targeting for your Marquee or showcase campaigns, Spotify allows you to use either a default audience of any listeners (in your chosen markets) who are likely to stream your release after seeing your campaign or to target a specific segment of listeners, depending on your goals.

The audience targeting options for Marquee and Showcase campaigns are as follows.

Programmed Audience: listeners who haven’t deliberately chosen to stream your music in the past two years, but have streamed your music at least once from ‘programmed’ sources, i.e. editorial playlists or algorithmic placements.

Active Audience: these are listeners who have chosen to stream your music in the past 28 days from active sources, e.g. your artist profile or their own playlists and library. These are the most engaged listeners of your music and are broken down into three sub-segments:

Super Listeners - the most dedicated listeners in the last 28 days and the most likely to continue streaming your music in the next 3 months, AKA your biggest fans.

Moderate Listeners - active listeners who aren’t quite as engaged as Super Listeners, but show potential for continued listening and developing into Super Listeners over time.

Light Listeners - listeners who have intentionally streamed your music once or twice in the last 28 days. They’re not heavily engaged with your music, but have shown potential.

Previously Active Audience: these are listeners who were part of your Active Audience in the past two years, but haven’t streamed your music deliberately in the last 28 days.

How to use Campaign Kit to hit your goals in 2025

Using Spotify Campaign Kit to grow your audience

To grow your audience, you should be aiming to reach new listeners with your Spotify campaigns. But you don’t want to reach just anyone, because music is a subjective thing - you want to reach people who are likely to enjoy your music, so that they click through to listen to your promoted release and are more likely to save to their library and/or follow you for future releases.

Campaign Kit can be used to target new listeners through…

✅ Discovery Mode: helping your music reach people whose listening behaviours indicate they might like your music.

✅ Playlist Pitching: getting your tracks featured in relevant playlists will help you reach new listeners (but not necessarily convert them into followers or fans!).

✅ Marquee & Showcase: targeting Programmed Audience will put your music in front of a new audience of people who are likely to enjoy your music.

🏆 Measure your success through... New Listeners, number of Streams, New Active Listeners.

Using Spotify Campaign Kit to reengage past fans

If it’s been a while since you released music or you’ve simply noticed your streams have been a bit less consistent recently, you can use Campaign Kit to reengage listeners who have already expressed interest in your music (through streaming, saving to their library, adding to their own playlists, etc.).

Campaign Kit can be used to target disengaged fans through…

✅ Marquee & Showcase: targeting your Previously Active Audience with sponsored home screen listings to remind them of your catalogue or introduce new releases.

🏆 Measure your success through… Reactivated Listeners.

Using Spotify Campaign Kit to build connections with fans

While getting new listeners is always exciting, to achieve sustainable growth in your music career you need to back up new listeners with a consistently engaged fan base who’ll keep coming back to your music over and over again.

The more connected a fan is with your music, the more you’ll earn from them in streaming revenues over time - and they’re far more likely to purchase merch from you, attend your live gigs, and support you on your social media channels too. 

The goal with building fan connections is to increase follows, saves and playlist adds, so that your fans are easily able to access your music in the future without you needing to use paid promotion to reach them again.

Campaign Kit can be used to build deeper connections with fans through…

✅ Discovery Mode: put your music back on the radar of existing fans who are more likely to save, follow and add your music to their playlists.

✅ Marquee & Showcase: target your Active Audience to encourage them to engage even more with your music.

🏆 Measure your success through… Amplified Listeners, number of streams.

Getting started with Spotify Campaign Kit

To get started with using Spotify’s Campaign Kit to hit your goals in 2025, head to your Spotify For Artists page and navigate to the Campaigns tab, where you’ll find all the Campaign Kit options ready for you.

And don’t forget: if you’re an Identity Music artist, we can handle Playlist Pitching and Discovery Mode for you and are more than happy to advise on Marquee or Showcase campaigns too!

If you’re not yet an Identity Music artist but want to benefit from a higher level of support from your distributor, apply over here.