spotify presents: beat school
ft. odunsi the engine, cruel santino, & GA

challenge

how does spotify begin to export african music & culture to gen z in north america?

opportunity
the US is the #1 streaming country for 4 out of 5 top streamed african artists on-platform. there was a huge opportunity to engage with gen z in NA through their love of african music by telling these sorts of nuanced stories about artists they love.

approach

for this campaign, we took on a launch/sustain approach. we launched with long-form content, supported with paid media, and sustained the moment throughout the quarter with a social-first version of the creative to live across spotify social channels.

launch
we built a 3-part video series, called “beat school” in which we brought together some of africa’s rising stars to break down one of their hottest tracks.

each episode was centered around a different genre and we used each episode to not only break down the track but also provide additional cultural context through pop-up style graphics. this allowed us to break down various languages and musical elements for the NA audience without forcing the artists to do the explaining.

sustain
following the launch of “beat school,” we refit the original creative into an artist-first, social franchise called “beat school in 60s” highlighting 3 genre-bending african artitsts.