Brief:

• Skateboard clothing brand Vans today announced a partnership with Spotify to create a branded playlist of music, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
• The "Off the Wall Wednesday" playlist features a curated selection of music based on a Spotify users' listening history and selections inspired by Vans' more than 50-year history of collaborations with artists who played at brand-hosted events worldwide. The playlist includes artists that have performed at House of Vans locations and the Vans Warped Tour music festivals, along with the "Sidestripe Sessions" of live performances named for its shoe styles, among other selections.
• The playlist will be updated every Wednesday on Spotify, which has more information about the selections on its website. Performers including Idles, Cautious Clay, Wallows, Gouge Away, Cuco, Tierra Whack, Quicksand and Anderson .Paak appear in the initial playlist.

Insight:

By creating a customized playlist on Spotify, Vans can showcase its brand among its target audience of young adults and teens who tend to be difficult to reach through traditional media. Vans has a more than 50-year history of sponsoring music-related events that position its brand as the authority on skateboarder culture. Spotify reaches about 47% of U.S. consumers ages 16 to 19, while 26% of its user base is 18 to 24 years old, per data cited by Statista, making the audio streaming platform prominent among Vans' target audience. Globally, Spotify reaches 141 million listeners of its free ad-supported service and 113 million paid subscribers to its ad-free version, per a quarterly report.

As the audience for streaming music grows, marketers are getting on board with various kinds of sponsorship to reach people based on their listening habits and demographic profiles. Among the more recent examples, Spotify in August partnered with Anheuser-Busch brand Michelob Ultra on a campaign that highlighted its technology to reach listeners with tailored messages based on their location, time of day and weather. Previously, KFC France in May created a playlist for Spotify that showcases various hip-hop songs in which the brand is mentioned​. Samsung and 3M were the first brands to test out podcast listener targeting that Spotify introduced in July.

The brand partnerships illustrate how Spotify can differentiate its platform from other media outlets by emphasizing its audio content and the connections between performers and their fans. The streaming giant's ad revenue rose 29% to $189 million in Q3 from a year earlier, while its podcast listenership jumped 39% as adoption reached almost 14% of users, per its quarterly report.