Spotify Trigger Cities - What They Are and How They Work

[@_J.Saenz.]

Great stuff my brother!! Good looks!!!!!

[@tomdupreeiii]

Hey thank you!

[@DanGraul]

I gave this method a test run over the past few days after seeing your video on it. I have a campaign to mostly Tier 1 and Tier 2 countries on a song that's been running for the past month and getting okay results (good price per conversion but had some trouble with the amount of drop off between conversions and actual listeners showing up on Spotify), so I was open to trying something new. After creating a new campaign with using the list of target cities you showed here, and including some target cities that were hot spots on my own Spotify listener locations, I've been getting some good results over the past few days. The overall amount of listeners is up and the quality of listener seems to be higher than I was getting before. This target method has been getting a lot more streams per listener than I had previously been getting with the song - even after dropping the budget down after the weekend ended, I got a few less listeners but the same amount of streams from Sunday to Monday;and the amount of drop off from conversions to listeners has narrowed compared to the old campaign. Appreciate all the great info in your videos!

[@tomdupreeiii]

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with this. And for taking the time to test it. I'm really happy to hear you had good results with it. It helps a ton to have someone else's data outside of my own!

[@CrystalReneeMusic]

I totally liked and subscribed. Thank you and the person who gave you the idea.

[@tomdupreeiii]

Thank you so much for the sub and foe the thoughtful comment! I’m glad you found the video.

[@PhilJohari]

This is so useful thankyou!!

[@tomdupreeiii]

No problem! Thanks for watching!

[@BNaturalStudios]

Great work, as always. Don't let haters get you down.

[@tomdupreeiii]

Thanks! Never will!

[@Pensacola2]

So generous and selfless to share this, thank you Tom!

[@tomdupreeiii]

What a comment! Thank you for saying that. 🙏🏻

[@MCAlvesPortugal]

Great review 😎

[@tomdupreeiii]

Hey thank you!

[@MugaMusicChannel]

greetings from japan! This is another good strategy. My top 3 cities on Spotify for Artist are Mexico City, Santiago, Sao Paolo. All of them in South America. So I will definitely take your advice in future release.

[@tomdupreeiii]

Hey that’s awesome! Thanks for dropping in from Japan!

[@redcanvasltd3267]

I love the art work on your EP

[@tomdupreeiii]

Thank you!

[@nobodys.shapeshifter]

This is one of those things that seem so obvious once you hear it, but I would have never thought of on my own. Thanks Tom!

[@tomdupreeiii]

Totally agree. Wish I could take credit for it but I definitely can’t. The math really seems to favor it though, which I think is fascinating!

[@eliteultra9]

Everything shown was impressive! Just a little addition to the info, México City is in North America not Central or South America so there is a major advantage when designing tours, you can tour the whole North American region by including cities like México City and other major Mexican cities, just like Ramstein did in their most recent North American tour and things such a sessions or scheduling should be easier by adapting to similar time zones and overall distances. México City is such a mecca for any streaming service or any service in general, with a whooping more than 30 million people just debuting in a small indie venue can potentially skyrocket an artist popularity by also gaining the whole country and with a high probability of then making it big in the US too due to it's cultural closeness and the Mexican-American relations and community

[@tomdupreeiii]

Great comment! Thank you for sharing this with us.

[@djnoebr]

thanks for sharing !

[@tomdupreeiii]

You bet!

[@svenmyren3281]

This is awesome bro! Thank you for sharing, makes allot of sense ;)

[@tomdupreeiii]

My pleasure! Thanks for watching!

[@dobbydop]

This channel is invaluable I’ve been using everything I’ve learnt here to help myself and a lot of the artists I produce get some nice results and even stop them from being ‘burnt out’ by the music industry It’s inspired them to keep writing and pushing when they were about to give up Thank you soo much! Quick question, what other targeting did you use for the trigger cities adset?

[@tomdupreeiii]

Wow thank you so much for this comment! I’m so glad these videos have helped so many in your circle. For that ad set I used stories placements only and a lookalike audience only targeting Spotify.

[@aarg4ingennavnfunker]

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing this:)

[@tomdupreeiii]

You bet! Thanks for watching!

[@micahscale7413]

ironic that you are doing a video on this. I've been testing my trigger countries for a week. I went from 14 cents a conversion to 8 cents a conversion. It's just a smart concept. Glad to know that great minds think alike. Even my click-through rate on tone-den has jumped from 83% to 95%.

[@tomdupreeiii]

Dude incredible timing!

[@moniusi]

Video is gold! I was searching for ways to get my music on playlists in these trigger cities. It's a new and interesting concept to advertise instead. I wonder what other methods there are to get your music to the people in these cities?

[@vxd]

Tom what are the landing page stats looking like? Does it translate into streams? If a lot of these guys click but they don't actually have spotify that might be an issue right?

[@tomdupreeiii]

Yes, that would definitely be an issue. Fortunately, the click through rate on my landing page has gone up by a good margin (~85% up to ~95%) and the amount of daily followers I'm getting has gone up as well!

[@ApolloSuns]

Our top Cities #1 Mexico City #2 Guadalajara, MX #3 Santiago, Chile #4 Winnipeg (Canada) home town #5 Puebla City, MX #6 Buenos Aires, Argentina #7 Chicago, US What your saying makes sense haha

[@thesuncollective1475]

Just checked out your band man, you guys are killa dilla....Damn..what instrument do you play?

[@ApolloSuns]

@@thesuncollective1475 Oh wow! Thanks so much, very appreciated. I play guitar!

[@tomdupreeiii]

@Apollo Suns wow, that’s awesome!

[@ApolloSuns]

@@tomdupreeiii Thanks! Since taking more time and money to dig in our socials have been getting lots of love and engagement

[@tomdupreeiii]

@Apollo Suns love that!

[@HayesandYprofile]

Hey, Tom, great content! Do you think you can get onto Discover Weekly later on, or does it have to happen within the first few weeks?

[@tomdupreeiii]

You can get on Discover Weekly any time! There isn't a time limit for that one like there is on Release Radar.

[@HayesandYprofile]

@@tomdupreeiii Thanks for taking the time, appreciate it!

[@iam_RyanBronson]

were you using a story ad or a timeline ad?

[@tomdupreeiii]

I use stories ads.

[@gigimonrose3992]

Hey Tom! Great vid! What ad placements did you use? While these are great results in terms of cost I think your CTR is a bit low... I'm not a pro here by any means but they say a good CTR for FB ads is 2-5%. I use mobile/ destop ad for Insta and FB and nothing else. One of my ads CTR was nearly 3%! BUT.... (the big BUT), my cost was like 30p which is ridiculous for a stream! So I'm back to the drawing board... sigh...

[@tomdupreeiii]

I’m only using stories placements for these ads. My experience with CTR has generally been anywhere from .50% to 2.0% with these kinds of ads, depending on audience temperature and size, cold targeting, retargeting, etc. For a largely cold audience, I’m happy at ~1.0%. I know the CTR varies across placements and industries as well, so what might be true for one may not hold true for another. 3.0% is great though! Hats off to you on that! Good luck on bringing the cost down!

[@omstheband]

Do you test new ads sets within a campaign you’re already running (by creating a new ad set after the campaign has already been running for a while) or do you just create an entirely new campaign? I want to test out some different ad set ideas but not sure if adding them to an already existing campaign would mess things up?

[@tomdupreeiii]

I create new ad sets all within the same existing campaign. It’s worked great for me!

[@omstheband]

@@tomdupreeiii Got it! Thanks so much man

[@AcesizOfficial]

Interesting

[@tomdupreeiii]

I thought so too!

[@jacobmgmt9737]

Great video

[@tomdupreeiii]

Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it!

[@matthewv789]

One question though is, are these the customers you really want to reach? Possibly, if they really do end up setting taste and starting a trend of people liking your music more broadly around the world, but I’m pretty skeptical that will actually happen. If you’re trying to make money, are these people the most likely to buy a CD, a download, or merch (at the price you want to charge, particularly accounting for shipping), or tickets to your concerts (are you even going to tour India or Indonesia? Would you be able to charge your usual ticket prices?) Even streams: Spotify pays out way less for a stream from India than they do for a stream from the US. So I doubt your ad spend is any more beneficial to target these countries despite the lower cost per (whatever). I think there’s a reason ad rates are cheaper in those countries, and it reflects that these is less money to be made there. And what money there is to be made there is probably being made by locals with local knowledge and audience familiarity, no travel costs to perform there, low shipping costs to ship goods, and lots of cross promotion with other local media, all advantages that you lack when coming from the US.

[@yourbandisabusiness]

You are one of the few people asking the right questions.

[@cru313]

Hey Tom great video! Since the conversion Ios14 changes my cost per result is through the roof with conversion campaigns. Do you set a cap on the highest bid somewhere in your campaign, if yes where do I do this? And if you don’t how come your cost per result is so low when I basically copied your campaign?

[@tomdupreeiii]

My costs may be lower simply because I've been running my campaigns longer and Facebook has more data connected to my audience and my account. It also could have a lot to do with the song and the ads. There are so many subjective pieces that can create a wide range of results. I wish it was easier than that. Doing my best to built into as much of a formula as I can, that's for sure!

[@CRXYTV]

Could you use the trigger cities to get your 100 conversions that you need to make look alike audience ?

[@tomdupreeiii]

Yeah dude, I think that would definitely be a usable strategy!

[@CRXYTV]

@@tomdupreeiii Thanks! would you still use the detailed targeting for your artist? as im just trying to get these 100 conversions

[@OkayKeith]

In my top cities I see streams coming from São Paulo but not so much from the others but its there. Hopefully on my next release I can trigger release radar or discover weekly

[@tomdupreeiii]

I think you’ll see an increase as you keep going!

[@OkayKeith]

Make sense. I guess when I release another song it might trip release radar and discover weekly.

[@bautistaesandi2478]

This is what you told on a comment yesterday about Buenos Aires when i told i was a little bit scared about releasing my song, right? My song is in spanish so maybe i can make a campaing with 2 adsets, one for Buenos Aires and the other for Mexico City and Santiago...

[@tomdupreeiii]

That’s exactly right! Yeah I think that’s a great idea. But I would simply include all those cities in the same ad set and then maybe test a second one targeting all three countries as a whole.

[@bautistaesandi2478]

@@tomdupreeiii Okey! So one for cities (buenos aires, santiago, mexico city...)and other for countries (arg, chi, mex). I will test it and as soon as i have results im going to let you know in a comment. If things go right then great and if not thank you anyway for the answers and the good vibes. ¡Abrazo desde Buenos Aires! (thats in spanish haha)

[@cru313]

One question! When I choose all Spotify countries and a lowest cost conversion AD I basically only get clicks from “weird little” countries. I don’t see the point if my ads never get clicks from big ones like the US, England etc what is the solution for that? Just running multiple campaigns? How do you work around this?

[@the_Distortionist]

The idea is to get cheap streams with those small countries to get on algorhythmic playlists which then show your song to "wealthier" countries

[@magpietheband]

Wonder if it would be beneficial to widen the lookalike audience from 1% to 3 or 4 and also do trigger cities in the same ad.

[@tomdupreeiii]

That’s a great idea. I hadn’t considered that. I might test that!

[@telepathicteddybear]

Did you leave the 25+ miles radius on? Or just "current city only?" Asking since the cumulative effect of all cities might be a big difference.

[@tomdupreeiii]

I left it at 25 miles which I think is the default.

[@Cloudgirl778]

Thanks :)

[@tomdupreeiii]

No problem!

[@susanwojcicki5714]

new song soon ?

[@tomdupreeiii]

Yes! Working on it now!

[@talesbuonarotti]

Bem vindo ao Brasil :P

[@tomdupreeiii]

Hi! 👋🏻 Thanks for watching!

[@acommon]

I think you're completely wrong. The only reason you're getting results from these places is because the advertising is way cheaper per click there

[@chocopanna9374]

Thanks for another great video Tom, I had read that article before and it's great to see someone actually testing it out! Did you exclude the trigger cities from the Lookalike ad set targeting, as to avoid having your ad sets competing with each other? Also, do you recommend allocating a separate ad set to the trigger cities or just include them in the ad set targeting all the Spotify countries? And last question, do you always target all the Spotify countries in the same ad set and let FB do its thing or do you separate the countries into different Tiers to be able to control the ad spend a little bit?