ALI HUGO & THE SPOTIFY STREAMING TREASURES OF ASIA

When Spotify introduced its services into the East Asian music market in 2013, Ali Hugo was making a comeback to the entertainment business, and by 2015 Hugo had already completed the recording of his project “New Generation Farahan.” The first Ali Hugo single to be released on Spotify was the North American four weeks at №1 instrumental hit single “Tears of a broken heart” with a bonus single the baroque, classical track “Flowery Gown”. Both tracks went under the radar with Spotify subscribers and failed to make any noticeable impact on the streaming site, unlike the success those songs had on many indie charts. However, it was the release of Hugo’s auspicious EP Time Machine, and with the two №1 hit singles, “This Love Is True” and “Sunshie” that Ali Hugo’s Spotify streams started to pick up. By the time the last single from Time Machine, “Rhythm of Love,” had been released on Valentine’s day 2019, Time Machine had secured 13K streams on Spotify.

Hugo points out that Time Machine failed to achieve its core objective of transforming Hugo into a National Superstar in Canada. Marketing research results and Canadian radio trends analysis indicated that a record like Time Machine, packed with nostalgic, familiar rifts, and radio-friendly tunes for stations like St. Catherine EZ Rock and CHFI, a record like that had a high potential for success. Forecasts showed that if the marketing of the Time Machine EP was focused on promoting it as “The record that will time travel you to the sound of back in the day,” and it was released a week before Christmas, then Spotify streams would quadruple in Canada. That did not happen! and Canada remains the music market with the least numbers of Ali Hugo Spotify streams. Unexpectedly the most substantial numbers of streams were generated in Amsterdam Holland; these were sustained by strategic social media marketing efforts. Another surprise was the massive number of streams from the city of Muscat in Oman. The launch of Virgin Radio station in Muscat as well as the popular Hi FM, which plays the current sounds of Pop, Hip Hop & R&B, prompted the Ali Hugo team to ignore the Omani market. Oman appeared to be a market too difficult to expand in with Time Machne because of the high numbers of youthful listeners who lacked a sense of music nostalgia. However, it was those very same young listeners who made Oman the country with the third number of Ali Hugo massive Spotify streams right after the United States.

The marketing environment became more intricate with the release of Hugo’s latest project “Hope for the Meek”. Significant Ali Hugo Spotify streams started showing up from East Asian countries.

Vibrate.com is a platform made of “A growing team of data scientists, engineers and database curators”. Vibrate shows that Hugo is currently famous in Bangkok and Maua Brazil. Other Asian countries with high Ali Hugo Spotify streams include Indonesia and the Philippines. When Ali Hugos Spotify Thai streams started showing up on our stats, we initially interpreted these streams as being the result of seasonal travelers from the Middle East and especially from Oman to Thailand. However, after Covid-19 hit and with global travel restrictions in place, the Ali Hugo Spotify Thai streams continued to grow, and it became clear to us that these were streams that originated in Thailand and are not the result of seasonal holiday travelers from the Middle East. It was shocking to see the speed of organic growth in the numbers of Ali Hugo Spotify Thai streams. A continuous increase in Spotify streams was occurring without the listing of tracks from Ali Hugo’s “Hope for the Meek” project on any of the official Spotify curated playlists.

We knew that we needed to take advantage of this organic growth Hugo responded, and we started focusing our digital marketing efforts on Thai Centric platforms and social media pages. We also used Email marketing to increase Ali Hugo’s Spotify streams by promoting listening to Ali Hugo on Spotify via Smart TV Mi Box [S} 4K Ultra HD set-top box. These efforts not only pushed Ali Hugo’s Spotify Thai streams over the top but also further increased the total number of Ali Hugo’s East Asian Spotify streams.

The digital marketing strategies implemented by the Ali Hugo team have shown profitability, yet Hugo is still determined to gain higher ground in the Canadian music market, while Spotify curated playlists by Ali Hugo is the way forward for Ali Hugo to further penetrate Spotify’s East Asian market.