Tag: coachella

How To Get Hyped for Festival Season With Spotify

April 14, 2022

Comfy shoes: check. Glow sticks: check. Fanny pack: check. Festival season is upon us and you may have all the gear you need for your music-filled weekend, but have you caught up on the latest hits from all the live acts you can’t wait to see?

From the drive to the venue to the parking lot after-party, Spotify wants to help you check that box so you have all you need music-wise. Here are a few ways you can get festival-ready using Spotify:

  • Blend with festival headliners: You can now Blend with some of your favorite festival headliners, like Megan Thee Stallion—a perfect way to get amped for their upcoming performances. You’ll also receive a social sharecard, which shares your taste-match scores and lets you see your listening preferences compared to the artist.

  • Blend with your festival crew: Headed to the next festival with your friends? Thanks to our new Blend features, you can now create a Blend playlist with up to 10 people, allowing you and your crew to listen to all of your favorite tracks in one shared personalized playlist. Now y’all can get pumped for the show together.
  • Get hyped for the lineup with the ultimate Bluetooth speaker: Elevate your festival game with the VAPPEBY Bluetooth speaker lamp from IKEA. Complete with Spotify Tap, this festival-ready device features one-touch access to Spotify, two different light modes, and a 12-hour battery life so you can go all day and night.

  • Elevate your jam sesh: Kick-start your festival prep—whether that’s in the car or getting ready at home—with a Group Session. You and your friends can simultaneously stream all of your favorite festival jams even before you link up. 
  • Don’t stop the music: Crank up the music even if you don’t have Wi-Fi access. Spotify’s Offline mode allows Spotify Premium subscribers to play downloaded tracks at any point. 

  • Keep the memories alive with a post-festival playlist: As the sets wrap, you and your friends can commemorate an unforgettable festival with a collaborative playlist. And make it uniquely yours by customizing the playlist cover with your favorite photo from the weekend.

This month, thousands of fans will be driving to the desert to catch headliners like Harry Styles and Billie Eilish in California. Across the Atlantic, concertgoers will be traveling to Lagos, Nigeria, to jam to performances by Fireboy DML, Central Cee, Fave, and more. Whether you have plans for these festivals or a different one is on your hit list, Spotify has everything you need to get ready for a weekend of nonstop music.  

Now crank up the music and listen to the latest from your favorite headliners while you finish packing.

 

The Streamingpalooza Before (and After) Music Festivals

August 1, 2018

What’s more fun than seeing your favorite band play live? How about seeing a few of your favorite bands play—plus a couple dozen potential new favorites—back-to-back with thousands of other music lovers over the course of three days?

Cue music festivals, which typically kick off in the U.S. in March with Texas-based South By Southwest (SXSW), and continue into late October with the almost 20-year-old Voodoo Fest in Louisiana. No matter which event you’re attending, you’re sure to be surrounded by abounding energy and music.

Unsurprisingly, attendees don’t limit themselves to in-person listening. According to Spotify data, fans prep for festival weekends by streaming up a storm, and reminisce afterward with the songs they enjoyed the most—including new favorites—both near the concert venue and back at home.

Take, for example, last year’s Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago. Headliners included Chance The Rapper, Arcade Fire, Lorde, and The Killers, as well as Lil Uzi Vert, Tegan and Sara, and Charli XCX. Fans came to Chicago from far and wide—with phones and headphones in tow—streaming altogether 28,755 fan-created Lollapalooza playlists (i.e., any playlist with a name related to Lollapalooza).

In the days leading up to the 26-year-old Chicago festival (which now tours in South America and Europe as well), streams of Lolla playlists spiked around the country. As fans traveled to the Midwest, the spikes moved right along with them, with the location of the streams and spikes centralizing around Chicago during the festival. Check it out:

Lollapalooza 2017 visualization by Erica Leh and Skyler Johnson

But why did the playlists continue to see engagement during the festival? Erica Leh, a data scientist at Spotify, says it’s probably because of people who couldn’t make the event, could only attend one day, or who simply had “FOMO.”

“I think the greatest effects of festivals on streaming are two-fold,” she says. “Before the festival, streaming helps hype up concert-goers and introduces them to new artists they might be interested in seeing. After the festival, it allows attendees to relive their favorite moments, and to stream artists they might not have known before seeing their sets.”

Spotify data analysts Skyler Johnson and Manish Nag discovered that an artist’s streaming numbers spike 24 percent within a 20-mile radius of the venue the week before and after a concert. The potential for a “festival bump,” then, is enormous: There are thousands of people in attendance from all over the country and beyond.

Festival 2017 streaming visualization by Erica Leh

Some festivals, like Moogfest in North Carolina or Georgia-based Shaky Knees, boast high streaming numbers in relatively local areas, while bigger draws like California’s famed Coachella and the Electric Forest festival in Michigan see streaming from coast to coast, in both urban and rural areas.

SXSW, a livestreamed festival that has historically showcased many up-and-coming artists, as well as expert talks, cultural events, and art exhibits, stands out in particular due to its entire-country takeover. “Seeing the way South By Southwest lights up the map is exciting to me, because if livestreaming music events at South By could reach so many fans, livestreaming presentations or talks could, too,” explains Erica. “Showcasing more kinds of content—from videos to podcasts to live streams—can help creators better share their ideas with the world.”

For both fans and artists, the impact of multi-day, multi-artist concerts is as large-scale and long-lasting as the memories of the event itself. Because once the tents are packed up and the grounds are cleared, the discovery of new music continues well after the crowds have gone home.

Lollapalooza 2018 is coming up this weekend, August 2 – 5. Avoid Festival FOMO by streaming one of the top-three Lolla playlists: Maximal House Music, Lollapalooza 2018, or Lollapalooza Chicago 2018!! Looking for a festival you might like based on what you listen to? Look no further.

Petit Biscuit Doesn’t Care How You Pronounce His Name—He’s International

May 21, 2018

Spotify has helped cultivate the growth and subsequent cultural explosion of many artists across varied musical genres. In the Amplified on Spotify series, we’ll be interviewing artists who have not only made their names through the platform, but are shaping it as well.

Few artists can say they’ve achieved their dreams by age 18. But French DJ Mehdi Benjelloun—known as Petit Biscuit—recently checked off another musical goal, having played (rain or shine) at this year’s Coachella just a year after graduating from high school. It’s one more in a string of successes: At age 15 he released his first single, “Sunset Lover,” and at 16, he dropped his first LP, Petit Biscuit.

Petit Biscuit started taking the internet by storm in 2015 when he broke through with several standout electro house singles on Soundcloud. His music combines electronica and synth with classical themes and sounds for an ethereal, dreamlike quality. Being classically trained in piano, cello, and guitar has allowed him to adapt from various genres of music as he composes and produces his electronic hits.

With the Coachella performance under his belt, Mehdi is preparing for his upcoming North American tour. Spotify grabbed few minutes with him to learn more about what he’s doing next and where he finds inspiration.

Q: You have skills in both classical and electronic music genres. How did you get your start in classical, and how did you transition to creating electronic music?

At 5 years old, I started practicing cello. My curiosity then pushed me to learn the piano and the guitar, as an autodidact when I was 8 years old. I’ve always loved playing instruments but my wish was to create music from scratch. I knew nothing about DAW and music production; I fed my culture on the internet before trying some software, hardware and synthesizers. The goal was to try to start designing my own sound instead of beginning with a melody. In my humble opinion, that is the definition of electronic music.

Q: What inspired your early hit single, “Sunset Lover?”

“Sunset Lover” is the opposite of the electronic vision that I described, since I found the melody very quickly. I then built the song from that. It’s my most organic track, like a solar ballad. It’s about my way of contemplating every single landscape and trying to find sensitivity to it.

Q: You have more than three million monthly listeners on Spotify. How has Spotify allowed new fans to find your music, and how do you discover new music on the platform?

It’s great to see a company like Spotify working so closely with artists. I don’t have a label; it is basically only me and my guys who are also my management. And for us the playlist DNA is the future. Although each artist has a unique sound, finding the way to connect tastes and moods on playlists and recommendations is beneficial for new artists like me. And that’s my favorite thing on Spotify: to discover new artists in the making, finding something catchy but interesting.

Q: How has Spotify contributed to your success?

We are a new generation of artists; we have never been closer to our fans and listeners. Spotify has a huge community with users eager to find new music to enjoy. Those listeners are potentially new fans.

Q: What have you learned from working with Spotify?

The data tools are really useful. Internally, we have many discussions about making our marketing feel more “real” with some fan pre-sales for my shows through Spotify. Spotify also worked with us on impressive billboards in my biggest markets, Toronto, Paris, and New York.

Q: You added many more stops to your upcoming North American tour. How did you realize you had such a following in the area?

It’s still hard to realize. Cruising oceans and knowing that your music is listened to by a lot of people is a dream come true. I think the only way to realize it is to be on stage and catch the energy of all the people. Seeing such great vibes during my concerts is one of my best memories.

Q: When you announced that you were playing at Coachella, you said it was “a dream come true.” What’s the next dream you hope to accomplish?

I want to travel as far as possible to perform, but also to live new experiences. I want to discover new destinations, like Nepal or New Zealand. I would also love to travel the rest of Asia. Travelling and discovering new places is a great way to find new inspiration.

Q: Now that you have an international audience, you must be getting some funny pronunciations of your name. What’s the funniest you’ve ever heard?

People calling me “Petite” (pah-teet) is one of the funniest. It’s like someone got too lazy to pronounce both words, and still got the only one wrong. In the end, I got used to the name and now I even like it.

Q: Bonus question: How should people actually pronounce your name?

Pronunciation doesn’t matter. Petit Biscuit has to be international!