Spotify for Artists Campaign Kit: every tool, who qualifies, and which to use first

This covers Spotify’s Campaign Kit as Spotify’s own Campaign Kit page, its launch post and its Spotify for Artists help pages describe it, checked Sep 24, 2026. Budgets are Spotify’s published limits in USD, and each tool gets a short summary here with a link to the full guide.

What is the Spotify for Artists Campaign Kit?

The Spotify for Artists Campaign Kit is Spotify’s name for its set of promotion tools inside Spotify for Artists: playlist pitching, Discovery Mode and display campaigns (Marquee and Showcase). Each one is paid for differently. Pitching is free. Discovery Mode has no upfront cost and takes a 30% commission on royalties from certain streams. Marquee and Showcase are ads you pay for per click. Only pitching is open to every artist; the others need a minimum audience. Spotify’s Campaign Kit page lists those three tools and nothing else, so Countdown Pages, Canvas and Clips aren’t part of it, even though they also live in Spotify for Artists.

Campaign Kit isn’t a new product so much as a new label. Spotify’s launch post from Dec 6, 2023 says it brought tools that already existed “under one umbrella.” Here’s the kit on one screen:

The paid tools sit in the Campaigns tab. Pitching doesn’t: it’s under Music, then Upcoming, next to each unreleased song.

Which rows you can actually use comes down to a few numbers.

Who can use each Campaign Kit tool?

Playlist pitching is open to every artist with Spotify for Artists access. Showcase needs at least 1,000 streams in the last 28 days in one target market. Marquee needs that plus at least 5,000 monthly active listeners in the market you target. Discovery Mode needs at least 25,000 monthly listeners, at least 3 eligible songs and a distributor on Spotify’s approved list. Two different listener counts are in play: monthly listeners is the rolling 28-day number on your profile, and monthly active listeners is a smaller count of people who chose to play you. The display rules are on Spotify’s display campaigns page and the Discovery Mode rules on its access page.

Read that as a ladder:

The paid rungs have extra conditions. For Marquee and Showcase, your team has to be based in one of 23 supported countries (the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, four South American countries and much of Western Europe), and your payment card has to be issued there too. For Discovery Mode, each song needs 30 days on Spotify and some existing plays in Radio, Autoplay or Mixes, and your distributor has to be one of Spotify’s approved licensors. TuneCore and Ditto aren’t on that list, which is one more thing to weigh if you’re picking from the best music distribution services.

The two listener counts trip people up. If one editorial playlist pushed you to 30,000 monthly listeners, you may clear Discovery Mode and still be nowhere near 5,000 monthly active listeners in any single country for Marquee. Check both in Spotify for Artists under Audience, then Segments, which Spotify’s audience segments page explains, before you plan around either.

No Campaigns tab at all? Spotify’s page on creating a display campaign says that means your artist isn’t eligible or your team isn’t based in a supported country.

Everyone starts on the bottom rung, and it costs nothing.

Playlist pitching: the free Campaign Kit tool

Playlist pitching is the only Campaign Kit tool that’s free and open to every artist: you submit one unreleased song to Spotify’s editors in Spotify for Artists, under Music, then Upcoming. Spotify asks for the pitch at least 7 days before release. A pitch sent in time also puts the song in your followers’ Release Radar, which is the one guaranteed result. An editorial placement isn’t guaranteed. You can pitch one song at a time, and a song can’t be pitched once it’s live. The rules are on Spotify’s pitching help page and its Release Radar page.

Spotify’s playlisting page says pitching is “not just for superstars” and that more than 150,000 artists were playlisted for the first time across 2020 and 2021. That’s a big number over two years spread across a very big catalog, so treat pitching as a free lottery ticket with a guaranteed consolation prize (Release Radar), not a plan.

What makes a pitch count is timing. Your distributor has to deliver the song before it shows up under Upcoming, so a release uploaded the week of release day can miss the 7-day window entirely. The form itself rewards specifics: genre, mood, where you’re from, what the song is about. Our guide to free Spotify playlist submission walks through the form and the free curator routes for after release.

Pitching stops the moment a song goes live. The next tool only starts after that.

Discovery Mode in the Campaign Kit

Discovery Mode is the Campaign Kit tool with no upfront cost: you flag released songs you want recommended more in Spotify Radio, Autoplay and Mixes, and Spotify takes a 30% commission on the recording royalties from every stream of those songs in those three places while the campaign runs. Streams from anywhere else on Spotify stay commission-free. It needs 25,000 monthly listeners, and songs have to be out for at least 30 days. Campaigns run by the calendar month and are set up in the Campaigns tab. Spotify states the commission on its Discovery Mode help page and lists the three places on its contexts page.

The word that matters is “every.” The 30% covers streams you’d have had in those places anyway, not only the extra ones, so a song that already lives on Autoplay can end up earning less. Discovery Mode pays off only if the new listeners it finds go on to save the song and play it from their library, where there’s no commission.

Spotify’s Campaign Kit page frames it two ways. For new music, it says Discovery Mode “primes fans for your upcoming release by reminding them of other songs in your catalog.” For reach, it says 58% of first-time artist discoveries on songs selected for Discovery Mode come from overseas listeners. Both are Spotify describing its own product.

The break-even math, the distributor list and the payola debate are in our full Discovery Mode guide.

Discovery Mode charges you in royalties. The other paid tools charge your card.

Display campaigns: Marquee and Showcase

Marquee is the display campaign for a brand-new release and Showcase is the one for any release at any time. Marquee is a full-screen pop-up in the Spotify mobile app, must start within 21 days of release, runs about 10 days, and needs 5,000 monthly active listeners in the target market. Showcase is a banner on Home and Browse, works for new or catalog music, runs about 14 days, and only needs 1,000 streams in 28 days in that market. Both are paid per click, with a campaign budget between $100 and $10,000, per Spotify’s forecasting and budget page. Formats and rules are on its display campaigns page.

You don’t pick strangers to show them to. Spotify’s audience goals page groups targets into three goals (grow your audience, deepen fan engagement, reactivate listeners), all built from people Spotify already sees near your music. Its target markets page lists the countries you can aim at, which is a longer list than the 23 your team can buy from.

Spotify’s Campaign Kit page makes two claims about using these alongside Discovery Mode:

• Artists who combined display campaigns with Discovery Mode saw, on average, 2x greater growth in monthly active listeners than artists using Discovery Mode alone.
• Releases with the highest Discovery Mode intent rates tend to see nearly 40% higher display campaign intent rates. Intent rate is the share of listeners who saved or playlisted.

Those are Spotify’s averages across its own customers, and they don’t say what a typical campaign cost. Spend, targeting, reporting and whether Marquee is worth $100 are covered in our guide to Spotify Marquee and Countdown Pages.

That guide covers Countdown Pages because people often assume they’re part of the kit. They aren’t.

What isn’t in the Campaign Kit: Countdown Pages, Canvas and Clips

Countdown Pages, Canvas and Clips aren’t part of the Spotify for Artists Campaign Kit. Spotify’s Campaign Kit page lists only playlist pitching, Discovery Mode and display campaigns. Countdown Pages are free pre-save pages for upcoming albums and EPs, open to artists with at least 3,000 monthly active listeners. Canvas is a free 3 to 8 second looping visual for any track, available to all artists. Clips no longer accept new uploads: Spotify stopped them on Jun 17, 2026, and existing Clips stay live. All three are free, and none of them sits in the Campaigns tab.

A bit more on each, since they often get lumped in with the kit:

• Countdown Pages are set up under Music, then Upcoming. Singles, deluxe editions and reissues don’t qualify, and the option appears within 72 hours of your distributor delivering the album or EP, per Spotify’s Countdown Pages help page. Short vertical videos on those pages are now called countdown videos.
• Canvas is added per track in the Music tab. Spotify’s Canvas page says it’s available to all artists, and its adding a Canvas page says you can add one to upcoming releases too.
• Clips were short vertical videos. Spotify’s Clips page says new uploads ended Jun 17, 2026, and that eligible artists can now upload full-length videos instead, with access rolling out gradually.

If you’re under every paid threshold, these free tools and pitching are the whole kit you have. That’s more useful than it sounds.

Which Campaign Kit tool should you use first?

TheDebutRoom’s view: use Campaign Kit in the order its thresholds open it up. Pitch every release from your first one. Treat Showcase as optional until a song is already being saved by the people who hear it. Test Marquee with $100 in one market once that market passes 5,000 monthly active listeners. Try Discovery Mode on one older song for one month after you pass 25,000 monthly listeners. The paid tools are built to move people who already know you a step closer, and Spotify’s targeting reflects that, so none of them is a good first way to reach strangers.

Here’s how that plays out at each size:

Why hold off on Showcase when it opens so early? Because the audience it can reach at 1,000 streams is tiny. Spotify’s goals target your own active, lapsed and programmed listeners, and a segment too small to spend your minimum budget can’t be targeted at all. At that size, $100 is mostly paying to remind a few hundred people who already heard you once.

Also note that the rungs don’t always come in order. Spotify’s Campaign Kit page says roughly 1 in 6 artists who started with only Discovery Mode grew their audience by nearly 30% and became eligible for display campaigns within three months. So plenty of artists with 25,000 monthly listeners still don’t have 5,000 active ones in a single market.

The honest worry at every size is spending money you’d miss on a number that drifts back down. None of these tools guarantees streams, and nothing legitimate does. Anyone selling guaranteed streams, saves or placements is selling what Spotify’s artificial streaming page says can get royalties withheld and music removed.

Below the paid thresholds, the other legitimate way to spend money is paying for honest curator review, where nobody promises a placement. Playlist Push works that way: Spotify campaigns start at $280, and each curator decides on their own. Do it only after you’ve pitched and tried the free routes.

Once you know which tools you have, the question is when to use each one.

How to plan a release with Campaign Kit

Planning a release with Campaign Kit takes four steps. Deliver early and pitch one song at least 7 days before release. If you have Discovery Mode, run it on an older song the month before. Book a Marquee within the first 21 days if you qualify. Move to Showcase, or Discovery Mode on the new song, once it has been out 30 days. You need Admin or Editor access in Spotify for Artists, and your distributor has to deliver the release before any of it appears. Each step follows a rule on Spotify’s help pages: the pitch closes at release, Discovery Mode needs 30 days, and Marquee has a 21-day window.

1. Three or more weeks out: deliver and pitch. The song has to show up under Upcoming before you can pitch it, and the pitch has to be in 7 days before release to reach Release Radar. For an album or EP with 3,000 monthly active listeners, set up the Countdown Page at the same time.
2. The month before: Discovery Mode on catalog. Spotify’s Campaign Kit page suggests this to prime fans before a new release. Setup opens on the 11th and closes at 12 AM UTC on the last day of the month, so plan a month ahead.
3. Release week: Marquee. Start it early. Spotify’s target markets page warns that you may lose access to Marquee once a release has been live 18 days or more in a market, even though setup says 21.
4. After 30 days: Showcase or Discovery Mode. If the new song is holding up, it’s now old enough for Discovery Mode, and Showcase can push it again as catalog.

Judge each step on saves and new listeners, not raw streams. A campaign that brings plays and no saves bought ten days of attention and nothing after. If none of the paid steps apply to you yet, step 1 alone is still worth doing on every release.

For everything else in Spotify for Artists, browse the Spotify for Artists hub.