Milk

Client: Bye Bye Bicycle
Product: Music
Title: The Spotify Parenthesis
Media: Music streaming platform
Country: Global
Date Of Campaign: 2nd Novemebr 2020

Background: The Swedish indie band Bye Bye Bicycle had an upcoming EP release by the name of Specular, but no media budget to reach out to the press and fans with. After 8 years away from the spotlight, the band needed to announce their comeback. This happened to be during the same time Spotify announced their new plan of giving bands better exposure on the platform if they agreed to get less compensation for their songs. The objective was not only to let fans and the music industry know that Bye Bye Bicycle had a new album coming up, but to do so in a spectacular way to gain as much attention as possible.Fans often listen to old songs that are familiar to them, so what would be better than using old songs as ads for the new ones when releasing a new album? Connecting the old material with the upcoming release was a natural and organic way of announcing the band’s comeback. Spotify founder Daniel Ek was saying the summer prior to the release that bands need to create a story around their release. Today, artists need to do more than just produce music to reach out to old and new fans, which is why we found a whole new way to market the band’s new music.

Idea: By changing the titles of Bye Bye Bicycle’s existing songs and album titles – only by adding tailormade temporary parentheses to them – we turned the old songs into ads for the new ones. The parentheses hinted at the upcoming release, in a way meant to create curiosity among the listeners. To be able to turn the old songs into messages, we uploaded new metadata at the start of the campaign, which added a temporary parenthesis to each title. Since the old songs already existed in thousands of people’s playlists, we got access to them in a way that no one has done before. Some of the new song titles were: Hold (On - Brand New Opus ” Specular” Drops Soon), Tears (Of Joy When “Specular” Drops) and Threads (Tie This Song To ”Specular” - Out Soon) while the name of the album became Nature (Of This Parenthesis Is To Inform You That ”Specular” Drops Reeeeeeal Soon)”. By doing so, the band reached their core audience of people listening to thousands and thousands of playlists, making each play echo their comeback message on platform.

Results: By creating a reach far superior to that of a regular press release or social campaign, the new songs appeared in 14 000 playlists, increased monthly listeners by 154% and reached 7,4 million people through media and music blogs. Bye Bye Bicycle now joins a prominent list of bands that’ve pulled off spectacular album releases.