How to get to know your audience in Spotify
When your music is on Spotify you have access to a wealth of data on who your listeners are and here’s how to work it all out.
Uploading your music to Spotify is both simple and free thanks to RouteNote. Artists can use our services to distribute unlimited releases to the world’s top services and earn revenues, gaining access to artist insights like those on Spotify for Artists.
Once your music is online and you’ve claimed your Spotify for Artists profile, you can explore your audience data. With a wealth of statistics available, this guide will help you to understand who your audience are with audience segments in your Spotify analytics.
On the segments tab, you can find your unique listeners from the last two years. Here you can explore who your active listeners are, who has been listening to you in the past, and what your programmed audience looks like. So that you don’t get overwhelmed, Spotify have broken down what each segment means:
- Active Audience: These are valuable listeners who intentionally streamed your music in the past 28 days from active sources like your artist profile, single and album pages, and their own playlists or library. On average, they make up 33% of your total audience but drive 60% of your streams and 80% of merch purchases through Spotify. You want to keep them engaged to ensure they continue listening and stay in your active audience.
- Super listeners: These are your most dedicated listeners in the past 28 days. They’re also the most likely to keep streaming your music in the next three months, more than any other segment in your total audience. Super listeners are your biggest fans on Spotify and a key measure of fandom.
- Moderate listeners: These are active listeners who intentionally streamed your music multiple times in the past 28 days. Although they’re not as engaged as super listeners, there’s potential for them to develop into super listeners over time.
- Light listeners: These are active listeners who streamed your music once or a couple of times in the past 28 days. While they’re not heavily engaged like moderate or super listeners, there’s potential for them to become more engaged over time.
- Previously active audience: These listeners were part of your active audience in the past two years but haven’t intentionally streamed your music in the past 28 days.
- Programmed audience: These listeners haven’t intentionally streamed your music in the past two years. However, at least once in the past two years, they have streamed your music from programmed sources such as editorial playlists, personalized playlists, Radio & Autoplay, or playlists created by other listeners.
Spotify point out the importance in reclaiming listeners who have shown interest under the previously active and programmed audience sections. They write: “Growing your active audience, especially super listeners, significantly impacts your streaming numbers and long-term audience retention. However, don’t overlook the importance of your previously active and programmed audiences.”
Listener Conversion Metrics
This is where you can track how listeners are converting from discovery on playlists, your artist profile, and elsewhere into dedicated listeners. Spotify track listener conversion metrics every month so that they can show them to you, the artist, to inform your strategy and reveal how audiences are finding you and sticking around.
- New listeners: These are listeners who hadn’t streamed your music on Spotify in the past two years but have now joined your total audience. Now you can measure how many new people your music is reaching each month on Spotify.
- New active listeners: These listeners joined your active audience after not intentionally streaming your music for at least two years. Their active streams might be the first time they’ve listened to your music, or they might have transitioned from streaming from only programmed sources. New active listeners will be included in your active audience numbers.
- Reactivated listeners: These listeners have rejoined your active audience after a period of inactivity of at least one month. As you reactivate more listeners, you’ll notice your previously active audience segment shrinking and your active audience growing.
Share of Streams
This is the section of your data which shows how much of the different sections account for your total streaming numbers. You can view the share of your audience and share of streams for the last 28 days.
Spotify write: “The data on the Segments tab helps you track your audience across various stages of fandom, from new listeners to loyal fans. Listener conversion metrics create a feedback loop connecting your marketing and release strategies to audience growth and re-engagement, which is essential for building long-term success.”
Check out the segments tab on your Spotify for Artists to find your audience.