Argentinian singer-songwriter Natalie Perez has been a star in her home country from the age of 12 when she started off as an actor, including work on telenovelas. She later moved into music and started having hits domestically as well as around South America from 2017 onwards. Perez’s second album, Detox, came out in 2020, two years after her debut, Un Té de Tilo por Favor.
She works with Believe and has been slowly but steadily building her profile outside of South America, most notably in the US. The company has cited Spotify Canvas, Artist Pick and Discovery Mode as key to this snowballing success.
Spotify – at a time when it is being caught in the crosshairs of not just #BrokenRecord and Justice At Spotify but also a UK parliamentary inquiry – was keen to push out a positive side to what it does and used Perez as one of the case studies on its own blog.
“Natalie and her team used Canvas to simultaneously build an experience around Detox while celebrating the second anniversary of her first album,” said Spotify in the blog. “For Detox they took a literal approach, creating animated juice bottle images for each song as if the tracks were part of a juice cleanse.”
Canvas was used to tease video clips as well as reveal details of her first virtual show, running in parallel with what she was doing on her Instagram account so the two platforms worked together.
Discovery Mode was key for her move into the US, with Believe using this feature for 33 of her tracks. It is a controversial feature as those participating must agree to a lower streaming rate for tracks involved in exchange for them being boosted via the streaming service’s algorithm for personalised recommendations. Spotify says that 14 of the 33 tracks performed “exceedingly well” and grew her profile in Mexico and the US.
“The democratizing power of Discovery Mode will enable a wider community of artists to benefit from boosting their music,” said Believe CEO, Denis Ladegallerie. “It’s helping artists cross borders, especially ones from territories that historically haven’t had equal access to the global music industry stage. And, in these early tests, we’re already witnessing how Discovery Mode is helping talented Believe artists from all over the world, such as Argentina’s Natalie Perez, find their next fans. Spotify is building tools and resources that ensure success is no longer limited to a select few.”
Of course, one must be wary of the levels of Spotify self-interest in this blog; but equally one must not simply dismiss it all and say that Spotify is only a force for bad. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle.
But what the Spotify blog did was to shine a light on some of the ways it can help artists build audiences through streams, not just in major markets but also in emerging ones.
