In this campaign—the first ever created for Spotify—we show the world what we stand for: We are Spotify. And we are for music.

In each of our films, we want to focus on a single moment that shows how powerfully music can impact a person’s life, and illustrate the range of human emotion music spans. Through these first three simple moments, we show just a few ways that music can affect and transport us. In these intimate scenes we show how music evokes nostalgia and allows us to lose our inhibitions and overcome routine.

We are Spotify, and we are for music.

With this simple statement, we put our stake in the ground. We are not only presenting Spotify as the place to experience music the way it should be experienced, we also want to take a stand for the power of music. It is an elemental need we all share, and we want to acknowledge, celebrate and fight for it.

As a backdrop for this statement, we wanted to create a single musical moment that’s completely disconnected from time, place or person. Something that conjures a different memory for every individual who sees it, allowing us to experience a time when music took control of us, all over again.

In this launch film – the first ever created for Spotify – we show the journey of one person being carried by a sea of people, all of them moving together with the rhythm of music. The crowd is immense – limitless, even – but we’re anchored to the moment each time we return to our person.

To accomplish this, we needed to create a world that blurred the line between reality and dreams. At some moments the viewer is firmly planted in the real world, but at other times the laws of gravity are bent, the scale of the scene is endless, up is down and down is up, etc.

This was achieved by capturing hundreds of people in-camera in each scene, all of them perfectly choreographed to simulate the ebb and flow of a rolling sea. Hydraulics were used to exaggerate the peaks and valleys in our sea of people.

Visual effects were kept to a minimum to maintain reality and rawness, but the super expansive shots were achieved using some crowd duplication. The biggest challenge was to maintain the delicate balance between real humanity and massive, ocean-like effects. In the end, we were able to create a piece that was both intimate and titanic by blurring the line between real footage and restrained visual effects.

This epic backdrop was paired with an understated, almost introspective voice throughout. A single voice that encapsulates the millions of vocalists and innumerable notes that have scored our lives. A voice for music.

The film was purposefully left free of music, instead using atonal, ambient sounds designed to set the mood of the piece. In doing so, the film conjures a different musical moment for every viewer, and allows us to experience a time when we were taken by music, all over again.