Music marketing: launching a single across six markets with Maikel Delacalle

Maikel Delacalle is an urban singer and songwriter born in San Isidro, southern Tenerife. He had a loyal following and covers performing well on YouTube.

The problem in music marketing is not the existing base: it is that a release is decided in its first days, and you have to reach people who are not listening yet.

For the remix of Mi Nena the target sat outside the existing community.

• Two new audiences: people who knew him without following him, and fans of similar artists who had never heard him.
• Six markets at once: Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Miami, each with its own competition.
• Four platforms: Google, YouTube, Meta and Spotify, each with different formats and logic.

A track that does not take off in its release week rarely recovers later.

We designed the launch in three phases and produced a full set of assets per platform, so the message arrived in each one native format.

Three phases, one message each

• Pre release with pre save, release day, and a sustaining phase with the out now message.
• Pre saves concentrate plays in the first hours, which is what the platform algorithms read.
• Social content calendar running from day minus 7 to day plus 8.

Native assets, not one asset resized

• Display banners in every Google format.
• Bumpers and in stream ads for YouTube.
• Video in four formats for Facebook and Instagram.
• Audio and video spots for Spotify.

Segmenting by country and by audience

• Six markets simultaneously: Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Miami.
• Three audiences: the existing base, people who knew the artist without following him, and fans of similar artists.
• Display and video on Google and YouTube, engagement and traffic on Meta, audio and video on Spotify.

Architecture and technology

• Paid media coordinated across Google Ads, YouTube, Meta and Spotify Ad Studio on one calendar.
• The same scheme ran again in May 2023 for the next single: the launch became a method, not a one off.

Learn more about digital marketing.

The launch moved the metrics that carry an artist career: subscribers, listeners and plays.

Starting point

• 2,020 YouTube subscribers gained and 6,476 channel likes, from 4 to 21 March 2023.
• Reach concentrated on the existing follower base.

What was achieved

• 12,437 YouTube subscribers gained, up 516% on the previous period.
• 11,834 channel likes, up 83%.
• 68,319 new Spotify listeners out of 77,654 reached, across March and April 2023.
• Over 331,000 estimated Spotify streams.
• 15.4 million impressions and 15,693 Google Ads clicks over the same period.
• Over 330,000 views of the YouTube video ads.
• 632,000 people reached and 55,510 link clicks on Facebook and Instagram.

Strategic impact

• Of every 100 people reached on Spotify, 88 ended up listening for the first time.
• The method was documented and repeated on the next single with nothing rebuilt.