After a raft of major announcements – including a new version that incorporates video and podcasts, as well as a streaming music deal with Starbucks – Spotify is still tied with iHeartRadio for second place behind industry leader Pandora.
Spotify’s inability to catch up in perception with Pandora, despite being the biggest music subscription service in the U.S., has held since at least early 2013. Although Pandora has lost some perception ground since last August, it still scores about twice as high as its nearest rivals.
Spotify’s perception was already trending down on May 10th, and it wasn't until nine days later when the back to back announcements of the Starbucks pact and the upgraded version that its levels began to stabilize.
YouGov BrandIndex used its Buzz score to measure perception, which asks adults 18 to 49: "If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?"
Now that Spotify’s deal with Starbucks is sealed, what artists and music genres should Spotify be playing to those customers? YouGov’s companion product to BrandIndex, YouGov Profiles, provides those answers, derived from responses on approximately 100,000 different data points across 150,000 members of the YouGov panel.
According to the YouGov Profiles data, Starbucks customers have a greater preference for the following artists compared to the general population: Elton John, Kesha, Beyoncé, Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, Pink, Daft Punk, Missy Elliott, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Rufus Wainwright. Also, Starbucks customers have a greater preference for world music, alternative or indie rock, dance or electronic, and jazz genres as well.
