Tag: spotify advertising

Scores, Songs, and Supper Served at Our Spotify Supper in London

September 18, 2023

Olivia Dean Performing

Good food, good conversation, and amazing music. Is there anything better?

That’s what was served up last week in London at our annual Spotify Supper, which included a live performance by Olivia Dean, our EQUAL UK & Ireland ambassador and recent Mercury Prize nominee.

Spotify Supper began in 2016 as a way to bring together executives with advertising and publishing partners for an evening to remember. The dinners have become a much-anticipated staple of our brand, and the latest, held in London, was no exception. Guests were treated to a multisensory experience with “Blend”-inspired cocktails and enjoyed desserts from the Soft Serve Society that took a cue from our Sonic Science research.

Head of International Sales Kristiana Carlet Shares How We’re Taking Advertising to the Next Level at Spotify Beach

June 19, 2023

Each year, Spotify showcases how our platform inspires creativity, connection, and innovation for advertisers and brands at the Cannes Festival of Creativity in France. This year, we’re also able to spotlight the tremendous growth we’ve seen recently—our ad-supported revenue grew 17% year over year in the first quarter of 2023—and how we’re moving toward a future where ads account for 20% of Spotify’s total revenue. 

Kristiana “Kri” Carlet has witnessed this growth firsthand. Since joining Spotify as the Head of International Sales, she’s taken our efforts in Europe, Asia, and Australia to new heights. The Italian native, who moved to the U.K. in the early 2000s to start her career in advertising, says that her desire to learn something new every day and her international branding expertise are a winning combination of tools to make Spotify a leader in audio advertising globally.

“We’re already seeing the forward momentum in Europe, so now I’m excited to turn my sights to the emerging markets like Japan and India, where we’re just getting started with our ads business,” she explained to For the Record on the ground in Cannes. “Every time I’m in those markets with the team and our customers, I’m blown away by the excitement around our brand, the creativity there, and the opportunity that audio represents for them! We’re going to have a huge ability to test new ideas and ways to advertise in those markets—I’m very interested in seeing that come to life.” 

We’re kicking off another standout year at Cannes. What are you most looking forward to this week at Spotify Beach? 

I’ll be very honest—I’ve done so many Cannes—but when I came with Spotify for the first time last year, I was blown away. And I wasn’t sure how we could top it! So I’m very proud to say that this year, Spotify Beach will come to life with even more interactive, playful experiences, from enriching masterclasses featuring the world’s most influential voices to truly FOMO-worthy evening concerts. 

Visitors can get excited for interactive experiences such as a Songs of Summer soundscape, an FC Barcelona partner zone, and an AI DJ interactive experience. Plus, Spotify Studio is back again and fully booked with creators, advertisers, and press taking advantage of our state-of-the-art audio-video facilities. We’ll also host a series of masterclasses featuring exclusive opportunities to hear from Spotify executives including CEO and founder Daniel Ek, brand partners like Coca-Cola and Samsung, and some of the world’s most exciting creators, including Emma Chamberlain, Trevor Noah, Issaa Rae, and Alex Cooper.

We’re also hosting a series of playdates that bring the magic of Spotify to life by inviting guests to get out of their seats and play. And of course, it wouldn’t be Spotify Beach without a lineup of can’t-miss evening performances, including Foo Fighters, Florence + the Machine, Jack Harlow, A$AP Rocky, will.i.am, and more. All of this makes Spotify Beach the perfect spot to meet our clients and partners and show them they are part of an amazing journey with us at Spotify! 

We’re constantly innovating new technologies and formats for content creators and advertisers. What are some ways we’re demonstrating these at Cannes?

Ahead of Cannes, we announced Spotify Ad Analytics and our new B2B podcast, Perfect Pitch, inspired by our Cannes Lions award-winning campaign, A Song for Every CMO. We also recently shared our Sonic Science 2.0 research study, which demonstrates how audio content connects both emotionally and physically with listeners. We found that Spotify listeners are bringing audio into their lives literally 24 hours a day—and are primed to embrace brand messages. Most recently, we’ve been focused on using AI to enrich the listening experience—like with our AI DJ, where each user’s own DJ creates personalized listening experiences for them. Now that I use it, I can’t live without it! 

But I think the best way to absorb everything we’re innovating on is our session with Daniel Ek, Trevor Noah, and our Global Head of Advertising, Lee Brown, as they share their perspectives on how to best leverage new technology to tell stories and drive deeper connections with audiences. I’m really looking forward to sitting in on that one myself.

Cannes Lions is also about awarding the most impactful, creative advertising campaigns and the people behind them. What are some of your favorite Spotify campaigns from the last year?

There’s been so much that we’ve been working on with the partners around us—I can honestly say that we get to work with the world’s most innovative marketers to create original and engaging ad experiences for digital audio. My favorites have been Destination Canada, easyJet, and especially Disney+, which allowed us to bridge our work with Disney to launch a new campaign that combines the worlds of music, film, and TV in a delightful and immersive experience. With it, Spotify listeners across Germany, the U.K., Ireland, Italy, and Spain were able to explore personalized recommendations, as well as new genres and titles from Disney+’s catalog based on their listening habits. It’s personalized, innovative, and meets music and television lovers right where they are—truly a Spotify experience. 

Why should advertisers visit Spotify Beach on the Croisette?

During typical client meetings, you focus on the brief and the specific business challenge that your customer needs you to meet. You can’t always bring the examples to life. I think events like Cannes give us the opportunity to give them a 360-degree view about the power of Spotify advertising and showcase how we’re really only at the beginning of this journey. 

Spotify Beach is really going to bring our creativity and innovation in the streaming industry as a whole to life. It will demonstrate the power that our creator and industry relationships have and how we make them available for our bands and partners. Clients and partners will get to see and experience the overall Spotify ecosystem. Spotify has such an impact on people’s lives, and coming to Spotify Beach shows that without question. 

What’s your personal work mantra?

When you come with a great deal of experience, it’s important to remind yourself that you don’t know it all—and you have to be very good at listening. Because of where I am on my personal journey, I have a lot of reminders to remove my bias and spend time listening to my team and customers. If we want to be successful in business, it always starts at the end of the day, with the people. Then I can help supercharge the experiences of my team and my customers. 

Finally, what would we find on your “On Repeat” playlist? 

At the moment, anything Harry Styles. I’m obsessed—and it’s a common passion I have with my 17-year-old daughter. We’ve been trying to learn the lyrics from Spotfiy on our car journeys so we can belt them out when we see him in concert. As an Italian, I also love Maneskin. They are so fun and they’re going to become an iconic global band.

Catch more of our full Cannes lineup here.

How Listening to Audio Creates a Full Mind-Body Experience—And Good Vibes

February 28, 2023

Listening to audio activates key centers of your brain, from your emotional response to memory storage to interest and engagement. On Spotify, that’s happening whether you’re listening to a song, a podcast, or an ad—meaning you’re more highly engaged and are more likely to remember what you listened to. So listening makes for a fully mindful experience, and thanks to volume two of Spotify’s Sonic Science report, we now know it also makes for a full body experience full of good vibes, too. 

In 2021, Spotify Advertising released Sonic Science: Understanding your brain on sound. In this first volume, we partnered with the research team at Neuro-Insights to examine the neurological impact of audio and what it means for advertisers. We looked at how Spotify’s deep levels of personalization and interactivity make it a highly immersive, emotionally provoking, memorable medium—more so than TV, digital video, and social media. 

For Sonic Science: Volume 2, out today, we turned our attention to audio’s impact on the body. For the Record asked Marion Boeri, Spotify Associate Director, Thought Leadership, to fill us in.

What is Sonic Science? Why did Spotify want to examine this?

Sonic Science is really all about trying to understand the impact of digital audio. This research franchise is meant to be used by our advertising partners, as well as brands, creative agencies, media agencies, and marketers. The idea is to educate them on the power of audio and really prove that it is a crucial format to leverage when engaging with their consumers. But we also want to help them and guide them to be more contextually relevant. 

We already know that audio is crucial for a lot of people throughout the day. We see from our first-party data that it’s used at any and every moment of the day, and we see how culture is reflected on our platform. We do know people are using audio to help with stress and anxiety—we talk about the good it’s doing for mental health. So looking at our brains and “getting dirty with science” and unpacking that impact helps us understand what that means for an advertiser when they want to engage and leverage an audio platform.

At the end of the day, we want to make sure we’re creating a positive environment, and that translates into a positive impact for advertisers. Ultimately, we’re using the insights and the research to create a set of best practices that really helps us guide our advertisers and be even better on the platform, and with a stronger strategy. We’re trying to create an advertising experience that is additive and not disruptive.

Where did we focus during the second round of research?

In volume one, we looked at the brain. In volume two, we looked at the entire body. You know how you’ll be listening to something scary and get goosebumps? Or listening to something with a high BPM and see your heart rate go up, even if you’re not jumping around? We wanted to prove this mind-body connection. 

So we worked with a biometrics research company, MindProber, as well as Josh McDermott, PhD, who leads the Laboratory for Computational Audition at MIT and who served as an advisor to our entire process. Together with MindProber, we engaged over 400 Spotify Free listeners in the U.K. and U.S., and we asked them to listen to Spotify at least once a day for an hour, doing whatever they would normally do while listening—work, commute, play with kids, cook dinner, work out, clean—but while wearing a sensor in the palm of their hand. With that sensor, we were capturing heart rate and body temperature: electrodermal activity. We captured the emotional arousal, how people’s bodies were reacting to music and podcasts, in their natural context. 

It was crucial to us to really be able to have listeners be in their natural environment. So in effect, we were looking at what was happening every day, in any listener’s life, and just trying to understand how that translated into engagement. So that was a great complement to the brain story by trying to validate everything and looking at the whole body. And we captured so much data!

What were some of the findings and results? 

It validated a lot of things that we already know as Spotify listeners. We all have emotional needs: Sometimes you’ll turn to a piece of music because what you want is motivation. Sometimes you need to chill, and you’ll turn to something very different. So with this study, we were able to map that out and lay out the acoustic attributes related to what listeners were doing. Some things were common sense, like high-density, high-tempo audio for working out, or instrumental music for gaming. But we also noticed, for example, that when people are walking alone, they’re more likely to engage with songs with a high rate of speech—a lot of words. At the end of the day, we have different needs, and we can try to fulfill these with audio. It’s more than a soundtrack—it’s a mirror of our lives. And that was something we were able to validate with the data. 

Plus, we learned that the Spotify listening experience creates a halo of good vibes. Even when they’re streaming sad music, listeners get a mood boost when they tune into Spotify. A third of our Sonic Science study participants reported feeling “happy” or “cheerful” after listening to Spotify, while a quarter described feeling “calm”—regardless of when they listened, what they listened to, and what they were doing at the time.

What’s the takeaway for those who want to be more in tune with their consumption habits?

There are a few. One is that you can kind of trick your body into having an emotional reaction. Some people love listening to very sad music when they’re upset. Some people use music to get out of that sadness. I think being more mindful of the impact audio can have—not only on your mental state but also on your entire body—is interesting because you can start to get to know how to help or motivate yourself. It’s not only beneficial for entertainment. 

Second, is that any platform needs to understand that connection they’re creating with their users. Knowing this data helps us create an experience that is even more relevant, and I think that was a great validation for what we’re doing. We’ve managed to create a personal bond and emotional connection that helps us create more products and more playlists to feature on the platform, since we do know that having personalization and interactivity is key to our users. 

Finally, we all consume a lot of media all the time, and it’s hard to know what’s good for us, or how to make decisions about the time we spend on a platform. Some media has been proven by research to have a toxic, negative effect on our mental health and well-being. So it’s great to see that there’s a positive effect of using Spotify. 

We say “listening is everything.” In your opinion, what is the power of audio?

The power of audio to me is the benefit it has on your mental well-being. I also think that besides that, audio holds the power of connecting to others on a global level. It’s universal. You listen to music from different languages. You hear different stories and perspectives through podcasts. You’re learning from others; you’re opening your mind to so many other things. It helps to shape culture, it helps us to bond to each other, and from a human standpoint, it is everything. 

Read the entire Sonic Science report on Ads.Spot.

Rak Patel, Head of Enterprise Sales, Europe, Shares Why Podsights Marks a New Opportunity for European Advertisers

October 18, 2022

Rak Patel, Head of Enterprise Sales, Europe

Earlier this year, Spotify Advertising continued our focus on delivering innovation in audio advertising with the acquisition of Podsights, a leading podcast advertising measurement service that helps advertisers better measure and scale their podcast advertising. With Podsights, we’re bringing greater transparency to podcast ads around the world. Advertisers will now be able to apply key analytics and measurement solutions, enabling them to easily track the success of campaigns or specific placements. And since podcasts are growing in popularity and are slated to become a €1.5B ads business in Europe by the end of 2023, we’ve been investing to grow digital audio advertising across the region. 

So earlier this month, we launched Podsights for podcast advertisers in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. This means advertisers in these markets can now easily access real-time insights about their podcast investments and understand how podcast ads drive actions that matter to their business campaigns. In the U.K. in particular, we’re testing these tools for ads in our Free music experience with media agency Omnicom Media Group. Over time, we plan to extend these measurement capabilities beyond podcasts to the full scope of the Spotify platform, including audio ads within music, video ads, and display ads. 

And no one is more excited for these advancements than our Head of Enterprise Sales in Europe, Rak Patel. 

“We’ve been working hard to create major demand outside of the U.S.,” he explained to For the Record. “We’ve done it through investments on the international side, investments on building a team and set of resources to truly capitalize on the opportunity, and investments on the podcast advertising side for international. All of these components are steps to make Spotify even more attractive as we go on our amazing journey.” 

Podsights is now available for all podcast advertisers in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. What was the road to getting here like? 

About a year or so ago, our advertising business started building out further capabilities in the EMEA region and in particular the major markets—the EU5 (Including U.K.!)—putting investment not only into the team, but into expanding our offerings as well. And that’s a really important milestone for us because it meant that we were starting to maximize our opportunity with advertisers and agencies outside of the U.S. And a big part of being ready to do that was through really maturing our product offering: advertising via podcasts. 

Now, clearly, podcasts are a big thing at Spotify, so what’s really important to us is being able to maximize the opportunity of podcasts on our platform for our advertiser partners, whether that’s through the content that we have on the Owned and Exclusive side or through building our ability to have an audience buy on our platform with the Spotify Audience Network. And then what advertisers still need is to be able to measure the effectiveness of the activity on their site. 

And that’s where Podsights comes into play. Rolling this out now across the EU5 is another important step for us to be able to go to advertisers with the full suite of capabilities, which means that they’re able to both reach their audience and measure the effectiveness of that activity on our platform. 

Is there a market you’re particularly excited to watch on the podcast advertising front?

This is like asking if I have a favorite child. (I do, but I’m not going to share that here.) So what I’ll say is: I’m massively excited about all five. Simply because each market is at a different stage, but we have a readiness to really do more within each of the markets. Now, Germany and the U.K. are more progressive at the moment in terms of the marketplace. And there’s fantastic content that we have there, and opportunities to match. But equally important for us is France, Spain, and Italy too. So I’m excited for all of my country-children. 

In the U.K., we’re testing Podsights with music ads for the first time. What does this mean for advertisers?

First off, I’m delighted that we’re starting this test in Europe. Secondly, what’s really important here is being able to offer our measurement tools to our advertisers at scale across our whole portfolio, whether it’s podcasts or music. The music side of our business is something that we’ve been obviously very focused on for many years now. So the opportunity for us to really scale our new tool, Podsights, in a really fast way across advertisers who already know us really well on the music side, I think that’s a great move. 

What are some tips for brands who want to get started with audio advertising?

Our efforts here are making the whole landscape of podcast advertising incredibly attractive because we’re enabling an advertiser to reach their audience at scale—while still offering them ways to sponsor individual shows—and then also to be able to do that on a repeatable basis. The key desires for an advertiser are to be able to share their story, to share their product, and to engage with the audience. There’s three things I would say are going to be really important for advertisers who want to do that through audio:

  1. Be brave. The podcast advertising landscape is one that’s going to evolve very quickly over the next several years. Come with us as we learn and go on this journey.
  2. Think about what our platform can offer from a personalization perspective that other brands can’t do—and then think about how you can really engage with your fans in that way. With unique tech like Streaming Ad Insertion, you know your ad is being heard by the audience you’re aiming to reach. That’s a game changer for podcasts. And not to mention, it’s quite cool. 
  3. Think about how you can include podcast ads in your full media plans on a regular basis. Don’t just come try it out and then move on. Make it something that’s evergreen. We see the most impactful, most memorable campaigns from advertisers who continually engage. And this is where Podsights really helps, because it gives those proof points. Don’t stop the conversation. 

To learn more about Spotify Advertising, head to Ads.Spotfy.

Spotify Advertising Activates in Southeast Asia for Our First-Ever ‘All Ears on You’ Events in Singapore

October 11, 2022

Yuna wears a red outfit while performing at Spotify Supper Singapore

Spotify’s advertising business has grown tremendously over the past few years—and our geographic footprint has expanded to match. One region of focus is Southeast Asia (SEA), the second-fastest-growing region globally in terms of internet users (source: eMarketer, Southeast Asia Digital Users Forecast 2022). Last week, our advertising leaders joined together in Singapore for a four-day experience to set the stage for new and relationships and grow existing ones with advertisers in Southeast Asia. 

“With our strong audio content and ubiquity strategy, Spotify is at the heart of Gen Zs and millennials in this region,” said Sea Yen Ong, Spotify Head of Sales, SEA. “On Spotify, advertisers have the opportunity to connect these uniquely engaged audiences with visual formats in the foreground and audio in the background on one single platform. This is an advantage which many other platforms and publishers are unable to promise or deliver.”

Setting the Table: All Ears on You Supper

To enhance our relationships with this community, we invited more than 40 senior brand and advertising partners to our first Singapore All Ears on You Supper at Riviera Fullerton. The night was filled with strategic conversations from regional decision makers across APAC, a delectable culinary experience, and a special artist performance. 

Spotify’s newly appointed Head of Enterprise Sales for JAPAC, Brad Grealy, opened the evening with a welcoming address. Then, Sea Yen held an open conversation with Chef Rémy Carmignani about his culinary inspirations, musical inspirations, and what guests could expect from the menu prior to the five-course meal. 

How Gen Z Is Using Audio To Hear and Be Heard

June 14, 2022

It’s no secret that the influence of Gen Z is rapidly growing when it comes to culture, commerce, and everything in between. Whether they’re deciding the latest social media trend or the hottest new artist, these young tastemakers are the ones setting the agenda. That’s why each year, Spotify releases our Culture Next report to show how Gen Zs are shaping audio streaming and culture at large—and to explain what that means for advertisers on Spotify.

For the 2022 Culture Next report, we interviewed dozens of Gen Zs around the world—and surveyed thousands more—to identify the most influential audio trends that the world should take notice of. From there, we pulled together the five main takeaways (which you can find in our full report). But we realized that these play into a bigger, overarching idea: Gen Z is blurring the line between creation and consumption.

Redefining the boundaries of creation

While this idea is unfolding in many ways, it’s especially relevant to the relationship between creators and their fans. What was once a dynamic built around a one-way broadcast is now an interactive, two-way exchange. 

On Spotify and Anchor, for example, the recent addition of polls and Q&As allow listeners to instantly weigh in on topics discussed in new episodes. And thanks to the emergence of platforms such as Discord, Twitch, and TikTok, Gen Z creators are hearing from fans as much as fans hear from creators. In fact, 47% of Gen Zs said they’ve joined a digital community, such as a subreddit or Discord, for fans of a particular creator. 

And Gen Zs aren’t just using these digital spaces to get the latest info on their favorite stars. When it comes to up-and-coming stars in particular, fans in these communities are using these platforms to hang out with other fans, as well as with creators themselves. 

 “We’re all just kind of homies” is how 21-year-old singer-songwriter Dreamer Isioma put it.

Emotional-support podcasts

But Gen Z musical acts aren’t the only ones forging these intimate bonds with their fans. The world of podcasting now has its own stable of celebrity hosts, and highly engaged fans are cultivating communities around them. And this interactivity isn’t just serving as an effective way for creators to better reach their audiences—it’s fundamentally changing the way listeners relate to the content they’re consuming. Comparing Q1 2022 to the year prior, we’ve seen an approximate 40% increase in average podcast listenership among Gen Zs on Spotify.  

And podcasts in particular have become more than just entertainment for Gen Z. They’ve become a form of content Gen Z can turn to for perspective and understanding as they tackle the increasingly complex issues they’re facing in their lives. Gen Z creators are finding themselves surrounded by a loyal base of fans who are using these podcasts as a form of support. Mental Health, Gen Z’s top podcast genre, experienced a roughly 62% increase in streams among Gen Zs in Q1 2022 compared to the year before.

Keeping it real

To better understand what makes podcasting such an appealing format for Gen Z to process ideas and topics that might be controversial (or even taboo), For the Record sat down with Kayla Suarez, cohost of Teenager Therapy, to hear her insights on the roles that honesty, authenticity, and vulnerability play in building lasting audiences and communities among Gen Z listeners.

One of the defining traits of Gen Z content creators seems to be how interactive they are with their community—much more so than previous generations. In your eyes, what has led to this dynamic?  

I think with Gen Z, there is such a sense of community, especially online. People can just find groups of people, or podcasts, or even brands that have similar interests. With Teenager Therapy, we’re advocating for mental health and being authentic and vulnerable. And with that comes being honest with our audience and establishing that foundation of trust and honesty. We want to get to know them and then get them to trust us and know that we’re not experts or therapists, but we are going through the same experiences as them. 

I think Gen Z really values that because I think nowadays it’s easy to see if a brand is just doing something just as a facade or if they’re being really honest. And so I think if, you know, a brand or company is just transparent about that, it goes a long way.

We noticed that Teenager Therapy was created with Anchor. Were there any features that attracted you to it, or are there any ways you use it to engage your fans?

Gael was the one who figured that out, but I remember him mentioning that Anchor seemed to be the most efficient way to upload a podcast. It also didn’t cost anything, which was a big factor. And recently, Spotify put an option to ask questions or put polls at the end, which we’ve been using. For example, the last time we were talking about cheating in relationships, we put a question: “Do you consider this to be cheating or not cheating?” It’s just little ways to engage our listeners. 

What is it about podcasting as a format that allows for these conversations to unfold in an honest way? 

Our audience is very open minded, and they’ve built a comfortable space for us to talk about topics that need to be discussed, even if they’re uncomfortable. We always just advocate for being respectful toward each other, regardless of differing viewpoints. I think just acknowledging that not everybody’s going to be correct and encouraging people to have an open mind play a huge role.

I also feel like the fans are very comfortable with this form of media. The hosts are right in your ear, and it feels like you’re just in the conversation with them in a very safe environment. I feel like that really resonates with Gen Z because a lot of us do feel lonely and stressed at times, and we don’t always feel like we can go to certain people for that. 

Going back to the idea of how Gen Z creators build relationships with their communities, do you have any favorite ways of interacting with your listeners?

We use platforms such as Instagram and Discord to ask our listeners questions. And Spotify Live is one of my personal favorite things to use because it brings together our listeners in the same room. It’s a very intimate setting where it feels like I can basically just say anything. And for the most part, it’s a lot of our regular listeners who come on stage to talk about their problems. It’s really nice to be able to put a voice to our listeners’ names, especially if they’ve been there for so long. 

Have there been any episodes or moments from Teenager Therapy that felt particularly impactful? 

One of the more impactful episodes that I remember was when I was about to start college. I was talking about some of the feelings of guilt I was experiencing over leaving home, especially being from a first-generation family. I wasn’t sure how people would react to it because I hadn’t really found a group of people that had really shared that feeling. 

It ended up getting a lot of attention from a lot of people feeling the same way. It felt nice knowing I wasn’t the only one struggling with the transition to college. We even had people giving advice, which was really impactful for me because it was something that I had been struggling with for a long time and still struggle with a little bit. 

Take a deeper dive

While the evolving boundaries between creator and consumer is definitely a theme to keep an eye on when it comes to Gen Z, it’s just one part of the Culture Next 2022 report. 

We’ve also dug up insights and findings on how Gen Zs use audio streaming to help shape their identities, how they’re embracing nostalgia in their own unique way, and how they’re using Spotify to express themselves. And while this report was created with advertisers in mind, we think everyone can learn a few things from these trends.

To get the entire scoop on how this rising generation is transforming culture in real time, be sure to check out the full Culture Next report here.

Pastry Chef Ravneet Gill Brought a Medley of Flavors and Audio Wisdom to the ‘All Ears on You: The Supper’ Event

October 22, 2021

Spotify Advertising’s newest and first-ever global B2B brand campaign, All Ears On You, is all about the immersive listening experience and the spellbinding nature of audio. To mirror the surround-sound nature of our platform, Spotify U.K. hosted a special evening filled with food, music, and celebration called All Ears on You: The Supper.

The multisensory evening included good food and good sounds, starting with a meal prepared by Johnnie Collins, head chef at London’s Light Bar & Dining. Henrie Kwushue, South London–born DJ and host of Spotify Original Podcast Who We Be TALKS_, enriched the dining experience with rhythmic beats. Following Henrie’s set, Years & Years took the stage to perform some of their biggest hits, including “King” and “Desire.”

But it was the evening’s dessert chef Ravneet Gill, host of Junior Bake Off and author of The Pastry Chef’s Guide: The Secret to Successful Baking Every Time, who stole the show. She served a delicious assortment of flavorful pastries, including slices of basque cheesecake and pots of vanilla custard topped with bramley apple compote.

For the Record got the inside scoop from Ravneet on the immersive experience of baking, which she says can be enhanced with the right audio backdrop.