Our research uncovered that Dylan’s 65-66 recordings actually happened across two recording studios, in two locales, both named “Studio A.”

There had never been a single Studio A. Until now.

Our solution was to virtually create Studio A, all in a touchable, modern, interface. This would give new fans a unique opportunity to sit in at the sessions.

Rather than designing a place-based metaphor with a mixing board, microphones and so on — we set about developing a, minimalist UI, designed for touch. This made sense because research showed millennials consumed music primarily on their mobile devices.

To make the experience relevant to a global audience, we created a responsive website that could be enjoyed cross platform- most importanly mobile.

To do this, we identified three levels of engagement, depending on how fans wanted to engage with the music. To touch the music and be touched by it.

A Listening Session — studio fragments and stories spanning the historic sessions

A Jam Session — previously unreleased track “stems” for creative remixing.

A Signing Session — an opportunity to sing Dylan’s most famous songs all via a touchable interface.

Given a limited promotional budget, our Key Performance Indicators for the Dylan experience were threefold:

User engagement — how deep of an experience could we develop, measured in average session length? For this metric, we delivered an average user session of 20 minutes, within the top quintile — an unheard of number for a site of this nature.

Audience age — to what extent could we draw organic visitors to the site under the age of 44? For this metric, we were able to deliver more than half of the total visitors (51.6%) within our demographic sweet spot.

Press Coverage — how much press coverage could we get based on a simple release and word of mouth? We were able to generate real journalism (vs. press release regurgitation) in Rolling Stone, Wired and AV Club to name a few — delivering over 100 million press views during our two week launch window.

The strategy was to get younger fans to connect with Bob Dylan the way the 50+ demographic already did. The Bob Dylan brand means many things to many people. With a career spanning over 50 years, it’s easy for any artist — even the legendary Dylan — to get lost in the “Spotify Shuffle.” Our goal was to capture the energy from Dylan’s “electric era” and deliver it to a new generation of fans.

Our audience was music lovers under the age of 44 — who perhaps knew of Bob Dylan, but were unfamiliar with the younger Dylan and his recordings.

In 2015, Sony Legacy Recordings wanted to promote BOB DYLAN 1965-1966 THE CUTTING EDGE — his most important release ever.

The brief required us to find a way to break through the clutter of music streaming services like Spotify, reach a new generation of fans and grow Dylan's fan base beyond the 50+ year old demographic. We had to do all of this with a very limited budget.