Surprisingly, album covers may bear more responsibility for the commercial success of an album over the actual songs themselves. Album covers have the power to make or break a release’s sales or even become the catalyst behind a song’s click-through on your digital service provider (DSP). As result, album covers are drawing an increasing amount of attention from optimization teams behind the release of an album for catalog artists. Digital innovation techniques have penetrated the process of the release of an album. For example, animated album cover art, motion cover graphics, and canvas visuals have been automated to graphically correlate with the sound and “vibe” of the currently playing song, appearing on a user’s main screen. The visual can come in various fashions – a traditional album cover that hosts an animation or a brief video of an artist’s music video. Either way, its inclusion has modernized and altered how listeners hear and see, music.
I personally learned of this digitally innovative success through conversing with David Gould, VP of A&R Optimization at Sony Entertainment. His team is solely tasked with the purpose of enhancing catalog artists’ sales and success through digital ingenuity. David shared that his team creates and attaches visuals to their artists’ songs on DSPs to prolong listenership, entice someone to click on the song, and promote the retention of listenership. Not only have these goals accumulated a variety of positive outcomes, but they are regarded as the driver of optimal playlist placement* on DSPs. *Optimal playlist placement is crucial for an artist and their representing label as it is correlated with algorithmic success. Ultimately, when a DSP recognizes a song performing well on a playlist, algorithms place it at the forefront of their services. This benefits not only the artist but the DSP in customer retention.
For Spotify, no revenue is earned if a song is clicked through within the first 30 seconds of its start. These visual covers slow the click-through process down as they captivate the attention and encourage the listener to view the album cover or canvas visual till its conclusion. According to Spotify, “Adding a high-quality Canvas to a track has increased streams by up to 120% and saves by up to 114%, in addition to lifts in artist profile visits and shares.”
It is important to note that not all canvas visuals or motion covers can enhance an album or song to that same degree. This makes using the right team and metrics imperative in unlocking the potential.
“Now what sort of potential?” you may ask. Well, there’s more.
In Spotify for example, Discovery Mode and Marquee are revolutionizing the financials of new releases all with the initial canvas visual in mind.
Discovery Mode is a feature that allows artists to expand their listener base and enables distributors to select music to personalize a session. In layman’s terms, it’s a data tracker for artists, their labels, and DSPs. When data collection is through, it allows strategists to allocate the optimal amount of resources to an album. And, traction follows suit with the more visually appealing visual covers for later releases and Marquee strategies, later explained. For example, Magic City Hippie rolled out a visual cover for each of their singles to entice deeper listenership and pick up on that Discovery Mode tracker.
Subsequently, a Marquee campaign can be conducted with these insights to build momentum for new releases by algorithmically targeting new listeners and driving them into confrontation with an artist’s previous albums. It is an in-app feature that notices if you are a new listener to a band’s latest release, it will notify and suggest to the listener to view and listen to other work created by that artist. Not only does Marquee track new listeners with the help of Discovery Mode. It tracks the type of listener – lapsed, casual, or recently interested. This results in, you guessed it – conversion, conversion, conversion. One-time listeners become lifelong fans and lifelong profit sources. You put a song on your playlist and money goes into an artist’s pocket… and their affiliated label. Because profit is based on a per-click basis, it is crucial for artists to get their songs on a playlist. Ultimately, using Marquee makes it 3x more likely an artist’s other works will be engaged on average.
In Magic City Hippie’s case, “30% of Marquee listeners saved a track from the album to their library or added it to a personal playlist. Plus, 20% of their Marquee listeners also streamed from their older releases like 2019’s Modern Animal.”
Within the age of AI comes privacy concerns and liability issues. However, these features are minimally intrusive as the DSP is tracking your listenership and is recommending music on your behalf, which most listeners enjoy. It makes it easier for listeners to find new music and curated playlists. It cuts out the time of discovery on behalf of the listener, however, still providing that exact feeling to the listener.