Challenge

2017 was a landmark year for women. Globally, gender bias and inequality were increasingly being exposed through progressive movements, from the Women’s March to #MeToo to #TimesUp. Not only did these movements increase awareness, but they empowered voices to be heard.

Despite this progress, data from Spotify showed that all the top ten streamed tracks on the music platform were from male artists. While people were beginning to wake up to gender disparity in music, listening habits were not reflective of this change.

Solution

We wanted to develop a platform that would create personalized engagement, offer solutions, and ultimately lead to more discovery, exposure, and opportunity for great women artists.

Through the Equalizer, users could connect to their Spotify accounts to see just how equal, or unequal, their listening habits were, providing a percentage breakdown of the number of men vs. women artists they listen to.

The Equalizer then provided users with an ‘equalized’ playlists of men and women artists based on their listening habits. A ‘slider’ then allowed users to add in even more women artists into their personalized playlist, which they could share via social to encourage further discovery of women artists.

Results

Our message was amplified through:

• A global media partnership and activation with Spotify across our key markets (US, UK, Ireland, Australia, Mexico, Argentina).
• Collaboration with Honey Dijon, the genre-defying DJ, fashion icon and trans rights activist.
• Promotion on social media, and relevant publishers, in select markets where gender equality has high resonance.

We’ve moved one step closer to achieving gender parity in music and will continue to empower the transformation of listening habits at scale; increasing the number of opportunities for women artists to be heard on the worldwide stage.