{"id":6961,"date":"2016-06-26T02:38:51","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T02:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.partyinc.com\/?p=6961"},"modified":"2016-06-26T02:42:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T02:42:16","slug":"beyonce-drake-stars-driven-instagrams-growth-boosted-followers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.partyinc.com\/beyonce-drake-stars-driven-instagrams-growth-boosted-followers\/","title":{"rendered":"How Beyonce, Drake and More Stars Have Driven Instagram’s Growth (and Boosted Their Own Followers)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instagram became a key, if underutilized, music marketing platform as it passed 500 million monthly users in just five years. But in the past six months it has taken a more active role in the industry, largely due to the hire of head of music partnerships\u00a0Lauren Wirtzer-Seawood<\/strong>, from\u00a0Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Parkwood Entertainment.<\/p>\n

“Music is incredibly important to Instagram as a business,” she says. “That’s why they brought me here.”<\/p>\n

Wirtzer-Seawood’s focus on bridging the gap between the company and the music industry has meant working with\u00a0Radiohead,\u00a0Taylor Swift\u00a0and\u00a0Beck\u00a0to integrate Instagram\u2019s tools into artists\u2019 marketing campaigns. Posts by Beyonc\u00e9 and\u00a0Drake\u00a0timed to recent album releases drove follower increases of 28 percent (up 16 million) and 16 percent (up 3 million), respectively. Since Beyonc\u00e9\u00a0announced her “Formation” single in February on the platform — as well as her\u00a0Lemonade<\/em>\u00a0album and video special in April — her posts have racked up 151 million interactions; Drake’s meme-able campaign for his\u00a0Views\u00a0<\/em>album amassed 52 million interactions since April 1.<\/p>\n

And when Beck started brainstorming the release plan for his latest single, “Wow,” his team turned to Instagram. “I worked with his team months in advance on this idea they had about how to use the community to tell the story of his creative vision,” Wirtzer-Seawood says. The result was a\u00a0day-long collaborative effort\u00a0between Beck, Capitol Records and more than a dozen artists handpicked by Beck, each of whom released a short video with an exclusive song snippet; in total, the Instagram posts grabbed 4.5 million views to date.<\/p>\n

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