How Spotify Built A Digital Campfire For Its Super-Fans

5 ways the streaming platform is nurturing its brand obsessives

Spotify has become a fixture in our lives in a way that few apps and services are. 

Less well known, however, is Spotify’s community hub.

Launched in 2012, it began as a portal where users could swap playlists and seek tech support, and was the breeding ground for what 1.5 years later would become Spotify Rock Stars  — a dedicated program for about 50 Spotify super-fans from 15 countries that I think of as a kind of ambassador program on steroids. Rock Stars answer questions in the Spotify community, respond to brand mentions on Twitter, flag potential live issues, ID customer knowledge gaps and pain points, write Spotify Answers KB articles, and lots more. In exchange, they get direct access to the Spotify Community team in private forums, are often involved in product research and beta programs, and get access to a ton of other perks.

I invited Allison Leahy, Spotify’s Head of Social Care & Community and Oscar Osornio, a Mexico-based member of the Rock Stars program, onto the Download recently to ask about the secrets behind the program’s success.

Here are 5 key insights they shared that you can use to build your own hyper-engaged super-fan campfire.

1. Make participating in your brand’s community actually fun

Oscar first learned about Spotify’s Rock Stars program by hanging out on the platform’s community hub and answering user questions. “Someone says, ‘Hey I’m having this problem. Does anyone know how to fix it?’ And if you do, you answer,” says Oscar. From there, relationships within the community grew. After a while, the platform’s community managers reached out to Oscar to ask if he wanted to apply to be part of Spotify Rock Stars, its program expressly designed for highly-engaged community members.

The primary program requirement, says Oscar? “Hanging out and participating.” He adds: “The more you participate, the more valued you feel in the community. Other Rock Stars encourage you, tell you you’re doing great and motivate you to keep going.”

2. Find creative ways to help community members feel valued

The program has built-in gamification elements to incentivize participation (for example, each rank comes with additional permissions or rewards such as free Spotify subscriptions and the ability to make contributions to our ‘what the Stars are listening to’ playlist), plus points which can be redeemed for prizes one might see in any ambassador program (think: exclusive Spotify merch).

But the Rock Star program also goes above and beyond a standard ambassador program—way beyond. 

For example, Rock Stars get to meet with developers on a regular basis and test app features before they’re implemented—and their feedback directly shapes the Spotify product, says Allison.

The biggest perk? The 10 most active Rock Stars get invited to an annual Rock Star Jam—an all-expenses-paid annual trip to Stockholm where they get to hang out with fellow Rock Stars, Spotify staffers, and higher-ups. 

While the Jam is a highlight for the Rock Stars, it’s also a highlight for Spotify’s employees. Says Oscar: ‘We meet with developers and customer service reps and they say, ‘I know who you are. Can I get a picture with you?’”

The sense of gratefulness comes from the top. Oscar recalls one meeting with the Spotify C-Suite team: “The first thing they said to us was, ’Thank you for what you are doing. We really value what you do.”

That’s why Rock Stars say one of their top reasons for volunteering is feeling like they’re a part of the Spotify team (that, and joy in helping others).

3. Make community-building core to your brand mission (not a sidebar or after-thought)

Many companies view community-building programs as marketing initiatives, not business priorities— a nice-to-have vs. a need-to-have.

Not so at Spotify, where community-building is core to the company’s mission, says Allison. 

The program pays dividends in terms of brand loyalty, retention, engagement, enthusiasm for the brand, and most importantly, product innovation that comes straight from users. 

While those things are tough to quantify from a dollars and cents perspective, she admits, there’s no doubt they go a long way to bolstering brand loyalty. “We have a direct line to our passionate customers around the world and are generating value in ways that our business leaders find compelling,” she says.

4. Don’t try to scale too quickly. Remember: digital campfires are supposed to be small

When Spotify experimented with scaling its Rock Stars membership from 50 to 150 members, it quickly became apparent that the platform didn’t have the infrastructure or resources on the community management side to onboard new members effectively.

“Whenever you have an influx of new membership, managing that change can be very delicate,” says Allison, “especially if you have a core group of users who know each other very well. It takes time to build a program like this…You want to be able to apply the right amount of attention to nurture a program. Otherwise, it becomes transactional.” 

Still, Spotify has major ambitions to grow the program.

Allison says Spotify realizes there’s potential to do so much more with the program: “we want to unlock that potential—to give our existing Rock Stars new ways to contribute, and leverage the network effect where there’s more peer-led and Rock Star-led on-boarding and co-mentoring.” 

5. Prioritize fostering relationships among community members  

While it’s obviously crucial for companies to facilitate top down relationships with community members, it’s equally important to nurture relationships among community members.

Indeed, Oscar has developed deep friendships with fellow Rock Stars and like-minded Spotify users from around the world that have solidified Oscar’s emotional attachment to the brand:.

“In the end,” he says, “what I enjoy most about the program is meeting other people. When you meet them in person, you feel like you’ve known them all your life, because you get to interact with them every day in the community, and then when you get to talk to them in person, you understand that nationality doesn’t matter—it’s more about your shared interests and passion for music and technology.”

Want to hear more from Spotify? Check out our full hour-long conversation on The Digital Campfire Download here.

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Want to learn more about The Digital Campfire Download: what it is, why I'm doing it, what to expect, deets on future and past episodes, or suggest a guest? Check out The Digital Campfire Download site here.  

Want my help navigating digital campfires for yourself or your brand? Head to my Website or reach out at sara@swprojects.co.