With more than 2 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp presented a significant, relatively untapped audience that has not yet been saturated with brand content. The launch of WhatsApp Channels, offered an opportunity for brands to engage with users through one-way broadcasts–sharing text, photos, videos, and polls with a community of shared interests. For Spotify, this new channel allowed us to expand our reach and engage this vast global audience, many of whom we had never reached before through traditional social media platforms. This positioned Spotify as both a leader and an early adopter in leveraging WhatsApp’s potential.
At the same time, we recognized a shift in how social media users interact–moving away from public feed towards private sharing, like DMs. Our goal was to leverage this shift through WhatsApp Channels, tapping into this behavior. We wanted to connect with users on this platform in a way that felt personal and direct.
While WhatsApp has been around for over a decade, Channels marked the first opportunity for brands to deeply engage with this community. As early adopters, there were no proven formulas for success—just a blank slate to define how brands could truly connect with users on WhatsApp. Given WhatsApp’s unique structure, we needed a strategy that felt native to its messaging roots.
To make the biggest impact, we tied our WhatsApp Channel launch to Spotify Wrapped, one of the biggest cultural moments of the year. This allowed us to introduce our presence to Spotify users at the peak of their excitement and ride the momentum into a passionate day-one fan base.
We then focused on creating a space where Spotify feels like the friend you text for podcast recommendations or to celebrate your favorite artist's surprise release. Unlike on our other legacy platforms, where content is more polished and branded, we embraced lo-fi executions—memes, text screenshots, and other formats that would feel at home in a group chat. While we tailored our content approach for Channels, we doubled down on why our audience loves to follow Spotify—strengthening the connection between fans and their favorite artists and genres through exclusive content, artist updates, bespoke videos, and unseen images.
Since WhatsApp only allows users to engage with posts through emoji reactions, we had to adapt to this new system of communication, that didn’t rely on comments. After seeing that our most popular reaction on our first posts was the red heart (❤️), we encouraged our followers to switch to the green heart (💚)–because we’re Spotify and we love green. What started as a playful nudge quickly became our community-driven “Green Heart Rule.” Our followers flood our posts with green hearts and embrace this shared culture.
Our ongoing experimentation with different content types, voice/tone adjustments, and response strategies has been key to maintaining momentum. As we learned more about what our audience craved, we adapted—continuously refining our approach to create a space where users felt seen and connected.
Since launching Spotify’s WhatsApp Channel, we’ve seen extraordinary growth and engagement. Our channel is one of the most followed entertainment brands on WhatsApp, with over 13 million followers–surpassing our own more established channels like Instagram and TikTok, within a year. Our content has resonated deeply with our audience, with multiple posts surpassing 100k emoji reactions. Notably, our top post earned over 1.7 million interactions, an incredible feat even for our legacy platforms.
Most impactfully, WhatsApp channel followers have become super-engagers on Spotify’s other social channels. They frequently comment on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, leaving green hearts and explicitly mentioning they are from the WhatsApp channel. They have found a way to bring two-way communication to a one-way social channel, boosting Spotify’s overall engagement metrics across owned platforms.
