Tag: playful

Why Following FC Barcelona Is a Game of Its Own

October 18, 2023

Since 2022, our partnership with FC Barcelona has spanned playlists and football pitches alike. And helping fans connect with their favorite artists and players has been at the heart of that. But Barça faithfuls are no ordinary supporters: They are authentic, emotional, and most of all, exceptionally committed to the club. 

This also means their expectations are very high, and they have a voracious appetite for club-related content that is distinctive and entertaining. So each and every day, FC Barcelona’s social media accounts set out to deliver photos, videos, memes, and team updates that keep hundreds of millions of fans around the world buzzing.

The club’s brand identity and engagement teams, headed up by Barça Identity Director Paloma Mikadze and Fan Engagement Director Eric Serra, are responsible for the playful social media strategies, posts, and videos that keep fans supporting the club through their likes, comments, and reposts. They are the storytellers of FC Barcelona, and working together with Spotify’s own storytellers, like Partner Marketing Lead George Mead, they find new and unique ways to bring Barça players together with music’s biggest stars. (Who can forget ROSALÍA’s epic shirt reveal?) 

 

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Over the years, FC Barcelona has cultivated a deeply loyal fan following through its social media accounts, and since partnering with Spotify, it only continues to grow stronger. For the Record sat down with Paloma, Eric, and George to talk about their approach to fan engagement, how they get players into the mix, and insights into some of their most memorable campaigns.

No one can forget the incredible artist reveal with ROSALÍA on team kits ahead of an El Clásico match. Can you tell us a little about the process behind that campaign, as well as the results?

Paloma Mikadze: When passion and ambition come together, incredible things happen. That’s a philosophy we truly believe in, and the MOTOMAMI campaign underscores that. Our team makes extraordinary ideas come to life. Bringing sports and music together is wonderful, and we wanted fans around the world to feel and experience that fusion of culture. 

We built a strong journey around the hype phase to capture all the attention we were looking for before the reveal moment—we wanted all eyes to be on us, and that’s what we did. The ROSALÍA shirt reveal was a trending topic all over the world. Our content was being consumed by millions of fans, which multiplied the exposure of our brands around the world.  

 

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George: That was truly unforgettable! It helps when it coincided with a last-minute match winner to essentially secure the La Liga title, but that really exemplified why this partnership is the first of its kind.

After she featured on the shirt, searches for ROSALÍA on Spotify spiked significantly across the world. Barcelona, meanwhile, got roughly half a billion impressions on content with the singer’s MOTOMAMI logo across all club media channels.

Plus, a TikTok video featuring ROSALÍA remixing the club’s anthem, which was posted on Barcelona’s account to promote the campaign, has now amassed more than 86 million views, further illustrating how Barça have been able to leverage Spotify’s relationship with its artists to better target Gen Z.

How about Anitta’s playlist challenge during this summer’s preseason tour? 

Eric Serra: Can you imagine Anitta playing football, or Gavi, Pedri, Raphinha, and Balde recreating one of Anitta’s trendy dances? Maybe not, but this is where the team comes in to create remarkable content for the fans while achieving commercial goals simultaneously. Connecting all the dots is not easy, but when you have the players and artists on the pitch with big smiles during production, you know that the idea is good, and the content will perform very well.

 

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George: Again, that was a perfect example of seeing football and music come together in a way that aligned across the markets for both the club and the artist. Barça has such a massive following in the Latin American markets, so to be able to work with some of the biggest artists and celebrate their talents with those of the club was something that we really wanted to do for the preseason tour. The players loved it because it intersects with the music that they like to listen to, and we saw really good engagement across our own channels as a result.

The players are super active on social media. What’s behind their social strategy? 

George Mead: This has been a really fun aspect of our work with the club from the beginning. Working with current players and legends like Ronaldinho to create and share their favorite tracks, which motivate them on match days, in special Spotify playlists—as well as the opportunity for fans to Blend with players—has provided another way for fans to connect with the players via music. 

Paloma: We never miss an opportunity to bring the players into our social media plans. They’re generally aware of how crucial content is in today’s landscape, and we always try to propose innovative and fresh content so they can make the most of it. Highlighting their personality and qualities is key when we draw up our content strategy.

They take part in different ways—whether it’s trends, challenges, choreographies, interviews, or amplification from their own channels. We’d like to send a huge thank you to them for their proactivity and willingness to expose the Barça brand to the fullest. 

Eric: The approach to player activations is a perfect fit for them. We are providing the kind of content that they consume on social media, and the result is more authentic and engaging for the fans.

Eric Serra and Paloma Mikadze

How does your social approach help supplement the established futbol fan community? 

Paloma: It’s about being authentic and engaging at the same time. Fans have a very strong appetite for content and entertainment, but it’s not only about building strategies. It’s also about analyzing insights to readjust the approach and constantly innovating to meet expectations. We try to be one step ahead. Understanding how and why fans react and behave is the first step to establishing a fan community.  

George: As a member of that community myself, I know that that is one of the most engaged demographics out there in terms of social media. We believe that this partnership adds far more than just the Spotify logo across the Barça shirt, and I think we’ve seen from the results so far that we’re speaking to an audience that loves the crossover—and we’re excited to offer more with our projects in the future.

Eric: We don’t have customers, we have fans . . . and we focus on putting the Barça fans at the center of everything we do.

Have your social engagement plans changed at all since partnering with Spotify?

Paloma: Our plans have adapted rather than changed. We know our audience; we understand our fans and we constantly analyze the market. Innovation, flexibility, and insight extraction is essential in our day-to-day work. 

Our teams are persistently seeking new opportunities to elevate our partnership through content. We must be relevant in a landscape that offers infinite options, and joining forces with Spotify has been key. Creating strategies to leverage campaigns from a 360-degree point of view is crucial. Now, more than ever, we believe in reaching fans beyond football. 

Eric: I agree with Paloma; it’s not a redefinition, but rather a way to take advantage of the partnership. Thanks to them, we’re working on big campaigns with great artists like ROSALÍA, Drake, Anitta, Daddy Yankee, Ovy On The Drums, Piso 21, and more. However, without a previous entertainment and lifestyle brand mindset, it would be impossible to fully integrate the partnership into our day-to-day operations.

George: We’re always interested in the engagement and impressions that we’re getting from our campaigns, and what’s really been great is that these are major music marketing campaigns, but they’re still done with amazing value in terms of output. This club has a massive following around the globe, so we’ve definitely looked at that in markets that we’ve previously not reached to a greater extent.

 

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What are some fan engagement opportunities you see for this partnership going forward? 

George: I think there’s still so much we can do together with the club. Everyone at Spotify is really excited about the prospect of the Nou Camp being revamped into an entertainment hub as part of the club’s Espai Barça project. We see that as a really exciting opportunity for us.

What is the value of bringing artists and other creators into the Barça brand? 

George: I really think the value is felt through the global reach that this football club has. We’ve seen artists featured on our billboards around the Spotify Camp Nou and obviously our special-edition jersey takeover campaigns. That means they’re reaching new audiences that have previously been untapped for them.

Eric: Music and football, artists and players. If you blend all of these elements to create content and experiences, the primary beneficiary will be the fan. When you bring artists and creators together with players or the Barça brand, you’re merging different fan bases and organically amplifying the impact. Who wouldn’t wonder what happens when an amazing football player interacts with an incredible artist in the same room?

Paloma: Barça is more than a club. That’s the story we want to share globally, and it’s our inspiration. FC Barcelona is a local brand that’s eager to expand its values all over the world. There’s no better way to do that than with credible voices telling our story to specific niches. Our goal is to attract new audiences by amplifying our fan base and creating a solid, loyal relationship with future supporters. 

Check out the other stories in our “Playful” edition of Liner Notes to discover more ways we infuse energy, creativity, and delight into our products.

Spotify’s Interactive Experiences Create the Magic of Wrapped Year-Round

October 18, 2023

Spotify users start chattering on social media about Spotify Wrapped months before the experience is unveiled. The data dive turned cultural phenomenon, in which we unveil global top-listened-to songs, artists, albums, and podcasts, as well as fans’ personal listening trends, is as much of a learning experience for us as it is for our users. It’s an opportunity to see firsthand how much audio impacts our listeners’ lives, and the ways they turn to our platform to dive into this experience even more deeply. 

So the Spotify marketing teams make efforts to leverage our unique abilities and insights for original interactive experiences throughout the entire year. From New Years–inspired Playlist In a Bottle to My Top Five artist experiences with Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, ROSALÍA, BTS, and Taylor Swift, these new campaigns delight our users, more deeply connecting them with the artists they love and with fellow fans. 

“Wrapped really credentialed us in the marketplace in terms of marrying data with creativity and delivering it to users in an interesting way. And it gave us permission to think outside the box,” says Louisa Ferguson, Head of Global Marketing Experience. “There’s a lot of cultural energy on Spotify, and it’s nice to carve out space for Spotify to be more experimental and to try things that we’re not sure if they’re going to work and we want to find out. Our users help us do that.”

Louisa notes that as the team developed ideas for interactive moments, they realized there were opportunities to illuminate new and different insights on our users’ listening behaviors.  

“We want users to more consistently stumble upon these exciting, engaging moments throughout the year,” says Colette McIntyre, an Associate Creative Director at Spotify. “We see the younger generation, in particular, craving more interactivity and more personalization. They want to connect with the artists they love more, they want to connect with their own tastes more, and they want to connect with other fans more. And we wanted to facilitate that more regularly.” 

Playlist in a Bottle is a notable example of a moment of surprise and delight when users aren’t expecting it. It also puts listening ownership in users’ hands by enabling them to create a playlist for their future self. 

“Playlist in a Bottle is a lovely complement to Wrapped, which is a look back, in that it’s a look forward, a prediction of how your year is going to unfold,” said Louisa. The team was floored by the reception and is eyeing January 2024 as an opportunity to reintroduce the experience.

Our platform reflects the cultural zeitgeist

Though Playlist in a Bottle is one example that focuses on a topical moment, New Years, the team also prides itself on keeping abreast of unique trends and cultural conversations. 

Social media is core to this. “We think social first, always,” says Colette. “Social conversation is inherent to these experiences. Part of why these are connecting with people is because they’re built on very real insights of fandom, of genre, of the ways our users or fans react. One of our interactive experiences, GetReadyWithMusic, was inspired by, yes, music’s long-standing relationship with fashion, but also the social phenomenon of ‘Get Ready With Me’ videos on social.” 

“We are very, very focused on tapping into existing cultural conversation,” Louisa agrees. “It is really important that we enable these fans, who are already having this debate in various places, to come to the place where they actually listen to the music, engage with the experience, and then share it out to their friends and spark maybe a little bit of disagreement. We’re okay with that. We like that friction.” 

Having those moments on our platform isn’t necessarily a given, and that’s where Johannes Vuorensola, Director for Tooling, Integrations, and Labs, comes in. Johannes oversees a back-end product that allows Spotify to create these playful experiences in our Android and iOS mobile apps, keeping listeners where they are to enjoy moments like Supergrouper or Pet Playlists 2.0. 

“We want to be able to provide a seamless experience for our users, rather than driving them to another destination on a microsite or web page,” says Johannes. “We know that our users love our app; they want to consume music and other content on our platform. And obviously it’s natural for us to be able to bring these playful elements into their everyday lives, right where they are.” 

Johannes notes that it’s also a boon for the team to be able to develop and get feedback on these experiences across Spotify. “It helps us to take the product onto the next level by pushing it even further. This allows us to continue to innovate and build even more engaging products that truly create these playful and meaningful experiences and connections with our users and artists.” 

Evolving data as the differentiator 

While some interactive experiences are more general, others fall into niche fandoms or favorite genres. All of these are rooted in the habits of the listening communities we see on Spotify. 

“You can’t escape the fact that genre is still a useful organizing principle for music, and it’s a way for fans to come together and convene over a passion and attract a bigger community,” says Louisa. 

In Find Your Flow, listeners discovered which Latin music style best defined them by answering questions specific to their tastes. Then they received a listening persona based on their styles. “For an experience like Find Your Flow, all the details we used were hyper-specific to the reggaeton community, and all those data and listening insights came from a local level to us,” notes Louisa. “That is a real example of how Spotify’s broad reach is enabling us to dive deeper into a specific market, pull out insights, and share them globally.” 

Our My Top 5 franchise focuses on highly visible artist fandoms and also pulls from the way fans naturally debate their fandoms. For the My Top 5 BTS experience, fans were encouraged to not only share their top songs, but to do so using a background that signified their favorite band members. The ease of sharing to social media naturally brought fans together and sparked new interactions. 

We added Spotify data as another layer to our recent My Top 5: Taylor Swift’s Eras. After selecting their Top 5 Eras, fans received a share card, similar to past My Top 5 moments. But after self-identifying, “We’d come in with receipts, as only Spotify can,” says Colette. “Well actually, you’re more of a Reputation fan than you thought.” 

Colette notes this opportunity as a beautiful melding of what we’ve become known for with Wrapped, now applied to the framework of the My Top 5 franchise.

“When I think of Spotify, I think of discovery, and I think of play,” explains Colette. “And I think these experiences are inherently playful, right? They’re fun. They’re light-hearted. They provide unique, surprising ways for fans to look at their own fandom or look at themselves. They capture the spirit of Spotify and what sets us apart and why our users trust us and love us. At the end of the day, music is personal. But it’s also meant to be shared. I can’t think of better ways to have both.”

How Spotify Uses Design To Make Personalization Features Delightful

October 18, 2023

Every day, teams across Spotify leverage AI and machine learning to apply our personalization capabilities on a large scale, leading to the features, playlists, and experiences Spotify users have come to know and love. And when you spend your days working with emerging technologies, it’s easy to get transfixed by complicated new advancements and opportunities. So how do our forward-thinking teams ensure they can tackle this technical work while also prioritizing the experience of our users? 

That’s a question constantly on the mind of Emily Galloway, Spotify’s Head of Product Design for Personalization. Her team’s role is to design content experiences that connect listeners and creators. This requires understanding our machine learning capabilities as they relate to personalization to leverage them in a way that is engaging, simple, and fun for our users. 

“Design is often associated with how something looks. Yet when designing for content experiences, we have to consider both the pixels and decibels. It’s more about how it works and how it makes you feel,” Emily explains to For the Record. “It’s about being thoughtful and intentional—in a human way—about how we create our product. I am a design thinker and a human-centric thinker at my core. People come to Spotify to be entertained, relaxed, pumped up, and informed. They come for the content. And my team is really there to think about that user desire for personalized content. What are we recommending, when, and why?”

The Personalization Design team helps create core surfaces like Home and Search, along with much-loved features like Discover Weekly, Blend, and DJ. So to better understand just how to think about the design behind each of these, we asked Emily a few questions of our own.

How does design thinking work to help us keep our listeners in mind?

When you work for a company, you know too much about how things work, which means you are not the end user. Design helps us solve problems by thinking within their mindset. It’s our job to be empathetic to our users. We have to put ourselves in their shoes and think about how they experience something in their everyday life. A big thing to keep in mind is that when using Spotify, phones are often in pockets and people look at the screen in quick, split-second moments. 

Without design, the question often becomes, “How do we do something technically?” For those of us working at Spotify, we understand how or why we’re programming something technically in a certain way, but users don’t understand that—nor should they have to. What they need is to experience the product positively, to get something out of it. We’re accountable for creating user value. We really are there to keep the human, the end user, at the forefront. 

Without this thinking, our products would be overcomplicated. Things would be confusing and hard to use, from a functionality perspective. Good design is about simplicity and should largely remain invisible. 

But design is also additive: It adds delight. That’s what I love about projects like DJ or Jam that are actually creating connection and meaning. Design is not afraid to talk about the emotional side—how things make you feel. 

How does design relate to personalization?

Personalization is at the heart of what we do, and design plays an important role in personalization.  

Historically, Spotify’s personalization efforts happened across playlists and surfaces like Home and Search. But over time we utilized new technologies to drive more opportunities for personalization. This started from a Hack Week project back in the day to become Discover Weekly, our first successful algorithmically driven playlist. It then gave way to Blend, which was designed for a more social listening experience. And more recently, to DJ, our new experience that harnesses the power of AI and editorial expertise to help tell artists’ stories and better contextualize their songs. It utilizes an AI voice that makes personalization possible like never before—and it’s a whole new way for our listeners to experience Spotify’s personalization. 

When designing personalized experiences like these, we must think “content first,” knowing people come to Spotify for the content. Design ultimately makes it feel simple and human and creates experiences that users love. If recommendations are a math problem, then resonance is a design problem.

But we also have to have what I like to call “tech empathy”—empathy for the technology itself. My team, which is a mix of product designers and content designers, has to understand how the technology works to design our recommendations for the programming. Personalization designers need to understand the ways in which we’re working with complex technology like machine learning, generative AI, and algorithms. Our designers need to consider what signals we’re getting that will allow our recommendations to get better in real time and overtime. And when a recommendation is wrong, or a user just wants a different mood, we need to design mechanisms for feedback and control. That really came into play when we developed our AI DJ.

Tell us the story of the inception of DJ.

We’re always trying to create more meaningful connections between listeners and creators in new and engaging ways. And we use technology to deliver this value. DJ is the perfect example of how we’re driving deeper, more meaningful connections through technology.

Prior to generative AI, a “trusted friend DJ” would have required thousands of writers, voice actors, and producers to pull this off—something that wasn’t technically, logistically, or financially possible. Now, new technologies have unlocked quality at scale. Xavier “X” Jernigan’s voice and personality delivers on our mission of creating more meaningful connections to hundreds of millions of people. Generative AI made the once impossible feel magical.

To bring DJ to life we answered some core experiential questions knowing we are taking listeners on a journey with both familiar and unfamiliar music. We asked questions such as: What does it mean to give context to listening? How do we visualize AI in a human way? You can see this in how the DJ introduces itself in a playful way—owning that it’s an AI that doesn’t set timers or turn on lights. 

We also put a lot of thought into how we designed the character, since it is more than a voice. 

Ultimately, we really wanted to lean into making it feel more like a trusted music guide, as well as having an approachable personality. So much of our brand is human playfulness, so we made a major decision to acquire Sonantic and create a more realistic, friendly voice. And that led to Xavier training the model to be our first voice. His background and expertise made him the perfect choice.

With new technologies like generative AI, what are some of the new ways you’re thinking about your team and their work?

I’m challenging our team to think differently about the intersection of design and generative AI. We keep coming back to the conclusion that we don’t need to design that differently because our first principles still stand true. For example, we are still taking a content-first approach and we continue to strive for clarity and trust. We’ve realized that tech advancements are accelerating faster than ever, which makes design’s role more important than ever. 

Because there’s so much more complexity out there with generative AI, it means the human needs must be kept in mind even more. At the end of the day, if our users aren’t interested in a product or they don’t want to use it, what did we create it for? 

Emerging technology inspires you to think differently and to look from different angles. The world is trying to figure this out together, and at Spotify we’re not using technology to use technology. We’re using technology to deliver joy and value and meet our goals of driving discovery and connections in the process.

A Peek at Our New Video Podcast, ‘Hits the Spot’

October 18, 2023

illustration of a podcast studio with a couch booth and bookshelves

Every day, we share Spotify’s story across a variety of channels. Whether you prefer to hear about the company’s latest business developments audibly on our platform, via social media at Spotify News (follow us on X, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn), or right here on For the Record, we’ve got you covered.

But just as storytelling technology is constantly evolving, so too is our approach to how we serve it up. We always aim to meet our audiences where they are using methods and mediums they most prefer. Spotify has made a big push into video podcasts, and you’ve told us your preference is to see more of our news in a video format. 

Our new weekly video podcast, Hits the Spot, is the result. 

Each week we discuss Spotify news and developments and host guests from our studio at our New York headquarters. We dig into their Spotify experiences and data and explore how music, trends, and streaming shape their lives.

The team built a vibrant visual identity for the show and new studio that serves as a welcoming creative environment in which to chat. Our season is just getting started, but already we’ve surprised guests with fun insights that can be found only on Spotify, and sparked some fresh stories told to host Lea Palmieri.

From corporate conference room to creative space, scroll through this exclusive look at how our team brought the Hits the Spot studio to life.

How Spotify Island Is Leveling Up by Gamifying Sound

October 17, 2023

Last year, Spotify became the first music streaming brand to have a presence on Roblox with the launch of Spotify Island, an otherworldly digital destination for all things audio. Made up of the main Spotify hub, and surrounded by our awesome collection of themed destinations, this digital universe is an audio oasis where fans can mingle with their favorite artists, embark on interactive quests, and unlock exclusive content. We even have some special music-themed pets for players to collect by completing various challenges around the Island.

Back in June, we announced three new features that were in the works—the Dashboard, the Spotify Soundsphere, and the ability to ride Soundwaves. Since then, the first two have already made their way to Spotify Island and, starting today, the beach is open for all sound surfers.

Here’s all the new fun that awaits on the Island:

  • Take control of the Dashboard: While visiting Spotify Island’s studio, players can take a seat in the producer’s chair to mix their own tracks with a collection of sounds, loops, and one-shots exclusively from Soundtrap, the music-creation tool for beatmakers and songwriters.
  • Create your own sound in Spotify Soundsphere: Featuring whimsical interactive beatmakers, instruments, and equipment, Spotify Soundsphere is all about exploring and having fun. While visiting, players can create their own sounds and share them with friends.
  • Riding the Soundwaves: Starting today, players can grab a board and ride the waves of custom Soundtrap mixes. Depending on the music, the waves change in size, color, and intensity. 

You can access all of these features and many more by logging into Roblox and visiting the main island. We have a lot more fun new features on the way, so stay tuned.

While it’s only been a little over a year since we entered the massive space of Roblox, we’ve made quite a few additions to Spotify Island to make it more like a home for all music-lovers. Themed portals like K-Park, the whimsical wonderland dedicated to the vibrant dreamland of K-Pop, and Planet Hip-Hop, a futuristic universe that covers the world of hip-hop, were introduced to the world, creating an immersive genre experience like no other. Plus, an ongoing roster of collaborations with creators like Doechii and Stray Kids have led us to create unique experiences and games for fans while deepening their connection with artists through avatar meet-and-greets and special virtual merch sales. 

So, with so much happening in our little corner of the Roblox universe, it’s time we put you to the test. How well do you know Spotify Island? Take our quiz to find out.

1. Which exclusive virtual pet is available on Spotify Island?
2. Which creator(s) were the first to appear in K-Park?
3. Where in Planet Hip-Hop can you customize your ride?
4. What K-Pop choreographer visited Spotify Island and let fans join in on a dance session?
5. How could you previously unlock the Annyeong (안녕) emote?
6. Last year on Planet Hip-Hop, what did you have to do for Doechii to allow you into her swamp?
7. What is the best Korean treat to have at the K-Pop Cafe?
8. How could you get the Floating Boombox when it was on Planet Hip-Hop?

Spotify Has the Pawfect Playlist for You And Your Pet

January 15, 2020

There is something uniquely special about the relationship we humans have with our pets—it’s one filled with unconditional love, licks, snuggles, and cuddles. It’s hard to put into words the emotion these animals give us—other than pure happiness. So it’s only natural that we want to make them feel good, too, and many pet owners believe they do exactly that with music. 

We dug our paws into the subject and conducted a study on how pet owners use music with their pets. We found that 71% of pet owners surveyed play music for their pets, and that’s not all. Check out the rest of the furry (read: fun) facts we unearthed from pet owners in five countries across the globe.