Spotify Tapes
D&AD New Blood brief 2021
The Challenge
Spotify has transformed the music streaming industry and allowed users to listen to audio whenever and wherever they want. But Spotify is about more than just listening.
How can Spotify make the listening experience a more social experience?
How can they get listeners to soundtrack and share their life through music?
The Solution
44% of users listen to Spotify on a daily basis. Music is a core part of everyday life and acts as a soundtrack for some of life’s best moments. Music is therefore profoundly linked to memories, both personal and shared. It helps the brain to retrieve memories that may have otherwise been forgotten.
Hearing a particular song has the power to transport us back in time to a moment, but how can we save those songs that mean the most to us?
Tapes is a new feature within Spotify that allows users to capture the moments that mean most to them through music and makes reliving those moments easy. By saving and sharing their best music moments, users can connect with others on a whole new level, while still keeping music as the core of everything.
Tapes allows users to build communities within the app (big or small) and have valuable conversations about what music means to them.
Tapes are easy to create and can be done after discovering an old song that takes you back to a moment, or created in a moment that you want to be able to look back on forever.
The personalised aspects of tapes makes them individual to the creator and a way to show off their passion for music and create an identity within the app. Tapes are easy to share both within Spotify and to other platforms and serve as a talking point, bringing more users into Spotify. Although the feature has cross platform functionality, it is focused mainly on user interactions within Spotify – creating a platform to connect with others.
The feature allows users to create communities within Spotify (big or small), based on shared moments and passions and allow people to connect and socialise through music – experiencing it together.
The algorithm led Tapes discovery page enables users to step back in time and rediscover songs from their past, or discover other people’s moments and the songs that mean the most to them.
Tapes brings together music, images and memories in one place and creates a space where users can connect with each other, reliving moments and discovering new music at the same time.
Concept walkthrough video
The campaign: #tapeyourmoment
#tapeyourmoment is a creative advertising campaign to promote Tapes as a new feature in Spotify. The marketing concept is to instil in users’ minds the underlying premise of Tapes through a tag-line and readily recognisable scenario. It uses moments in life we have all experienced, presented through music and images. The campaign draws on existing Spotify influencers to trail the way for other Tapes users by creating and sharing content to help build a baseline discovery catalogue. The #tapeyourmoment campaign uses example Tapes created by users to raise and embed the app’s profile, drawing existing and new users in through eye-catching words and images.
The campaign imagery aligns with and builds on Spotify’s existing visual identity, whilst also embracing the personality of tapes. The hand drawn elements help to add personality and reflect the customisable aspect of the feature. The campaign aims to not only encourage users to explore and use the feature to create their own tapes, but also to invite reaction on social media through the relatable music moments. By enhancing user and influencer endorsed growth, the #tapeyourmoment campaign will create a buzz, inviting searches on the Tapes name and tag lines used.
Behind the scenes
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe After Effects, Figma, Procreate
