Hey there and welcome back to The Habit Weekly. We're thrilled to be kicking of another year of music marketing news with you.   In this week’s edition:

• YouTube and Coachella's renewed deal.  

• Taylor Swift boosts U.S. vinyl sales.

• Madonna announces world tour with NSFW video. 

Spotify's Listening Personalities

 SpotifyWhen Spotify launched its annual Wrapped campaign for 2022, we were introduced to an exciting new feature - Listening Personalities. Using the past year's streaming data, Spotify have developed 16 personalties that summarise individuals' streaming habits, based on four binary attributes. The personalities take into account these attributes:

F/E: Familiarity vs Exploration

T/N: Timelessness vs Newness

L/V: Loyalty vs Variety

C/U: Commonality vs Uniqueness

In short, Spotify looked at whether listeners are listening to the same artists and songs on repeat, or venturing out into unknown territories, whether they're sticking to oldies but goldies, or hitting up new releases as soon as they drop, alongside the popularity of the music they're streaming.

To characterise this information, Spotify normalised its streaming data, and each participating user was placed on one side of each of the four spectrums.The variables leave us with 16 personality types, each a neat little package that tells the story of Spotify users’ habits.

Spotify's use of Listening Personalities has reminded us of the power of developing fan personas and segmenting audiences, based on their interaction with content. 

We are curious if Spotify will add these personality based segments to their existing advertising segments such as location, interest and genre. 

With the help of characterisations like Listening Personalities, artists could create tailored marketing approaches that take their audience's unique habits into consideration, creating more valuable results.

Whether it’s committed vs casual fans or trend followers vs nostalgics, audience's listening habits are likely to influence how they interact with marketing content, so artists should be paying attention.  

Campaigns

YouTube and Coachella have renewed their live streaming deal. They'll continue to ease festival FOMO with Coachella streams and extra content till 2026. Madonna has used a NSFW, star studded promo video to announce her upcoming world tour. Lil Wayne, Amy Schumer and Jack Black are part of the crew helping to spread the word about the superstar's 40th anniversary concerts. 

Trends

Taylor Swift helped vinyl sales grow for the 17th straight year in the U.S last year. In fact, 1 in 25 vinyl sold was a Taylor Swift record. But following epic expansion during the pandemic, vinyl sales growth is slowing. It is unclear if this is related to demand, or ongoing supply chain issues.After YouTube faced backlash (and some colourful language) from creators, they are revisiting their new approach to profanity. It would see creators miss out on monetisation opportunities if they swore within the first 15 seconds of their videos. PUBG Mobile has a new music label Beat Drop, made just for the game. The label says its aim is to shine a spotlight on up-and-coming artists, “produce industry defining tracks with established icons, and provide players with epic songs to heighten their PUBG Mobile experience”.The Brag Media announced its plans to experiment with AI this year. The publication is adamant AI will not replace writers, nor will they publish articles that are soley AI produced. The use of AI in written content creation is growing across the board. So it is hard to see it not having an impact on journalists, or anyone creating written content.

Learn

TikTok will now allow you to go live with up to 5 guests, thanks to its new Multi-Guest feature. Engage with fans, respond to questions, and add effects are all options.Hootsuite will help you get on top of social media scheduling in 2023 with this posting template.

Fast Facts

👉 Over 80% of Apple Music subscribers listened to Spatial Audio in 2022.