For this year’s year-end campaign, we looked forward instead of back, finding bright spots in our data to create optimism for the year to come. A global OOH campaign transformed user’s 2017 listening data into “2018 Goals.” A microsite let them look back on last year’s data and dared them to share. We paid tribute to 2017’s top artist, Ed Sheeran, by having him devour one of 2017’s top hits. And we commissioned the New York Times to “fact-check” the year’s top songs for a more truthful 2018.

Data was at the center of every element of the campaign, from intensely personal experiences to habits thousands of people shared. The website experience allowed people to look back at every element of their listening habits, from the minutes they listened, to their top artists, songs and genres, and how they compared to other listeners their age. The data each person shared became an act of self-expression and, at times, playful self-effacement. Each OOH board had a data point at its center, be it a user’s listening to one song hundreds of times or people adding odd songs to playlists, and each city personalized their creative based on their own local audience’s data. Our TV spot was generated from a single datapoint—Ed Sheeran becoming the year’s top-streamed artist—and then devouring his song on film. And our New York Times partnership took a comedically overly critical eye to applying data-analysis to pop music.

The campaign generated over 2.4 billion streams, 5 million social shares and drove a bigger increase in monthly active users than any campaign in Spotify history.

2017 Wrapped was an integrated campaign entirely centered around data—specifically the way Spotify’s 150+ million users listened to music in 2017. A website let each user look back on their year’s listening history, generating 20+ million unique visits. 5+ million users shared their listening data on social, which became one of the season’s biggest memes. A global OOH campaign celebrated user’s quirky streaming habits and playlist names, taking data-storytelling offline at massive scale. A TV spot celebrated the most-streamed artist of the year, and we worked with the New York Times to fact-check the claims in the year’s top songs.

Our campaign targeted new and existing Spotify users around the world, focusing on users 20-49 who had a high affinity for music. Through our year-end data storytelling across multiple medium, we aimed to create conversation around people’s listening habits as they relate to one another, to the rest of the world, and to people’s own perceived notions of their musical habits and preferences. All of this was aimed to drive engagement and overall consideration of Spotify. And we aimed to target and provide this data in ways that encouraged people to share through their own social channels.

The end of the calendar year is a key time for Spotify, an opportunity for the brand to further its status as a cultural and musical force by using the edge it has as a tech company–data–to reflect on the year that was. But how could we tackle a notoriously difficult and tumultuous year like 2017? In a year that many wanted to tune out, we decided to celebrate how music gave us a reason to keep listening.