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Spotify's Snapchat channel tributes 2015's music, targeting younger users

Spotify is celebrating the end of the year by sponsoring a Snapchat Discover channel, revisiting 2015's music scene with a new genre each day in an attempt to connect with its key demographic. 

The music streaming service is hoping to connect with its key demographic, a young, digitally-savvy audience who also spends a great deal amount of time on Snapchat. The channel is sharing greetings from big artists, articles, exclusive performances, and lists of top musicians of the year. 

"As the battle for market share in the music streaming space escalades, service providers are looking for ways to distinguish themselves as 360 degree centers for all things related to music," said said Shuli Lowy, marketing director at Ping Mobile, New York. "Proving a richer experience and a reputation for expertise is what builds an affinity towards a provider. 

"Spotify's discover channel on Snapchat does just that," she said. "Instead of just keeping the streaming servers up, Spotify is going the extra mile and engaging fans with holiday messages from artists, historical tidbits about bands, and year in review highlights about music. The campaign suits Snapchat's story format well--using varied forms of content including full length musical videos, images, articles and short clips."

Celebrating through channels

Snapchat users are being gifted a wide range of exclusive content for each genre. For instance, Tuesday?s channel featured a variety of content related to Country with multiple artists wishing fans happy holidays as well as mentions of the top artists of the year and music videos. 

Yesterday Spotify focused on Pop, another significant genre for consumers. The channel shared a video of popular artist Demi Lovato wishing users happy holidays and discussing her New Year?s resolution of brushing her teeth more. 

Following Ms. Lovato?s greeting, music fans swiped right to a preview of an article regarding musician Justin Bieber versus the band One Direction, then swiped up to view it in its entirety. The report recounted Mr. Bieber?s and One Direction?s success compared to one another throughout the year, following album releases on the same day. 


Spotify's channel shares music facts

Alessia Cara?s popular song, entitled Here, is featured in an exclusive acoustic performance on the channel as well as a variety of related facts. Spotify also names One Direction the top Pop artist of the year. 

Snapchat ad relevancy
Similarly, Netflix recently tapped the influence of Snapchat and NFL content to promote its Jessica Jones series to a tech savvy and broad market, with various advertisements in the Sunday Football live story (see more). 

Hyatt Regency?s Hyatt Gold Passport brand teamed up with Comedy Central for a digitally driven content to augment the hotel chain's latest marketing campaign, which includes custom, humorous advertisements on the network?s Snapchat Discover channel (see more). 

"Spotify is switching its Snapchat content daily," Ms. Lowy said. "While many consumers swipe through content of Snapchat stories it is unlikely that they will swipe through content they have already seen. 

"Many of the users who are watching the content use Snapchat daily so it's important that the content remain fresh."

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer