For many music marketers, determining ad location targeting is one gigantic mystery.
Do I target one country? Many? All? Which ones?
I am constantly fielding inquiries from artists about where to focus their attention with their ads.
And what’s more, I’m continually doing my own research and testing this very issue as well. Every few months, it seems, I’m making a slight tweak to my location targeting inside my ad campaigns.
Recently though, I’ve been doing a bit more research into what’s working on a global scale for the music industry as a whole, not just for me or my genre.
Here’s what I’ve learned and how I’m applying it.
The top 10 music markets
Every year, the largest music markets in the world are listed by the IFPI or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
This ranking is organized by overall recorded music revenue and is an excellent indicator of opportunities for marketing music on a global scale.
As of 2022, the latest year for which we have a dataset, the top ten recorded music markets in the world are as follows:
United States
Japan
United Kingdom
Germany
China
France
South Korea
Canada
Brazil
Australia
At first glance, you’ll notice a strong correlation between a country’s rank on this list and its population size.
There is also a strong connection between a nation’s economic output and rank.
No surprises there.
People with a higher standard of living have more access to the “wants” of life outside of basic necessities, with recorded music being one of them.
In short, larger countries with higher GDPs tend to produce more music consumers.
Why it matters
So, what do we do with this information?
Well, as someone who leans heavily on social media advertising to market my music (and my guess is you do too), this bit of information helps to inform how I think about country targeting for my ads.
Sure, there are a lot of smaller countries with a high GDP and a high PPS (payout per stream) that don’t appear on this list, but if I’m looking to maximize my return on ad spend, both in terms of revenue and overall artist growth, then putting my money into the biggest music markets in the world makes sense to me.
By focusing on a combination of the countries in this list, I’m able to, essentially, hedge my bets and maximize my odds of success.
How I’ve applied it
When I first started using ads to market my music, I was all over the place with my targeting, including tons of countries with exceptionally low click-through rates and even lower payouts per stream.
But as I’ve grown and learned more as an artist and advertiser, I’ve increasingly leaned into a smaller set of markets, and, as it turns out, have pretty much landed on most of the top ten recorded music markets in the world simply as a product of doubling down on what works.
Interesting.
Toward the end of last year, I narrowed my targeting down to the US, UK, CA, AU, and DE only, opting to add FR into the mix three to four months later.
But just a few weeks ago, I took it even further and added South Korea and Japan into my ad set targeting too.
Now, I’m dropping a more in-depth video on this on Thursday, so I won’t spoil every single detail just yet, but it has been interesting to see how these eight countries have performed alongside one another for the past three weeks.
Specifically, Japan and South Korea have much higher streams-per-listener on Spotify, which tells me the fans that I’m finding in these new countries (new to me) are enjoying what they hear.
Just goes to show there are plenty of new music fans out there.
Sometimes we just have to know where to look.
For many music marketers, determining ad location targeting is one gigantic mystery.
Do I target one country? Many? All? Which ones?
I am constantly fielding inquiries from artists about where to focus their attention with their ads.
And what’s more, I’m continually doing my own research and testing this very issue as well. Every few months, it seems, I’m making a slight tweak to my location targeting inside my ad campaigns.
Recently though, I’ve been doing a bit more research into what’s working on a global scale for the music industry as a whole, not just for me or my genre.
Here’s what I’ve learned and how I’m applying it.
The top 10 music markets
Every year, the largest music markets in the world are listed by the IFPI or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
This ranking is organized by overall recorded music revenue and is an excellent indicator of opportunities for marketing music on a global scale.
As of 2022, the latest year for which we have a dataset, the top ten recorded music markets in the world are as follows:
United States
Japan
United Kingdom
Germany
China
France
South Korea
Canada
Brazil
Australia
At first glance, you’ll notice a strong correlation between a country’s rank on this list and its population size.
There is also a strong connection between a nation’s economic output and rank.
No surprises there.
People with a higher standard of living have more access to the “wants” of life outside of basic necessities, with recorded music being one of them.
In short, larger countries with higher GDPs tend to produce more music consumers.
Why it matters
So, what do we do with this information?
Well, as someone who leans heavily on social media advertising to market my music (and my guess is you do too), this bit of information helps to inform how I think about country targeting for my ads.
Sure, there are a lot of smaller countries with a high GDP and a high PPS (payout per stream) that don’t appear on this list, but if I’m looking to maximize my return on ad spend, both in terms of revenue and overall artist growth, then putting my money into the biggest music markets in the world makes sense to me.
By focusing on a combination of the countries in this list, I’m able to, essentially, hedge my bets and maximize my odds of success.
How I’ve applied it
When I first started using ads to market my music, I was all over the place with my targeting, including tons of countries with exceptionally low click-through rates and even lower payouts per stream.
But as I’ve grown and learned more as an artist and advertiser, I’ve increasingly leaned into a smaller set of markets, and, as it turns out, have pretty much landed on most of the top ten recorded music markets in the world simply as a product of doubling down on what works.
Interesting.
Toward the end of last year, I narrowed my targeting down to the US, UK, CA, AU, and DE only, opting to add FR into the mix three to four months later.
But just a few weeks ago, I took it even further and added South Korea and Japan into my ad set targeting too.
Now, I’m dropping a more in-depth video on this on Thursday, so I won’t spoil every single detail just yet, but it has been interesting to see how these eight countries have performed alongside one another for the past three weeks.
Specifically, Japan and South Korea have much higher streams-per-listener on Spotify, which tells me the fans that I’m finding in these new countries (new to me) are enjoying what they hear.
Just goes to show there are plenty of new music fans out there.
Sometimes we just have to know where to look.
For many music marketers, determining ad location targeting is one gigantic mystery.
Do I target one country? Many? All? Which ones?
I am constantly fielding inquiries from artists about where to focus their attention with their ads.
And what’s more, I’m continually doing my own research and testing this very issue as well. Every few months, it seems, I’m making a slight tweak to my location targeting inside my ad campaigns.
Recently though, I’ve been doing a bit more research into what’s working on a global scale for the music industry as a whole, not just for me or my genre.
Here’s what I’ve learned and how I’m applying it.
The top 10 music markets
Every year, the largest music markets in the world are listed by the IFPI or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
This ranking is organized by overall recorded music revenue and is an excellent indicator of opportunities for marketing music on a global scale.
As of 2022, the latest year for which we have a dataset, the top ten recorded music markets in the world are as follows:
United States
Japan
United Kingdom
Germany
China
France
South Korea
Canada
Brazil
Australia
At first glance, you’ll notice a strong correlation between a country’s rank on this list and its population size.
There is also a strong connection between a nation’s economic output and rank.
No surprises there.
People with a higher standard of living have more access to the “wants” of life outside of basic necessities, with recorded music being one of them.
In short, larger countries with higher GDPs tend to produce more music consumers.
Why it matters
So, what do we do with this information?
Well, as someone who leans heavily on social media advertising to market my music (and my guess is you do too), this bit of information helps to inform how I think about country targeting for my ads.
Sure, there are a lot of smaller countries with a high GDP and a high PPS (payout per stream) that don’t appear on this list, but if I’m looking to maximize my return on ad spend, both in terms of revenue and overall artist growth, then putting my money into the biggest music markets in the world makes sense to me.
By focusing on a combination of the countries in this list, I’m able to, essentially, hedge my bets and maximize my odds of success.
How I’ve applied it
When I first started using ads to market my music, I was all over the place with my targeting, including tons of countries with exceptionally low click-through rates and even lower payouts per stream.
But as I’ve grown and learned more as an artist and advertiser, I’ve increasingly leaned into a smaller set of markets, and, as it turns out, have pretty much landed on most of the top ten recorded music markets in the world simply as a product of doubling down on what works.
Interesting.
Toward the end of last year, I narrowed my targeting down to the US, UK, CA, AU, and DE only, opting to add FR into the mix three to four months later.
But just a few weeks ago, I took it even further and added South Korea and Japan into my ad set targeting too.
Now, I’m dropping a more in-depth video on this on Thursday, so I won’t spoil every single detail just yet, but it has been interesting to see how these eight countries have performed alongside one another for the past three weeks.
Specifically, Japan and South Korea have much higher streams-per-listener on Spotify, which tells me the fans that I’m finding in these new countries (new to me) are enjoying what they hear.
Just goes to show there are plenty of new music fans out there.
Sometimes we just have to know where to look.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.