Spotify Marquee and Showcase are paid promotion formats inside Spotify itself. Instead of paying a third party to send people to your song, you pay to have your release recommended to listeners in the app. They are tools, not guarantees: they can bring attention to a release, but they can't make people like it.
What Marquee and Showcase are
The details change, so treat this as a general picture and check Spotify's own pages for the current rules.
Marquee is a full-screen recommendation of a new release. It is shown to listeners who have already shown interest in the artist, for example people who listened before or follow the artist. Its job is to remind the people who are already close to you that something new is out, and to make it a single tap to listen.
Showcase is a promoted card on a listener's Home screen. It can be aimed at listeners who are likely to enjoy your music, which can include people who haven't heard you before. It is the format closer to discovery, while Marquee is closer to reminding.
In both cases the listener sees that the recommendation is sponsored, and the music itself plays like any other stream.
Who can use them
Availability varies by country, by account and over time. These formats are managed through the artist tools that Spotify provides, and some of them are offered only to certain artists or markets, or only for new releases within a limited time around the release date. You will normally need a claimed artist profile and a release that is already on Spotify.
The practical way to find out is to log in to your artist profile on Spotify and look for the campaign tools. If they aren't there, they probably aren't open to your account yet. On the CULT plans that include Spotify for Artists access, that is where you would look. Don't pay a stranger who claims they can "unlock" these formats for you.
When it makes sense
Paid promotion amplifies what is already there. It works best when:
- you have a new single and a small but real audience of listeners and followers
- your profile is complete: a clear photo, a short bio, your best tracks at the top
- the song is good enough that a listener who hears it once will want to hear it twice
- you have a plan for after the campaign: a video, a post, a concert, the next release
It makes much less sense if you have almost no listeners yet, if the profile looks unfinished, or if you hope the campaign will fix a song that people aren't responding to. Marquee in particular depends on having an audience to remind.
Judge the result by new listeners, not streams
Streams are the easiest number to look at, and the least useful one. A campaign aimed at people who already like you can raise your streams by getting your fans to play the song more, without finding a single new listener.
Look at these instead:
- Listeners. How many different people heard the song, and how many of them are new to you? This is the number that tells you whether you reached anyone.
- Followers. Did people follow your profile after hearing the song, or only play it once?
- Saves and playlist adds. A save means someone wants to hear the song again. A track that is saved by a decent share of its listeners is doing something right.
- What happens afterwards. Check a few weeks later. If listeners come back to the song and your other tracks without the campaign, the spend turned into a real audience. If numbers fall straight back, the effect was temporary.
Write down your numbers before the campaign starts so you have something to compare against. Compare the same length of time before and after, and note what else happened during it, such as a post that did well or a mention somewhere.
Before you spend anything
- Decide the amount you can afford to lose. Treat it as an experiment, not an investment you rely on.
- Pick one release and one goal, for example "more followers" or "more listeners in one country".
- Read the current terms in the tool itself, including how and when you pay, since they change.
- Never use services that sell streams, plays or "Spotify promotion" from outside. Artificial streams can get a track removed and your account marked, and they don't create real listeners.
Paid promotion is a small part of a release plan. A good song, a clear profile and steady content around it will do more for you than any single campaign, and they make a campaign work better when you do decide to run one.