Case Studies

The program budget by line, in the tracker's order. The measured platform media in the rest of this study is the advertising line alone.

Delivery by channel. Google's rate is a view-driven interaction rate, not a click-through rate; the other channels' CTR and CPC are on real link clicks.

Each channel keeps the same color everywhere on this site, so the split reads the same way from one study to the next.

The two Spotify Showcase flights are left out of this axis and kept in the table above: Showcase is priced on listeners by design, at $6.33 across the push, so its CPM is not comparable with a video or traffic buy.

Platform dashboards as of July 25, 2025; Instagram growth measured from January 1, YouTube 2025 against 2024, TikTok and Spotify all-time.

Streams (Luminate, to Jul 25)

Leeway 179.1K: first week 6,348, day peak 4,084 on Mar 6, week peak 22,197 in week 18. Should've Seen This Coming 314.6K: first week 67,429, week peak 80,181 in week 18

Against the last project

First week 67,429 against 41,493 for the 2019 release (+62.5%); day one 7,752 against 33,676; month one 258,200 against 442,100. The project opened slower and built wider

Playlist adds

Spotify R&B Weekly (Type Shit, peak 34, 1.1M followers), Soul Coffee (Leeway, peak 17, 782.8K), Fresh Finds R&B (Leeway, peak 13, 266.4K); Apple Music Brown Sugar and Grown N Sexy (Leeway)

Press

Hollywood Unlocked, Tmrw Magazine, Nuanced Magazine and more than 50 further features

Spotify Showcase

19,427 converted listeners, 18,098 new active listeners, 2,976 playlist adds, 20,884 saves on $8.2K

Musicow app

The offering the push existed to feed: 38 first share purchases at $20, all Blaq Tuxedo

Blended CPM

$0.75 across all paid media (Google $0.42, TikTok $0.90, Meta $2.18; Showcase $6.33 by design, priced on listeners); the reach layer without Spotify ran at $0.54

Cost per paid video view

$0.0021 (benchmark $0.02 to $0.03); 20.2% blended interaction rate against a 15% view-rate bar

Cost per click

TikTok $0.010 on an 8.74% CTR; Meta $0.016 on a 14.05% CTR

Cost per result

Traffic $0.011; engagement $0.088; video views $0.072 per platform result

Cost per converted Spotify listener

$0.42; $0.45 per new active listener; $0.39 per save; $2.75 per playlist add

Cost per net new monthly listener

$0.48 on measured media ($27.2K against +56.6K), $0.88 on the full $50K program

Cheapest impressions

TikTok SSTC traffic at $0.12, Google Demand Gen engagement at $0.18, Google video at $0.35 to $0.46

• The goal was beaten by half again.

  74.4K monthly listeners against a 50K target, from a 17.8K base, and the playlist reach that came with it (3.12M) is what keeps the number up after the flights end.

• Reach and conversion are different jobs, and I bought them separately.

  Blaq Tuxedo campaigns carried zero installs because installs belonged to the Musicow campaigns. Grading the artist layer on installs would have cut the cheapest reach in the plan.

• Content depth kept the cost down.

  Three official videos, a documentary series, a lyric video, an album trailer and 26 Shorts gave Google something new to serve every two weeks, and interaction rates ran 44% to 55% on the documentary and lyric flights.

• Showcase converts listeners for under fifty cents.

  19,427 converted listeners at $0.42 and 20,884 saves at $0.39 on $8.2K. Saves are the durable action, and Showcase bought them cheaper than anything else in the push.

• Non-US TikTok inventory was the bargain.

  The non-US Leeway flight ran at a $0.42 CPM and 16.3% CTR against $5.20 to $6.14 CPMs on the US flights of the same single.

• YouTube was the audience engine.

  Subscribers went from 2.2K to 53.9K on 4.3M views, which is a bigger permanent asset than any monthly-listener figure.