The Fox Agency team is made up of a lot of big music lovers (and the odd total muso) and we nearly all have our own Spotify premium subscriptions. Ben loves his 90s Britpop, Lisa goes for hardcore concentration trance, and Hatty’s has been powering through some Christmas mixes for quite some time. Maybe it’s best not to mention Sam’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard playlist or Bat Out of Hell on repeat for Nat though.
In what has become a yearly tradition, Spotify launched its 2018 Wrapped campaign today. Simply visit https://spotifywrapped.com/ and sign in with your Spotify account. You are then guided through several interactive pages that focus on your listening stats from the last 12 months. In itself, that doesn’t sound particularly exciting.
But the way it’s done brings the project to life.
It takes all the immense amount of data they can gather from your listening habits, and turns it into something enjoyable. If Apple’s big win in the current digital era was to master the art of surprise and delight, Spotify has taken that approach and applied it to stats.
It tells you how many minutes of music you have listened to, what the first song you listened to in 2018 was, the oldest song, your most-listened-to artists and packages it up in a delightfully designed microsite – all on brand, with bright colours and bold visuals. Heck, it even creates two customised Spotify playlists for you to add to your library.
Crucially, Spotify Wrapped works perfectly on a mobile device, with clever animations and scrolling techniques that I didn’t know were possible on mobile browsers. The whole thing is personal, by blending in artwork covers from your tunes of choice. It works because it’s not just pretty, but easy to navigate and customised.
I’ve not stopped yet, either. I’m going to eulogise even more.
The campaign is integrated. I’ve received promoted video tweets over the past week by Spotify, counting down the days to release. At the end of the online experience, you get four options to share your statistics. On a desktop, you can share to Twitter and Facebook, and on your mobile you can send as a message via WhatsApp, or post a picture to Instagram – the four most popular apps, all with considered sharing options. You can also let Spotify ‘share your 2018’ on a billboard in Piccadilly Circus, merging social media, streaming music and good-old public display advertising.
Many campaigns can have a fancy landing page, they can customise online elements and they can buy social media ad space, but Spotify’s Wrapped campaign is always a joy to behold for marketing folk because it perfectly encapsulates integrated campaigns, working hand in hand with automation and real-time data.