Marketing Monday Written by Jon for March 23rd I owe you some good ol' fashioned marketing stuff. My assumption is that most of you have found yourselves on this email list via some combination of bad luck and an interest in music marketing. I hate to disappoint people, and having spent the past couple of weeks philosophizing about the morality of Spotify and rambling on about the great questions of life in our tech-drenched age, I figure I should probably get back to my lane. So let's talk...
20 days ago • 5 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for March 16th I switched away from Gmail last week. I've used Google's professional email product (along with the rest of their workspace) for the past decade. But as of this morning: I'm off. The switch was, as expected, a bit of a hassle. I had to swap DNS records, get new user accounts for my team, and copy over a bunch of email filtering rules that I'd set up as part of my ongoing (losing) battle against inbox bloat. All told, the move took me about four...
27 days ago • 10 min read
Two Story Tuesday Written by Tom for March 10 Hello again. Last night, at dinner with a few folks, the conversation found its way, as often happens these days, to AI and Spotify. Two clarifications (inspired by Jon's most recent email) first: I'm using "Spotify" mostly as a stand in for all music streaming services. It might seem unfair, but in my defense, Spotify is probably the worst one, because it's also the best and the biggest - its algorithm is still the most effective music discovery...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for March 9th Spotify is not obsolete. I know, I know. We're talking in circles. Last week, Tom's email featured a subject line to the exact opposite effect (although, to be fair, he did punctuate it with a question mark, so there was more than a suggestion of ambiguity). In that email – which you can read here – Tom leads with a semi-viral article on Spotify's pending obsolescence, but he actually ends by taking the opposite stance: Spotify is not going...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Two Story Tuesday Written by Tom for March 3 Hello again. My father-in-law (who reads these newsletters) sent me this article entitled "The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away from Being Obsolete" last week. If you're going to take the time to read this email, you should first take the time to read that article. It will take you five minutes. Done? Sick. Here are my thoughts. I'd love to hear yours. 1. I'd never considered that music is a utility. In the article, he makes this...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for February 16th Anyone who knows me knows that I'm grumpy about TikTok. If you've been on this email list for any length of time, you've undoubtedly heard me say things like: "I don't like TikTok." "TikTok has its uses, I guess, but overall it is lame." "If I had to choose between posting on TikTok or consuming a three-pound, grape-flavored gummy bear each day, I'd pick the bear so freaking fast, like I wouldn't even have to think about it for a second, just...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for January 5th Last year was wild. I guess that's not saying much. It seems to me that every year is wild now, and each one is wilder than the last. Maybe that perspective is just par for the course of getting older, or maybe we live in unprecedented times and the world is slipping into chaos. Maybe both. But I'm not here to wax philosophical about the passage of time and the crisis of modernity, damn it. I'm here to write a marketing newsletter. Anyway, what...
3 months ago • 5 min read
Three slots Written by Jon for January 2nd Hey, quick thing: If you want to grow your Spotify, I have three slots available at our ad agency for new clients this month. Apply to Work With Us These are managed Meta ad campaigns that grow Spotify traffic like this: Those are all campaigns from the last couple of months. Not all campaigns crush it, obviously, but in general, Meta ads are my favorite Spotify growth tactic. They lead to meaningful engagement and growth. Last year we used them to...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for December 8th First of all... I wanted to give a quick update on last week's call for help with Spotify data analysis. Here's the email I sent on Friday, if you missed it. I've been going through the responses (I should finish over the next day or so), but for now I just wanted to say 1) I'm positive we'll be able to get this project done, just based on the volume of replies, and 2) thanks so much to everyone who took the time to respond. There are many...
4 months ago • 8 min read