Coca-Cola is expanding the scope of its partnership with social listening platform Spotify with #Placelists, an app that lets users discover new music based on the Facebook “places” engine (playlist + places = Placelist). Created by developer Pinzler during a Spotify-Coke hackathon in April 2012, the app was built by digital agency MRY in 9 months.
So far, the app’s interactive world map hosts playlists from hundreds of places across the world. The playlists are streaming, adding a sort of live radio, “dropping in” effect to the experience of navigating around the musical map. Locations span the globe, including playlists from Upernavik, Greenland (featuring tracks from Pitbull and Depeche Mode) and Dublin, Ireland (Dutch Uncles, Kwes, Blur). The New York, New York location is filled to the brim with New York-centric tunes, like “NY Girl” by Hatcham Social and “Leaving New York” by R.E.M.
Though the app doesn’t require a Facebook login to operate, it does prompt users to connect via Facebook when possible, stating “Placelists is more fun with Facebook”.
Coca Cola’s long history with music started with Ray Charles and most recently with Cee-Lo Green during the 2012 Olympics’ “Open Happiness” campaign (not to mention the record label-esque “Coca Cola Music”, a campaign launched in 2011 with Maroon 5 and Music Dealers, a discovery site). Their music-related campaigns are generally targeted at teenagers, whose mastery of social media and content sharing have created a multitude of opportunities for brands like Coke — allowing them to leverage their partnerships with music companies (like Spotify) and spread their brand into different consumer spaces.
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