Brand Saga

Brand Saga: How Spotify’s marketing tuned into culture to transform listening habits

From curated playlists to localised ad campaigns, Spotify’s India strategy reflects how the brand navigated a complex market and evolving listener habits.

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Pranali Tawte
New Update
Spotify marketing

In the early 2000s, the global music industry was in turmoil. Rampant piracy and illegal downloads eroded revenues, leaving record labels, artists, and distributors scrambling for solutions. Consumers, however, showed no decline in their appetite for music.

In 2006, Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of Tradedoubler, sought to resolve this imbalance. Their vision was to create a platform where music was more accessible legally than illegally, while ensuring artists and rights holders were compensated fairly. 

Two years later, in 2008, Spotify launched publicly in Sweden with a freemium model, free, ad-supported listening alongside a premium subscription.  

After years of negotiations, Spotify finalised licensing deals with major American record labels in 2011. The company was primed for a US launch, backed by a $100 million funding round.

Spotify debuted in the US in July 2011 with a six-month free trial of its premium service, seeking to lure in American listeners. One month after launch, Spotify had already captured 1.4% of the US music streaming market. This led to Spotify raising a total funding of $2.06B over 12 rounds.

Early marketing steps

Spotify’s initial marketing was subtle but effective. Its invite-only model in the early years created exclusivity and curiosity, while the 2011 integration with Facebook transformed music into a social, shareable experience.

But the brand’s true breakthrough lay in its ability to personalise listening through data. By analyzing users’ habits, Spotify turned statistics into stories, blending numbers with human insight. This approach culminated in standout campaigns such as “Thanks 2016, It’s Been Weird,” which took the year’s cultural turbulence and reflected it back through witty, data-driven OOH ads. 

Spotify thanks

Spotify thanks 1

Spotify Thanks 2

From cheeky references to oddball listening spikes to nods at global events, the campaign struck a chord by showing how music mirrored the world’s collective mood.

The success of this effort, won the brand a Silver and Bronze Lion at the 2017 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Alongside the annual “Wrapped” feature, these campaigns defined Spotify’s marketing.

Spotify rapidly expanded across Europe and the United States, paving the way for its entry into newer, more complex markets.

Road to India

For Spotify, India was a huge market. With over a billion people, a booming smartphone economy, and a young demographic consuming content at record pace, the opportunity was too large to ignore. Yet, this promise came with daunting challenges.

Unlike Western markets dominated by individual artists and albums, India’s music consumption is deeply tied to cinema, festivals, and regional culture. Bollywood and other film industries like Tollywood and Kollywood shape much of the country’s listening habits. On top of that, India isn’t one market but many: over 20 official languages, hundreds of dialects, and distinct regional tastes meant Spotify couldn’t adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.

Another roadblock was competition. When Spotify was preparing its entry, local players like Gaana, JioSaavn, and Wynk were already well-entrenched, offering vast local catalogues at competitive price points. Additionally, international competitors such as Apple Music and YouTube Music had already established themselves. 

Adding to the complexity were licensing negotiations with music labels. Some of India’s largest rights holders, including Warner/Chappell and Saregama, posed hurdles that delayed Spotify’s rollout by several years. However, Daniel Ek and his team persisted, recognizing that cracking India was not just about market share but also about cultural relevance and long-term growth.

Finally, in February 2019, Spotify launched in India.

Communicating with the audience

Spotify’s India launch was anchored by its first major campaign, “There’s a Playlist for That,” which cleverly localized the brand’s global positioning. Conceptualized by Leo Burnett India, the campaign transformed playlists into cultural commentary, using them as witty responses to everyday Indian situations. From awkward family interactions to humorous dating mishaps and even city-specific quirks, each billboard or digital creative paired real-life moments with a playlist

Sptify OOH

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The scale of the campaign was striking. With 500 outdoor hoardings across metros and a heavy push on digital, Spotify ensured visibility that felt both expansive and personal. Whether on a busy highway in Mumbai or a neighborhood corner in Delhi, consumers encountered hyper-local one-liners tied to their experiences, each closing with the tagline: “There’s a playlist for that.”

From the beginning, Spotify India emphasized that playlists were cultural products, not just song compilations.Curated offerings such as “Bollywood Butter,” “Indie India,” “Rap 91,” and regional playlists in Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, and Bengali reflected the full spectrum of India’s sonic identity. 

Collaborations with both mainstream stars and independent voices further reinforced Spotify’s credibility, balancing the mass appeal of Bollywood with the rise of hip-hop and indie subcultures.

The rationale behind the campaign was rooted in the understanding that music is deeply ingrained in the Indian way of life. Songs often feel like part of the country’s cultural DNA, whether during festivals, travel, fashion trends, memes, or pop culture conversations. Spotify’s curated playlists were designed to capture and bring alive these moments, and the campaign aimed to reflect precisely that.

Spotify's social media presence

Spotify India has a social media presence on Instagram with 929K followers, Twitter (X) with 90.2K followers, and YouTube with 1.5 lakh subscribers. The brand uses these platforms as spaces for dialogue, humor, and community-building.

At the heart of this approach is cultural listening. From tapping into viral memes and trending reels to creating India-specific references, Spotify ensures its posts feel native to internet culture rather than imposed brand communication.

Spotify’s social handles also thrive on topicality. IPL seasons see playlists like “Cricket Fever” pushed with witty cricket-meme formats.

A great example of this is their IPL 2019 campaign, where even though Spotify wasn’t an official sponsor, it cleverly rode on the IPL wave by covering the match ball by ball and providing a relevant playlist for each commentary, with its #HarBallPePlaylist campaign.

By the end of a match, they had tweeted out 250 playlists over a period of 4 hours, garnering a reach of 4.45M, generating a lot of engagement.

Spotify IPL

This is in addition to regular celebrity and influencer tie-ups for promoting customised playlists.

Spotify’s Instagram also goes beyond memes and campaigns. Features like “Behind the Beats” offer fans a peek behind the scenes, while artists share stories, insights, and creative processes, creating a deeper sense of connection between listeners and creators.

Spotify partners with artists and influencers to promote playlists, new music. By associating with celebrities and creators, Spotify strengthens its brand equity.

As India’s podcast market accelerated during the pandemic, Spotify saw a clear opportunity to grow user stickiness by expanding beyond music into the spoken word. YouTube has become a critical channel in the brand's communication strategy, which was used to introduce podcasts through relatable, story-driven content.

To tap into this momentum, Spotify launched over 150 original and exclusive podcasts across more than 13 regional languages, underscoring its ambition to make podcasts mainstream in India. 

Campaigns such as ‘There’s A Playlist For That’ (2019) and the later ‘Spotify Mixes’ highlight the platform’s focus on personalisation. Mixes show how a simple search query generates a playlist tailored to individual tastes.

Unlike earlier campaigns that leaned on celebrity endorsements, the Mixes campaign focused on product utility and rolled out across all social media platforms.

Year in a playlist

What is today known as Spotify Wrapped began in 2015 as “Year in Music.” At the time, it existed as a standalone microsite where users could view summaries of their listening habits — top songs, favorite artists, and total streaming minutes.

By 2016, the initiative was rebranded as Wrapped and integrated directly into the Spotify app. The shift transformed static reports into colorful, story-like slides optimized for sharing across social media, perfectly timed with the rising culture of digital self-expression. Every share became organic marketing, extending Spotify’s reach exponentially.

In 2022, Spotify tapped into this virality by having composer Pritam Chakraborty react to memes about him trending on Wrapped.


In 2023, the campaign featured music producer Devi Sri Prasad, once again blurring the line between data insights and artist-fan interaction.

The 2024 Wrapped campaign, celebrating a decade of the feature globally, took the concept further with humor, relatability, and star power. Conceptualized by Kulfi Collective, teasers like “Campfire Crashers” with Jonita Gandhi and Anuv Jain, and “Zen Earworms” featuring Dalip Tahil, built anticipation for the December launch. Spotify then unveiled four ad films featuring Jackie Shroff, Ananya Panday, Uorfi Javed, Orry, GVP, and Sai Abhyankkar, each blending playful storytelling with the big reveal of Wrapped.

While Wrapped and other campaigns have amplified Spotify’s visibility, the broader story is one of strategic adaptation, leveraging data, local insights, and digital trends to navigate the complexities of one of the world’s largest music markets.

From negotiating complex licensing deals to localizing campaigns with culturally resonant playlists, the brand’s marketing strategy has consistently sought to align its offerings with the country’s unique listening habits. Through a combination of traditional advertising, social media engagement, influencer collaborations, and regional podcast initiatives, Spotify has aimed to position itself not just as a music app but as a platform reflecting India’s varied cultural landscape. 

Spotify India's marketing Spotify Journey in India Spotify social media