While widely expected to win next year’s General Election, ousting the incumbent Labour Party, the Conservatives are taking no chances. The Spotify deal is the Party’s latest attempt to woo tech-savvy voters. Last month the Conservatives’ Online Communities Editor reached out to bloggers to cover its annual conference via social media channels and it has experimented with online video campaigns. The Party has also been linked closely to Google. In 2006 Party leader David Cameron spoke at the Google Zeitgeist Conference, while earlier this year Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined the Conservatives’ Economic Recovery Committee. Given Spotify’s hyper-local targeting systems, it could become a popular tool for politicians of all persuasions. Parties could target ads at listeners in areas where support is poor, or concentrate on improving voter turnout in areas where they are popular. On the other hand, political ads on Spotify could well just drive up subscriber numbers for the service’s ad-free Premium option. One of the main complaints of ads on Spotify is that users find many of them annoying. Politicians begging for votes between songs could well be the final straw for some.
