From today (24th July) artists with at least 5,000 active listeners in the last 28 days will be able to create a Spotify Countdown Page to support their upcoming release.
What are Spotify Countdown Pages?
Countdown Pages are Spotify's answer to the external Pre-Save. They provide a destination for fans to pre-save your upcoming release, preview the tracklist, watch video clips and even purchase merchandise. There is also a countdown timer to build excitement.
However, the best part of Countdown Pages is the Push notification that gets sent to all Pre-Savers. Just like a regular Pre-Save, the music is also added to the user's library, but now there is a direct reminder to listen.
Spotify asserts that almost 70% of users who pre-save stream the release during the critical first week when algorithms are fired and Popularity Scores are being established.
Availability & Eligibility
Countdown Pages will be available to listeners in the Spotify Desktop and Mobile apps in every market where Spotify operates. The Clips contained in the Countdown pages will be viewable in the Spotify mobile app in 70+ countries.
Countdown Pages will begin to be rolled out to eligible artists in the next few weeks. Look out for an email notification. You can check your eligibility for Countdown Pages within Spotify for Artists. Just login and go to Audience then Segments to see how many active listeners you have.
How to create a Countdown Page
On web:
Log in to Spotify for Artists.
Go to Music then Upcoming.
Note: Once your licensor has delivered release metadata via DDEX, you’ll see the option to create the Countdown Page.
Select the release, and click Get started.
Upload Clips and tag your merch.
Review and publish.
You can create and edit the Countdown Page via the Upcoming tab in Spotify for Artists up until the release goes live. Once published, fans can start pre-saving your release and watching your Clips via your artist profile, the Now Playing view, notifications, and more.
External Pre-Saves
It's taken some time, but finally, Spotify has created an internal solution that automatically makes all those external solutions redundant in a heart-beat. A whole industry had sprung up around the pre-save and most made little sense.
The instruction was to drive fans to a page to pre-save a song, with almost no consumer benefit. Most fans didn't understand it, or see why they should care. Then worst of all, on release day when they could listen, most didn't even know it was out.
Now with Countdown Pages, fans who visit the pages can at least engage with video clips, see a countdown timer and buy merch while they wait for the push notification that directly encourages them to listen.
Discover more about Countdown Pages