Late Hours.
A music streaming app for independent artists, launching with zero brand awareness and no influencer budget. We built a paid funnel that delivered 80,000 installs at sub-£2 CAC, holding 32% retention at day 7.
- Client
- Indie music streaming app
- Period
- 6 months
- Channels
- TikTok · Meta · Apple Search Ads
- Spend managed
- £0 → £180k / mo
The problem.
The founders had built a real product nobody knew about. The MVP was working, 200 alpha artists were uploading weekly, but acquisition was 100% organic and capped at ~150 installs a day. They had six months of runway and a board waiting for traction. Previous attempts at paid had burnt £40k on Meta with a 6% D7 retention — useless math at scale.
Brief: "Get us to 50,000 installs by Q3 and we need them to actually use the app."
Fig. 01 — The product. Ads have to make a 9:16 video sell the moment you press play.
What we did.
App install is a different sport from e-com paid. The metric isn't ROAS — it's retention-weighted CAC. Cheap installs from the wrong audience tank D7. So we built the funnel around D7 retention, not install volume, and ate higher CPI in week one to get there.
- TikTok for discovery · Spark Ads only, no studio content — sourced 30 native creators (artists themselves), shot in their bedrooms
- Meta for retention warm · install → activation campaigns, optimising for D7 retained event, not install
- Apple Search Ads · brand keyword defence + genre intent ("indie music app", "lofi player")
- Deferred deeplinks · every ad opens directly to the artist showcased — not generic home
- Activation campaign · push notif + Meta retargeting at D2 for users who installed but didn't play
- SKAdNetwork sanity · conversion value mapped to actual LTV cohorts, not vanity events
The channel mix.
TikTok carried the volume, Meta carried the retention, ASA defended the brand. Critically: TikTok creative was made by the artists, not by us. Authenticity matters more than production value when you're selling a music product to music people.
Execution.
The creator pipeline is the whole game. We onboarded 30 native artists in month one, paid them in cash + platform credits, and gave them a one-page brief instead of a deck. They shot, we edited, we shipped. New batch every Friday.
- Creator ops · 30 active artists, £200 flat + platform credits, 1-pager brief, 48h turnaround
- Creative cadence · 15 TikTok variants + 10 Meta variants per week
- Reporting · daily install + retention dashboard, weekly cohort review
"We came in asking for 50,000 installs. They delivered 80,000 with a retention curve our investors had never seen on a music app. They run paid like operators, not like an agency."Co-founder — Indie music streaming platform