A new out-of-home campaign with Uncommon Creative Studio skips the QR codes and puts real user playlist names on the wall: obscure, oddly specific, and very online.
A playlist is a time capsule. It catches a moment and a mood better than almost anything else, and Spotify knows exactly what it’s sitting on. That’s why the streaming giant is handing dozens of billboards over to the humble playlist.
The campaign, called “Playlist List,” pairs Spotify with Uncommon Creative Studio on a run of boards that treat the playlist as a genuine piece of culture. Across Los Angeles, Miami and New York, they splash the names of delightfully obscure user-made public playlists that read like inside jokes for each city. One board in L.A. reads “I refuse to take accountability so I blame it on the 405.”
Uncommon’s first swing at this came in June, when the New York Knicks won the NBA championship. The agency lifted a public playlist titled “Waiting for this since ’99,” a nod to the last year the Knicks took the title, and turned it into a billboard. It was one of several preapproved to go up depending on how Game 4 shook out.
The method is more deliberate than it looks. To find the right playlists, the Uncommon team worked the calendar and the local mood, whether Father’s Day or tourist season in New York, and matched them to specific cities. Hence a “welcome to the big city” board in New York, plus neighborhood-level cuts, like one aimed at interns clocking their first job in Midtown. Every board carries the words “Public Playlist” and the creator’s actual Spotify username, which meant the agency ran each one through Spotify Customer Service to get the user’s sign-off.
There’s a business reason the playlist keeps showing up in Spotify’s marketing. Playlists have become one of the platform’s stickiest features, and the tools around building and sharing them are increasingly how Spotify sets itself apart. Last year it rolled out Prompted Playlists, which let users shape a playlist from prompts they can tweak; earlier this month came Playlist Notes, letting creators attach personal notes to individual tracks.
What’s most interesting is what the campaign leaves out. Uncommon, which has also worked for SiriusXM and Quaker Oats, says it noticed a bump in saves for the featured playlists, but that was never the goal. There are no QR codes, no calls to action, nothing to scan. That’s a deliberate creative choice. The boards aren’t trying to convert anyone. They’re there to celebrate the simple act of making a playlist and pressing play.
