Our goal was to turn an experimental playlist into our most shareable product, targeting all users on Spotify. To achieve this, our creative and product teams collaborated an unprecedented amount – refining every element of the playlist including the name, share flow and design.

The result was ‘daylist’, a one-of-a-kind playlist on Spotify that moves with your day. It updates throughout the day with a series of highly specific playlists made for every version of you. It’s data-driven, hyper-personalized, dynamic, and playful. You get new tracks at every update, plus a new title that feels both culturally relevant and strangely personal. The playlist’s added sharing functionality and new range of share cards allows fans to constantly express their unique audio identity at all times.

In order for ‘daylist’ to feel infinitely shareable, we knew both the product and campaign had to be grounded in data. We developed a dynamic system of playlist creation (detailed in the next question) that ensures every playlist is culturally relevant and strangely personal. Every time a listener opens a new playlist, they should feel the desire to listen and share, creating a chain that sends ‘daylist’ across social spaces where other listeners will raise an eyebrow and dive into their own ‘daylist’. It was this feeling of IYKYK (if you know you know) that we also threaded through our campaign executions as they drove intrigue with their irreverence and data accuracy.

‘daylist’ was born out of Spotify hack week, a company-wide workshop that allows all employees to experiment, create, and learn. Through the testing and building that followed, creative and product teams collaborated an unprecedented amount – refining every element of the playlist including the name, share flow and design. For a playlist as weird and wonderful as ‘daylist’, we knew we had to innovate for our launch. So we replaced standard in-app notifications with haikus and cryptic messages, created fridge magnets made from descriptors, released launch videos that broke the traditional mold of product marketing, and produced timed OOH that reflected ‘daylist’ around the clock.

In a matter of weeks, ‘daylist’ ascended to become our most talked about playlist. Brands like Netflix and MTV posted their own titles, morning talk shows lauded it as “life-changing”, and even government officials joined in the daylist conversation. The word “daylist” (a portmanteau we created to be memorable and ownable) has lodged itself firmly into the social lexicon, and is now used casually in conversations around the world. ‘daylist’ is not just a dynamic playlist, it’s a tool for constant self-expression that fans have embraced with open arms. We built this playlist to be shared, and that’s exactly what our listeners have done. ‘daylist’ has organically trended across multiple social channels and has seen more than 12 million shares so far, with listeners using it as a shortcut to express their current mood with their friends and followers.

1.7B+ daylists made

16M+ individual listeners

12M+ shares

2B+ media impressions