Tag: FCB

Spotify Wins a Trio of Awards at Cannes Lions 2023

June 22, 2023

Gold background with 2020 Gold Lion Winner text

This week at the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—which recognizes excellence in the world of marketing and advertising—Spotify received a trio of awards, including a Gold Lion.

Our Gold Lion victory came in the Personalized Storytelling and Experience category for our 2022 Spotify Wrapped On-Platform Experience—our campaign that’s now a cultural phenomenon.

“Winning the Gold Lion is an honor and a testament to the immense talent and dedication of the cross-functional team at Spotify who work to bring the magic of Wrapped to life each year,” said Taj Alavi, Spotify VP, Global Head of Marketing. “As we say, Wrapped isn’t about Spotify, it’s about the world of audio culture. This achievement reaffirms our commitment to deliver a special moment to fans and creators at the end of each year and continue innovating, inspiring, and creating experiences for our users in the years to come.”

Wrapped harnesses the power of discoverability and personalization on Spotify and showcases it in a way that delights users and creators alike, year after year. It’s a moment when the whole company comes together to think creatively about how we can surprise and delight our listeners, and every year we continue to iterate on how we bring Wrapped to life for fans, artists, and creators around the world.

Bronze beacons

In addition to the Gold Lion, Spotify also received a Bronze Digital Craft Lion in the Cross-Channel Storytelling category for its design of 2022 Wrapped, which showcased listening individuality—the layers within all of us, brought to life through a visual identity focused on multiplicity.

Spotify also received a Bronze Entertainment Lion for Music for its fan engagement and community building work in a campaign that saw the debut of a special FC Barcelona match kit during the club’s men’s and women’s El Clásico matches in March. Featuring ROSALÍA’s MOTOMAMI album logo, the kits celebrated the one-year anniversary of the album and the Spanish pop star’s huge success on Spotify.

These wins cap off an exciting week for Spotify at Cannes, which included a talk on the art of the interview with star creator Alex Cooper; live performances from H.E.R., Florence + The Machine, Foo Fighters, Jack Harlow, and A$AP Rocky; DJ sets from will.i.am, Disclosure, and Uncle Waffles; and the reveal of Trevor Noah’s new Spotify Original podcast. For more on all the week’s happenings from the French Riviera, be sure to check out our Spotify Beach landing page.

How Spotify Brings FC Barcelona Players and Passionate Fans Together

June 20, 2023

CANNES, FRANCE - JUNE 19: (L to R) Bradford Ross, VP Global Sports & Entertainment Marketing and Partnerships at The Coca-Cola Company, Cesc Fàbregas, Pola Gomez, Benjamin Braun, Samsung Europe CMO and Jeremy Erlich, Spotify Global Head of Music participate in the Top Hits and Goal-Scoring Kicks: Fans, Football and Media session at Spotify Beach, during Cannes Lions on June 19, 2023 in Cannes, France. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Spotify)

For fans, the world of sports is more than what happens on the field or the outcome on the scoreboard. It’s about bringing people together. In this way, sports and music are similar—especially when it comes to the passion that fans have for each.

This week at Spotify Beach at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Spotify’s Head of Music, Jeremy Erlich, hosted a conversation between former FC Barcelona player Cesc Fàbregas, freestyle footballer Pola Gomez, Coca Cola’s VP of Global Sports and Entertainment Marketing and Partnerships, Bradford Ross, and Samsung’s European CMO, Benjamin Braun. Together, they dove into the fan culture surrounding sports, music and the ways each brand has harnessed this passion.

“About a year ago, we signed our partnership with FC Barcelona,” Jeremy said at the start of the conversation. “It’s been an amazing partnership. Together, we set out to bring the world of Football and Music together. For us, it’s about how we can use FC Barcelona’s huge scale and fanbase to celebrate artists and grow our brand in places like India, Indonesia and Latin America. Football and sport are different from music, but they have the similarities of having very passionate fan bases and having very young fanbases.”

Cesc Fàbregas knows something about an active fanbase. He joined his first professional team, Arsenal, at age 16, coming off the World Cup tournament where he was voted the best player and goal scorer. “Even though we lost the final against Brazil, that’s the first time I started signing shirts and taking pictures with people.” A few years later, Cesc joined his home country’s Football Club Barcelona, and led the team to victory at the world championships at age 23. But he stays humble.

“I always say that in football, you never know everything,” said Cesc. “It’s one of those sports you can always grow, even when you’re 32, 35, 37, and everyone around me has helped me learn. Everyday, I’m thankful for that.”

Pola Gomez also started playing football at a young age, thanks to her family’s love of the sport. But after sustaining injuries to both knees, she transitioned to football freestyle, where she interacts with most of her fans through social media. “I am on social media first for sharing my passion, sharing my tricks, but also to show off this incredible football freestyle universe. I love being close to my community, to share tips, but also to motivate people, especially girls trying out the sport of their dreams,” she said.

Jeremy dove deeper into music and branding with each athlete, and how their sport brings fans together. Read on for some top moments from their conversation.

Cesc: It [The Spotify partnership with FC Barcelona] is another level. You see how big the club can be around the world. Everywhere you go, they know you. They know the players, they know the brand. Spotify has made a great choice in joining us.

Jeremy: As part of our Barcelona partnership, twice this past year for the Clásico, which is one of the most watched sports in the world, we replaced the Spotify jersey with an artist logo. We did Drake for the first Clásico, and then we did ROSAL i A for the second. And let’s specifically talk about ROSALiA: She’s been a Barcelona fan her entire life. So the emotional connection when we offered her the opportunity to be on the jersey was, I think, one of the most enriching things we’ve done with an artist. She was moved to tears because her family and all her friends could see her on the jersey. But I think that really brings the strength of local connections.

Cesc: I think music has a really big, big part for us in football. Normally, there’s one designated player that will take charge of the music and will play music that everyone likes. But Spain is the place where there’s the most chaos because everyone likes a different type of music.

So each game, we pick a player who will dictate what’s going to happen musically in the locker room. It’s really, really important because in this half an hour before the game when we listen to music, we also just pump everyone up and we get motivated and excited for the game.

Sometimes we have one song that we all pick that we all feel identified with and we’ll just go for it. And you know it’s time for action.

Jeremy: When you think of what you want brands to associate with you, what do you think of? What’s most important to you?

Pola: Most important for me is to keep my image as a strong woman with my style. I really try to accept only brands with my values and ethics. At first, I posted just for me, and now all people can see my free style and they love and appreciate it. It’s just crazy—I don’t really have words for that, but it’s just so cool to be able to simply enjoy my passion. I can’t imagine my life without my ball. We are like a duo. We express ourselves together.

Cesc: I think it’s most important to bring everyone together and fight for what’s good and fight against what’s not good. Because we always have a big thing to say as sportsmen, as people who represent many, many things around the world in terms of culture and diversity. We just have to always be positive and try to improve as the world is trying to improve.

Catch all the conversations happening on the ground at Cannes on Newsroom.Spotfy.com/SpotifyBeach2023 and listen to the full conversation on Spotify.

Blend With FC Barcelona and See How Your Musical Tastes Compare to Your Favorite Players

May 30, 2023

The men’s and women’s FC Barcelona teams are celebrating title-winning seasons, and their avid fans are on board for the ride at the stadium, on social media, and on Spotify through our FC Barcelona hub and players’ matchday playlists. Today we’re kicking it up a notch by expanding Spotify Blend to include several Barça stars, allowing fans to combine their musical tastes with those of their favorite players into one shared playlist.

We first gave fans the ability to Blend with their favorite artists last year as a way to forge a deeper bond through the songs they love. Now our first-of-its-kind partnership with FC Barcelona offers fans the opportunity to do the same with the club they love. (For more information on how this experience came to life, check out our Liner Notes feature.)

“Back when we imagined our collaboration with FC Barcelona we thought about how the partnership would bring players and artists closer to fans,” said Marc Hazan, Spotify VP, Partnerships and Business Development. “Blend is delivering on this in a very unique and personalized way, giving Spotify users and Barça fans the tools to see how their listening matches up with their favorite players.”

Previously, a number of the FC Barcelona stars from the men’s and women’s squads—as well as club legend Ronaldinho—created matchday playlists featuring the songs that get them ready for the kickoff whistle. And when fans Blend with FC Barcelona, these tracks will now be included in a personalized playlist made just for them, providing the opportunity to discover new music and see where their tastes overlap.

“I loved putting together my playlist for fans so they could gain insight into how I prepare for games,” said star midfielder Pedri. “Now Culers can see how close our music tastes match with their own Blend playlist.”

And according to Barça Femení star—and reigning Ballon d’Or winner—Alexia Puellas, fans better be ready for hits from ROSALÍA, who featured on the club’s shirts in March and is Alexia’s top Spotify artist.

How To Blend with FC Barcelona

Ready to get started? Blending with your favorite Barça stars is simple. Just click here to create your FC Barcelona Blend. Plus, you can Blend with any of the following players individually by clicking their names below:

You can also find a full list of all available athlete Blends here.

You’ll also unlock your Taste Match score—allowing you to see the percentage of music that you and your favorite player have in common— that you can screenshot and share on social media. In addition, select Barça players will pick a card from one of their fans to share on their Instagram stories.

Music helps unite people all over the world, and Blending with FC Barcelona is just the latest way we’re helping artists, athletes, and fans connect every day.

Looking for the hits that helped inspire the men’s and women’s teams to trophy-lifting moments? Stream our Barça: League Winners and Barça Femení: League Winners playlists.

Spotify Reports First Quarter 2023 Earnings

April 25, 2023

Today, Spotify announced our first quarter 2023 financial performance, showing outperformance across nearly all key performance metrics. Take a look at the highlights below:

We had our strongest Q1 since going public in 2018, with nearly all our KPIs surpassing expectations:

Monthly Active Users grew by 22% year-over-year to 515 million driven by strength in both developed and developing markets, and nearly all age groups.
Premium Subscribers grew 15% year-over-year to 210 million with outperformance across all regions, led by Europe and Latin America.
Total Revenue grew 14% year-over-year to €3.0 billion, led by Subscriber gains.
Gross Margin finished at 25.2%, reflecting improved music and podcast profitability.
Operating (Loss)/Income finished at €(156) million, aided by lower marketing spend.

Interested in hearing more? Click here to review the full earnings release and listen to the webcast Q&A on our Investor Relations site here.

Click below to check out a sizzle reel of audio trailers from a few of our recent original and exclusive podcasts.

Everything You Need To Know About 2022 Wrapped

November 30, 2022

Listen to this story read aloud in 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

What were your 2022 listening milestones? Did you forge a deeper connection to your favorite creators, or explore new avenues of audio discovery that expanded your listening habits?

Spotify Wrapped is all about celebrating the endless ways that millions of creators and fans connect through audio each and every day. Starting today, we’re commemorating a year gone by and inviting our fans to join in on the fun with the eagerly anticipated, personalized 2022 Wrapped experience.

This year’s Wrapped experience is filled with fan-favorite features and exciting new ones that spotlight the many-layered elements of listening that make each and every fan unique. We know that no two listeners are the same—so, from the oddly specific to the unapologetically predictable, 2022 Wrapped encourages listeners to peer into the vibrant kaleidoscope of their listening and show it off to the world. Eligible iOS and Android users with the latest version of the Spotify mobile app can celebrate this ultimate combination of self-expression and play with their personalized experiences. (Creators, fear not: Artists and podcasters will also receive their own personalized Creator Wrapped to learn about and celebrate how their fans listened.)

We’re providing fans with some of their favorite Wrapped features plus a slate of new ways to discover and celebrate their year in listening. Just make sure you’re using the most recent version—8.7.78 or higher—of the Spotify app. (You can check this by going to Settings, then About. The app version you have downloaded will show up at the top of the screen.)

Here’s what to look out for:

Dig into your listening more deeply

Alongside our reveal of the top artists, songs, albums, and podcasts of 2022 that delighted our 456 million listeners around the world, fans can also head into the experience to see their own top lists across genres, songs, and podcasts, as well as minutes listened this year. (You can learn more about some of the genres here.) This year, we’re bringing back now-classic data stories and mixing in new features for a whole new way to discover your 2022 listening.

The two new stories include:

Your Listening Personality: It’s not only about what you listened to—but what that says about your music taste. This year during Wrapped, we’re showcasing 16 different Listening Personality types that Spotify created for 2022 Wrapped. Your Wrapped will showcase your Listening Personality based on how you listened to music throughout the year. Want to better understand how each of these special personas compare to one another? Find out all about them here.
Audio Day: An interactive story that gives you a peek into how your music taste evolved throughout the day, Audio Day showcases the niche moods and aesthetic descriptors of the music you listened to during morning, midday, and evening time periods.

Spotify and FC Barcelona Celebrate Drake’s Streaming Milestone With a Limited-Edition Shirt

October 14, 2022

From the start, we’ve had big plans for our partnership with FC Barcelona. We want to create a platform for artists that taps into the club’s massive global fan base. So as part of FC Barcelona’s El Clásico showdown this past Sunday—one of the most iconic events in all of sport—we teamed up with Drake and FC Barcelona to create a limited-edition kit.

Emblazoned with the signature OVO owl logo, the shirts reaffirm our commitment to bringing the worlds of music and football together.

“Our alliance with Spotify goes beyond a mere commercial relationship. It is a strategic relationship through which we seek to bring together two worlds that can arouse emotion, namely music and football,” said Juli Guiu, Vice President for the marketing area of FC Barcelona. “This initiative is another example of this desire and the innovative spirit of our collaboration.

“For the first time in our history, we are replacing the name of our main sponsor on the front of the jersey with an internationally acclaimed artist, Drake. This initiative shows our potential to become a unique platform to offer experiences that help bring us closer to our fans while reaching out to new audiences around the world.”

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Drake had the honor of unboxing the first shirt, which features the number 50 on the back because the global superstar is also celebrating an important milestone: He’s the first artist to have his tracks streamed 50 billion times on Spotify.

As October’s Very Own, there was no better match for Drake to debut the shirt than at this October’s El Clásico. To celebrate Drake and his impact on music, the men’s squad wore the shirts on Sunday when they stepped onto the pitch. And before the match, they even warmed up in training jerseys with “50” on the back.

Catalan Language Localization Means More for FC Barcelona Fans on Spotify

October 9, 2022

Since announcing our partnership with FC Barcelona in March 2022, we’ve been working to bring the worlds of music and football together. As the team’s Main Partner and Global Audio Streaming partner, we’re committed to making Spotify Camp Nou a space that celebrates artists from around the world—and helps FC Barcelona fans connect with their favorite creators, as well as their favorite players.

That’s why this October, we’re updating the Spotify mobile experience to support the Catalan language, making our app more accessible to Catalan speakers and bringing the total number of languages on our platform to 63. Catalan has been on our road map for some time, and we’re excited to accelerate the launch in support of our partners.

“We’re grateful to the FC Barcelona members and fans for welcoming Spotify into their club and stadium this year,” says Marc Hazan, VP Business Development and Partnerships. “As part of our partnership and commitment to bringing football and music together, the Spotify app experience will be available in Catalan later this month so that the club’s fans can enjoy Spotify with more ease.”

Spotify and FC Barcelona Announce a First-of-Its-Kind Partnership To Bring Music and Football Together

March 15, 2022

It’s official: Spotify and FC Barcelona are pleased to announce a long-term partnership, which officially kicks off in July 2022, where Spotify will become the Main Partner of the Club and the Official Audio Streaming Partner. Our brand will appear on the front of both men’s and women’s team shirts and training shirts beginning in the 2022-2023 season. Spotify and FC Barcelona will work together to create opportunities for the iconic shirt to be a space that celebrates artists from across the world. Spotify will also become Title Partner of the Stadium with the historic Camp Nou stadium rebranded Spotify Camp Nou.

Additionally, Spotify will use the partnership to shine a spotlight on artists from all over the world. This will bring the worlds of music and football together, giving a global stage to players and artists at Spotify Camp Nou.

The partnership plans are subject to the ratification of the Barcelona Members Assembly, which will take place in early April.

For the Record spoke with Spotify’s Chief Freemium Business Officer, Alex Norström, to offer more insight into what fans can expect from this unique deal.

Why did Spotify decide to partner with FC Barcelona?

That’s a great question. Why do Spotify and FC Barcelona make sense together? Why do music and football make sense together? There are a lot of answers from different perspectives—the business perspective, the brand perspective, the marketing perspective. All of which are important.

But for Spotify the answer is very simple: It’s about connecting fans with artists of every kind—players and artists, music and sports. Barcelona fans and audio lovers on Spotify will come together to form a massive, globally connected community bridging the worlds of music and football. The vision for the partnership is to create a new platform to help artists interact with Barcelona’s global community of fans.

As we look to grow the Spotify brand worldwide, there are few partners that have this sort of scale and global reach. Being able to connect music and football fans from Barcelona to Mumbai, Jakarta to Rio de Janeiro, is really a unique opportunity.

Can you talk about how the partnership took shape?

Our vision for the partnership is this: Spotify and FC Barcelona want to bring the worlds of music and football together, giving a global stage to players and artists at Spotify Camp Nou and building new opportunities to connect with fans.

Spotify has never undertaken a partnership at this scale before, but we realized that the magic is approaching ambitious projects at this scale. We’ve always used our marketing as a platform for artists, so it’s adding another huge stage, literally a stadium, to help artists interact with fans around the world. Barça’s games attract a huge, global viewership per season and we’re looking forward to working with them to connect artists to this audience.

When visiting the stadium and walking down the hallowed corridors of Camp Nou with its breathtaking scale and unmatched legacy, I felt the power, emotion, and aura of the players, the managers, and the fans who call Camp Nou home. It’s a privilege for Spotify to support and become a part of the FC Barcelona family and history.

We also love that FC Barcelona is committed to equality and supporting and cultivating diverse talent. These are values to which Spotify is equally committed. So the easiest part of assembling this partnership is supporting both the men’s and women’s team. We’re now proud partners of FC Barcelona, the women, the men, the institution.

What’s the vision for how this partnership will come to life? What can music fans and fans of FC Barcelona expect?

We plan to bring this partnership to life in two key ways. First, Camp Nou will become Spotify Camp Nou. Already the home of FC Barcelona fans, Spotify Camp Nou will also put a spotlight on artists and other creators.

Spotify is working with Barça to leverage our access to in-stadium elements to amplify artists and enable discovery. For example, using the dynamic digital displays to showcase and geo-target relevant artists to Barça’s global TV audience. While viewers in Europe may see a message about one artist, TV viewers in India could be served a different and locally relevant message.

Second, as shirt sponsor, Spotify will work to create a new platform to amplify artist voices. We think this can be more than just a Spotify logo on a shirt. The question we’ve asked is: How can Spotify work with FC Barcelona to make the shirt a bigger platform with more opportunities for artists?

If you think about how we’ve used our marketing platforms in the past, which regularly spotlight new and female artists through our EQUAL and RADAR programs, you can get a sense of the approach we’ll be thinking about for the partnership. We are excited to see what we can dream up together.

There are also other exciting pieces to this partnership that we’re considering, and we’ll share more later this year.

Could you share more on the benefits you see for artists and fans?

Spotify has always used its investment in marketing to amplify and champion artists. So we’re taking that same approach and applying it to this partnership.

More fans engaging with our platform means more opportunities for creators to live off of their art, and FC Barcelona’s massive global fan base will help fuel that growth. And for fans—both music and Barça fans—we’ll be creating more interactive and exciting experiences to connect with the artists they love.

FC Barcelona has legions of young fans across the world—in fact, most of Barça’s fans are under the age of 30, which is a hugely important audience for Spotify. Those fans also reside in some of Spotify’s fastest-growing markets, including India, Latin America, and Indonesia.

Against that backdrop, Spotify will be able to amplify the work of artists to new potential fans and supporters.

Celebrate today’s news by following FC Barcelona’s official profile on Spotify. To get further details on our partnership check out the release here.