How mehro Discovered New Fans and Hit 1 Million Monthly Listeners

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The independent artist and his team are growing his fanbase with great music, social engagement, and Spotify for Artists’ Discovery Mode tool.

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and producer mehro makes music for fans to feel. The 21-year-old rising star’s wistful first single, “perfume,” with its melancholy acoustic guitar licks and love-struck lyrics, was released in February 2020 and has since become a bona fide indie hit with over 10 million streams on Spotify. After dropping “perfume,” mehro released three singles and two remixes to set the stage for his debut project, SKY ON FIRE, which was released in March 2021. To date, the project has amassed over 23 million streams, and songs from the project have been saved or playlisted over 1.1 million times.

mehro’s success has been propelled by a marketing approach that amplifies his natural affability via social media and in video content, as well as Spotify for Artists tools like Canvas, artist playlists, and Discovery Mode to help deepen his connection with current fans and help introduce him to new ones.

When asked about the source of his inspiration and what led him to create music, mehro responds matter-of-factly: “I’m a sensitive person. I felt so many things inside of me, and I had to let it out somehow." On social media, in intimate conversations with fans over Zoom, or even in the interview for this article, mehro’s demeanor reflects the emotive music he’s released thus far: He is gentle, as self-aware as he is self-assured, and most importantly, authentic.

“The stories he’s telling in these songs are universal but very specific,” says Danny Rukasin, his manager. “The way that he’s cultivated a community around his music and his fans, [you can tell that] he really does care.” Rukasin, also co-manager to Billie Eilish and FINNEAS, partnered with mehro to help him realize his goals of taking care of himself and his family while making art that brings him both fulfillment and excitement.

No stranger to the needs of emerging artists, Rukasin and the team around mehro set out with a strategy of scaling the audience for his honest and earnest brand of music. Though fans have gotten a taste of what mehro can do with his releases thus far, Rukasin explains that it's just the tip of the iceberg and that the varied offerings to come require an atypical approach to building a fanbase. “mehro has a ton of music — and a wide breadth of diverse music, too,” he says. “So we’re putting a release plan together that isn’t leading to one big moment but continuously releasing music, so there is no endpoint and more for the newly discovered fan to listen to and stay excited for.”

Spotify for Artists tools were key to their plan of building upon past successes and converting social media engagement into fan engagement on Spotify. mehro’s playlist, Stay Pure, was not only a place for him to showcase his own music, but his musical taste as well. The playlist, which fans can find on his artist profile via Artist Pick, features tracks from his favorite artists alongside his own: “Stay Pure is one of those things where I get to champion artists whose music I love and who I respect,” he says.

Beyond being an expression of his personal taste, Stay Pure was an opportunity to get fans involved and to give them a stake in one of his creations. “Stay Pure turned into a fan initiative where we had fans submitting UGC [user-generated content] creative, and eventually we made the cover one of the fan’s pieces of art,” explains mehro’s marketing manager, Ryan Lassi. “We’re trying to not only build community around mehro’s Instagram; there’s a community to be built around his Spotify.”

Read the full story on Spotify for Artists official website: