Tag: sxsw

At SXSW Sydney, RADAR, EQUAL, and K-Music Take Over Spotify House

October 26, 2023

Blusher performs during the RADAR Artist Showcase & Party at Spotify House during SXSW Sydney on October 19, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by James Gourley/Getty Images for Spotify)

For the first time in its history, Austin’s iconic South By Southwest (SXSW) festival expanded beyond its Texas watering hole and traveled all the way to Australia for SXSW Sydney. Fashioned as the Asia-Pacific extension of the original event, SXSW Sydney took place over eight days and included a series of creative sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, and more. And you can bet Spotify was along for the ride.

We took over Sydney’s Lansdowne Hotel and transformed it into Spotify House across four days. During the day, it was the place to be for panels, networking sessions, and fireside chats. At night, Spotify House became a live-music venue with performances by a stellar line-up of artists from across the Asia-Pacific region. Spotify House was an opportunity to highlight some of our artist-first programs, like RADAR and EQUAL, as well as feature popular genres like K-hip-hop.

On our RADAR

We introduced our latest group of up-and-coming artists during a special RADAR showcase: Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, Vv Pete, and Blusher. 

“We are so grateful to be Spotify Australia’s new RADAR artist! We cannot believe the amazing support that we have received so far,” exclaimed the band members of Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. “We have absolutely loved seeing new people all over the world listening to us little Teeny Jeanies and we really can’t thank Spotify enough!”

RADAR is our global emerging artist program that supports rising artists, and that includes RADAR Australia and New Zealand, both of which we launched in 2020. Since then, we’ve played a significant role in helping regional artists like PANIA, merci, mercy, CHAII, Genesis Owusu, Youngn Lipz, Baker Boy, grentperez, Larissa Lambert, and Royel Otis cross over into international markets.

The response from a sold-out crowd deeply moved the artists. “We started making music in our bedrooms, and support from Spotify has made it possible to play our music to audiences all over the world,” shared Blusher. “Seeing new listeners connect with our project, being able to share not just our songs but our creative vision through visuals and playlists of the music that inspires us, makes us so excited to bring people into the Blusher world that we’re creating.”

It wasn’t just high-energy performances that amplified RADAR. Hannah Beeching, Spotify’s Lead for Global Music Program RADAR, spoke to industry veterans Andrew Klippel, Artist & Label Manager for Ourness Label, and Mardi Caught, founder of The Annex, a music marketing company, as part of the “RADAR Across Borders” session. “RADAR artists have been added to over 5,000 Spotify playlists since the program launched in 2020, and more than half of these artists have gone on to be added to more playlists in over 10 markets around the world,” Hannah remarked during the talk. 

Spotify’s GM of Asia Pacific, Gautam Talwar, Discusses the Music of a Rapidly Growing Region

October 17, 2023

The Asia Pacific region seems to never sleep on Spotify. From events celebrating Kalye HipHop, our flagship Pinoy hip-hop playlist, to the tenth anniversary of Spotify in Taiwan, we’ve spent a decade developing relevant products and content offerings to deepen our connection with local users. And our work is just getting started.  

This week, Gautam Talwar, Spotify’s General Manager of Asia Pacific, is joining artists and podcasters at SXSW Sydney, the first time the festival has been staged outside of its Austin, Texas, home base. Via panels and performances on everything from music discovery to what’s next for K-Pop— and how we continue to strive for gender equity—we’ll highlight how Spotify helps music move beyond borders at the iconic Lansdowne Hotel.

For the Record sat down with Gautam to learn more about what’s happening in the region. 

What are some factors that make the Asia Pacific region, APAC, a distinct and notable market for Spotify?

Asia Pacific is increasingly central to our global platform as a driving post for global culture—whether music, entertainment, fashion, gaming, technology, or e-commerce. And the region as a whole is one of our fastest-growing regions at Spotify today. There’s three main reasons for that. 

One is that these countries have large youthful populations. You’re talking about one of the largest clusters of Gen Z customers in the world, over 150 million Gen Zs residing in Asia Pacific who are driving this booming creator economy and online music culture. 

The other thing that makes it very unique is diversity. This is our superpower. There’s incredible diversity across languages, religions, and ethnicities. We also see this diversity play out in music and culture. Music is a very central, core part of expression. And since music has an important role of soundtracking daily life in Asia Pacific, music is a reflection of diversity in this region.

The third thing that makes it very unique is artists and creators. We are talking about an incredibly diverse group of genres and artists that are now crossing borders and building an international audience, all thanks to Spotify. We have some great examples of artists born in Asia, who maybe got their footing in Seoul, Sydney, or Jakarta, who have now crossed borders, gone overseas, and built a global audience. 

What trends are emerging globally with music from the region? 

Spotify has evolved from bringing all the world’s audio to Asia Pacific to taking all the audio from Asia Pacific to the world. 

When I joined Spotify about five years ago, the top charts in most of our Asian markets had mostly international music. Today when I look, it’s increasingly local. It’s increasingly K-Pop. And we’re also seeing some regional and hyper-local artists and genres making it to the top. We are seeing artists from all corners of our countries who are working to build an audience on Spotify. We have examples of not only those who are topping charts in their home country, but who are crossing borders to top charts elsewhere.

K-Pop is one of my favorite examples. Traditionally, the home of K-Pop is Seoul. But if you look at the genre’s top markets, it’s actually the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, and Mexico where streaming is outsizing Korea. Similarly, Mandopop, which was born out of Taiwan and China, ends up traveling to all parts of the world where the Chinese diaspora resides—Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the U.S. We’re seeing this in Aussie music as well, with names like Tones and I, The Kid LAROI, and Troye Sivan finding big audiences in the U.K. and the United States. 

But then there’s country-specific trends, like hyperlocal pop with Javanese Pop in Indonesia and LukThung in Thailand. The countries have rich, vibrant, local ecosystems and creators with big fans on social media. They don’t have to be in a metro region to build a career, but rather could be in any part of the country. Their fandoms help them not only drop music on Spotify but then promote it across social media. Artists care about their expression, they care about their sound, and the story. And what we’re seeing is that great songwriting and storytelling wins. And thanks to the personalization of the Spotify platform and its global distribution, there are numerous examples of artists’ finding an audience outside of their home country. We’re seeing waves. 

Fandoms are a key part of music in the region. How do we embrace and reflect this passion?

Our growth story in the region has always been built on supporting a set of fandoms and really using Spotify as a way for fans to channel and fuel their passions around these fandoms. In many ways, we’ve evolved from marketing to consumers to speaking to and through fans. 

We have a fairly strong presence and investment in K-Pop discovery on the platform. We have a K-Pop hub with a flagship playlist, K-Pop ON! It contains the latest and greatest in K-Pop. It’s what RapCaviar is to hip-hop and Viva Latino is to Latin music. This is for the global K-Pop community of artists and fans. It’s the mothership. It’s where you’ll discover the next big thing on the platform. 

We’ve also evolved this playlist, taking it off-platform to build a strong media network around it, with a YouTube channel, Twitter handle, and Instagram and TikTok distribution. For our fans, it’s really about being very playful and helping create opportunities that let them get closer to their favorite artists. Our storytelling approach is very much speaking to and through fans. They get up close and personal and see artists in their most playful states. And they’re loving it. 

One of the activations we did this year was Bunnyland. NewJeans is a rookie band, a year old, and they’re already commanding an audience as big as BLACKPINK. They are Gen Z, five girls, all incredibly creative and musically strong.  For their debut album release, we created an activation involving a real-life immersive fan experience for called Bunnyland. We had about 100,000 attendees across Bunnyland activations in Seoul, Jakarta, as well as Manila and Tokyo and heavily supported their U.S. debut at Lollapalooza.  So for us it’s about showing up every day, both with playlists and with iconic big-beat moments. 

We’ve also got ideas for how to do this with T-Pop, particularly with the strength of the Boys’ Love fandom, and in Australia, with A1 hip-hop—Aussie hip-hop. This subculture is very strong locally, and I’m very excited about how we’ve taken it to the main stage. 

How about podcasting? 

This is an exciting region for podcasts due to its history of talk radio. Today, markets like Australia, Indonesia, and India are some of the top markets for podcast listening. There’s been a lot of early adopters in this market, especially in Indonesia and the Philippines. When Anchor, now Spotify for Podcasters, launched, we saw radio personalities and social media personalities rally to it as an easy means to express themselves and get onto an audio platform. That has increasingly been going mainstream since.

In Indonesia and the Philippines we’re also seeing a whole new breed of creators who believe in long form as a means of storytelling. (There are some really big commutes in those countries, and podcasts play a role there). The big genres are comedy, horror, and crime, and the audiences tend to be more educated, more affluent, more curious about what’s out in the zeitgeist. Love and relationships is another one—people can use podcasts as a format to talk about subject matter that the mainstream wouldn’t talk about. 

Australia, too, has a very rich podcast ecosystem. We are a lead player there with a thriving ad sales operation. We have a number of original and licensed tentpole shows, both Aussie and American, that really do well. We also just announced the introduction in Australia of our premium audiobook offer. This makes available at least 150,000 audiobooks as part of Spotify Premium subscriptions—something that’s going to be huge in the market. 

What are you most excited to bring to SXSW Sydney?

I’m excited about the platform South By presents for us. It’s at the cutting edge of tech and innovation. It’s one of the most exciting congregations of the sharpest creative minds in the industry. And what I’m excited about is how we are really showcasing our diversity as Spotify, and the things that we are really passionate about, be it our EQUAL or RADAR programs, and how they elevate discovery for artists. 

I’m excited about showcasing artists from multiple genres, everyone from MILLI, one of my favorite Thai hip-hop stars, to, you know, some of the most exciting acts in Korean music and Korean hip-hop.

It’s interesting that Sydney is where the first edition of South By is happening outside of Austin. Sydney is home to musicians, artists, and designers, and there’s a lot of commonalities between Sydney and Austin. I’m hoping to see this become a returning franchise that we can become a part of. 

Hear more from Gautam about our presence at SXSW Sydney on the Spotify: For the Record podcast.

How Americana Troubadour Garrett T. Capps Went Worldwide

May 28, 2019

Photo credit: Oscar Moreno

“It was really kind of organic how it all happened,” says Garrett T. Capps about the route that unexpectedly took him from being an under-the-radar Americana singer/songwriter to having his song open the season three premiere of the Showtime series Billions.

Capps’ lyrically rich, raw-boned Tex-Mex rocker “Born in San Antone” is the tune Billions viewers heard when the Western boots of Clancy Brown as Texan Attorney General Waylon “Jock” Jeffcoat came on the screen. True to his word, Capps was indeed born and raised in San Antonio, but he spends a lot of time playing in Austin. And it was a set there at South By Southwest that kicked off the whole sequence of events.

“I was playing an official showcase at SXSW one year,” Capps explains. “They put two or three of my songs on a Spotify official Austin music playlist. One of them was ‘Born in San Antone,’ and I guess it greased the wheels of my Spotify algorithms and started linking up with people that might like that kind of music.”

Fortunately for Capps, one of those people turned out to be Billions co-creator/executive producer Brian Koppelman. “He’s a big Americana guy, who curates the music for the entire show himself,” says Capps, sounding like he can still hardly believe it. “He was just sitting on an airplane and he turned on Discover Weekly, and my song came up and he freaked out, he loved it. And then he contacted me. It’s wild, because that song is just a hometown anthem I wrote to play at local gigs, really.”

Capps doesn’t have a manager or booking agent. DIY to the core, he does it all himself, but he got a lot of help when television took his game to another level.

“I released my last album, In The Shadows (Again), independently in May of last year,” explains Capps, “and then I got a whole bunch of hits on that song [‘Born in San Antone’ from Capps’ debut LP] when the TV show came out. I think a lot of people got turned on to my new stuff, which is definitely not the same as ‘Born in San Antone.’ I don’t have any song like “Born in San Antone” on my new album. It’s like a rock ‘n’ roll song.”

But Capps’ new fans had no trouble connecting the dots from the rocking cut off his first album to the rootsy vibe of his second. “Spotify immensely helped me find this cult following around the world through its Discovery playlists,” he confirms. “It was like a perfect storm, and people are continuing to discover my music and hit me up, and buy stuff, and ask me to play shows… I think it’s all because of Spotify, really.”

The Streamingpalooza Before (and After) Music Festivals

August 1, 2018

What’s more fun than seeing your favorite band play live? How about seeing a few of your favorite bands play—plus a couple dozen potential new favorites—back-to-back with thousands of other music lovers over the course of three days?

Cue music festivals, which typically kick off in the U.S. in March with Texas-based South By Southwest (SXSW), and continue into late October with the almost 20-year-old Voodoo Fest in Louisiana. No matter which event you’re attending, you’re sure to be surrounded by abounding energy and music.

Unsurprisingly, attendees don’t limit themselves to in-person listening. According to Spotify data, fans prep for festival weekends by streaming up a storm, and reminisce afterward with the songs they enjoyed the most—including new favorites—both near the concert venue and back at home.

Take, for example, last year’s Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago. Headliners included Chance The Rapper, Arcade Fire, Lorde, and The Killers, as well as Lil Uzi Vert, Tegan and Sara, and Charli XCX. Fans came to Chicago from far and wide—with phones and headphones in tow—streaming altogether 28,755 fan-created Lollapalooza playlists (i.e., any playlist with a name related to Lollapalooza).

In the days leading up to the 26-year-old Chicago festival (which now tours in South America and Europe as well), streams of Lolla playlists spiked around the country. As fans traveled to the Midwest, the spikes moved right along with them, with the location of the streams and spikes centralizing around Chicago during the festival. Check it out:

Lollapalooza 2017 visualization by Erica Leh and Skyler Johnson

But why did the playlists continue to see engagement during the festival? Erica Leh, a data scientist at Spotify, says it’s probably because of people who couldn’t make the event, could only attend one day, or who simply had “FOMO.”

“I think the greatest effects of festivals on streaming are two-fold,” she says. “Before the festival, streaming helps hype up concert-goers and introduces them to new artists they might be interested in seeing. After the festival, it allows attendees to relive their favorite moments, and to stream artists they might not have known before seeing their sets.”

Spotify data analysts Skyler Johnson and Manish Nag discovered that an artist’s streaming numbers spike 24 percent within a 20-mile radius of the venue the week before and after a concert. The potential for a “festival bump,” then, is enormous: There are thousands of people in attendance from all over the country and beyond.

Festival 2017 streaming visualization by Erica Leh

Some festivals, like Moogfest in North Carolina or Georgia-based Shaky Knees, boast high streaming numbers in relatively local areas, while bigger draws like California’s famed Coachella and the Electric Forest festival in Michigan see streaming from coast to coast, in both urban and rural areas.

SXSW, a livestreamed festival that has historically showcased many up-and-coming artists, as well as expert talks, cultural events, and art exhibits, stands out in particular due to its entire-country takeover. “Seeing the way South By Southwest lights up the map is exciting to me, because if livestreaming music events at South By could reach so many fans, livestreaming presentations or talks could, too,” explains Erica. “Showcasing more kinds of content—from videos to podcasts to live streams—can help creators better share their ideas with the world.”

For both fans and artists, the impact of multi-day, multi-artist concerts is as large-scale and long-lasting as the memories of the event itself. Because once the tents are packed up and the grounds are cleared, the discovery of new music continues well after the crowds have gone home.

Lollapalooza 2018 is coming up this weekend, August 2 – 5. Avoid Festival FOMO by streaming one of the top-three Lolla playlists: Maximal House Music, Lollapalooza 2018, or Lollapalooza Chicago 2018!! Looking for a festival you might like based on what you listen to? Look no further.