Right now I’m sitting in a room covered in Spotify and Coca-Cola logos. That’s because Spotify and Coke have just announced a global partnership to help both brands expand their ubiquity.
The folks at Coke explained that music has always been a huge part of Coke’s marketing efforts, going all the way back to a series of ads featuring Ray Charles nearly 50 years ago. That said, the partnership will focus on four key pillars: global, technology, social, and a commitment to music. Spotify explained that Coca-Cola will be a huge factor in bringing Spotify to new markets and new corners of the world.
As far as technology is concerned, Spotify is incredibly proud of its platform that allows people to share across the world. “We’ll be working really closely with Coke as a technology partner to do things that only Coca-Cola could think of with music,” explained a Spotify executive. “We want to bring new experiences with music to consumers everywhere.”
From a music perspective, Coca-Cola takes advantage of music properties for big events like The Olympics. In 2011, Coke launched Coca-Cola Music, and 2013 will mark the evolution of that program. Spotify will be at the core of it.
Users will be invited to Spotify through live shows, unpacked events, and Coke even mentioned that a Hackathon took place this weekend. Meanwhile, Coke will be building content on top of the Spotify platform to deliver to users not only as a marketing effort but as a way to curate the content already available in a more useful, and convenient way.
Here’s what Spotify founder Daniel Ek had to say:
This is a really exciting day for us. We are partnering with one of the most known brands in the world. This isn’t just like any partnership for us. We don’t even do big partnerships at Spotify, but I can’t think of any brand that has the same amount of ubiquity as Coke, so I’m glad that we can expand together. This partnership, the really cool part about it, is the fact that this has been an evolution: a young tech company partnering with a 125-year old company isn’t something you’d normally see. But we found that Coca Cola understood what Spotify was about, and embraced the whole idea we have about sharing across the world. From Spotify’s perspective, this partnership is just as important as our deal with Facebook.
Ek also said that this will benefit users by bringing new users around the world onto the platform, which will in turn create a better experience for current users.
This morning, the company announced new brand apps with Intel, AT&T, McDonald’s, and Reebok. The apps will be a subdivision of Spotify’s desktop app, and give users new features based on which brand app they’re using. Spotify has some pretty huge bills coming in in the form of licensing fees, and the brand apps should help foot the cost through advertising, while also adding a touch of curation to the massive music library.
According to The Verge, the AT&T app will give users the ability to check out locations where certain songs were originally recorded. Pretty cool stuff for the music buff.
I know, I know. You want to hear about the iPad app. Ek, unfortunately, had sealed lips, but he did say that it’s “in the works.”
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