Once a year, the holiday season repeats itself. It’s a period for reflection; a reset button; a fresh start. It’s a natural time for people to take a break from the daily grind to recharge.

A lot of them take a break from streaming, too.

It was a negative trend with ripple effects across the entirety of the Spotify business. In general, the majority of new Spotify Premium users are existing free users who decided to upgrade. So fewer free users meant a slowdown in new Premium users, too.

So we set out to tackle Spotify’s two-sided business challenge. One, to spark business growth in a traditionally flat season. And two, to do it during the most crowded communications period of the year.

Recognizing that Spotify users’ listening behavior spoke volumes about the year behind them, we mined listening data for stories that would bring both brand-building context and business-building awareness. All while asking the question: how do you crack into culture amid all that Holiday noise?

While our users closed the door on 2016 appreciating the good and swearing off the bad, we decided to remind them how music - and Spotify - played a part.

In a global, fully integrated campaign that sought to aid in acquisition, retention, and increase overall consideration of Spotify, we connected the year’s most impactful moments directly to the Spotify soundtracks that accompanied them.

Across the globe, the campaign was adapted with locally-relevant data stories, ultimately creating 164 unique and locally-relevant executions that spoke to regional cultural insights and music trends.

During the busiest communications period of the year, our campaign broke through the clutter with over 1,500 pieces of news coverage and 1.2 billion earned impressions across the globe.

The personalized yearly recap campaign directly drove over a billion streams.

And the campaign efficiently drove 5.9 million new Premium subscribers, a +50% increase in conversions year-over-year.

All in all, we turned a traditionally unremarkable month into one for the record books.