How Maisie Peters used Discord and Levellr to get her first No.1 album

Written by Taz Sharp

When Maisie Peters' latest album The Good Witch went to no. 1, a highly engaged community of superfans had already come under the new album's spell thanks to a little magic from Levellr.

Content creators and musicians like Maisie, Gorillaz and Fred again.. are just some of the brands who already understand the power of their superfans. Levellr helps brands from Fall Out Boy to Starbucks unite their superfans - interacting with, understanding and responding to the most devoted fans in dedicated safe communities on Discord.

Maisie has a highly engaged audience (she previously sold out priority tickets for a UK tour in under 60 seconds!), and that's the sort of fan energy that can be harnessed and monetised in dedicated communities away from social media.

Maisie personally engages with over 13,000 fans in an exclusive Discord community built by Maisie's fans & Levellr around the singer and her music, making it the perfect place to share her latest anthems of heartbreak and triumph like 'Lost the Breakup' with an engaged audience eager to spread the word. Exclusive content includes Maisie's diary-style updates and specially-designed tarot cards for each song on the record.

A tarot card depicting singer Maisie Peters, accompanied by text explaining the story behind her song The Good Witch.
Maisie Peters shares evocative tarot card imagery for each new song on her album The Good Witch.

As part of the Good Witch album campaign, Maisie and her team at Atlantic Records tasked Levellr to build buzz among her fans. The goal was to drive a surge of engagement around the album using special Levellr features.

Levellr's digital team built a custom bot from scratch and created a riddle trivia game called "The Good Witch Hunt". It was an instant hit with Maisie's fans.

After opening a new channel titled #the-good-witch-hunt in Maisie's Discord server, Levellr's bot automatically posted riddles for fans to solve. Solving each mystery won fans their first taste of the new album.

And it wasn't just every fan for themselves: to unlock Good Witch goodies, 250 people had to react to each riddle. That encouraged fans to talk to each other, make new friends and help each other unlock snippets of new tracks. Over 9,000 messages were sent around the riddles in just 8 days and the server saw 9% growth (which her team could track via their Levellr dashboard).

Singer Maisie Peters stands on a rooftop holding her new album, with text thanking fans
Maisie Peters thanks her Discord superfans as she launches her new album, The Good Witch.

Big campaigns like an album launch can be mind-meltingly busy, so automated features like the Levellr bot allow you to engage with your fans even when time is super-limited. Once you've introduced elements like Maisie Peters' puzzles, you can sit back and watch the conversation soar as fans and superfan moderators interact amongst themselves.

During the Good Witch Hunt activation, the community participation rate shot up from 4.5% to 19.8% - almost twice the industry standard 10%.

That led to a 52% increase in the overall server health score, a Levellr built algorithm score which measures engagement and sentiment to take the pulse of the fan community.

The custom bot released a new riddle each day, one for each of the 10 songs on the album. Each riddle dropped daily at 8pm, and even before it arrived fans gathered early to share their anticipation. As Levellr provides clients with detailed granular data on the community's location, interests, engagement and activity, Maisie and her team could see the campaign's success as the busiest time on the server actually shifted to the time the riddles arrived.

Screengrab of a Discord chat in which fans ask "Will we be spoilt tonight?"
Maisie's superfans eagerly await the next "brew" from The Good Witch.

As well as playing huge shows like Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage or supporting Ed Sheeran, Maisie enjoys intimate venues where she can interact with the audience, taking requests and questions from the audience. Similarly, while social media reaches a mass audience, online communities in Discord or Telegram recreate those huge cultural moments of shared enjoyment for fans wherever they are, extending the live experience to all superfans.

Working with Levellr paid off as 23-year-old Maisie became the youngest British solo artist in a decade to score a Number 1 album. As her community grows, the conversation continues ready for whatever magic comes next.

Screengrab of a Discord chat in which fans share eye emojis and thank singer Maisie Peters.
Screengrab of a Discord chat in which a fan says "good job good witch" to singer Maisie Peters

Your superfans are waiting. Contact Levellr today to find out how you can build a community which works for your brand.