This year marks the 20th anniversary of Anjunabeats. To celebrate, we were planning a series of major festival events and club tours that would have brought the stars of our label to the UK, Western and Central Europe, Mexico, Australia and the US. Content capture and livestreams were planned to support these shows, alongside a constant drip of new remixes of classic catalogue on DSPs.

When coronavirus hit, we were forced to completely reevaluate our plan. A year that should have been an epic celebration for our company became a fight for survival. We dusted ourselves off, redeployed staff and refocused our celebrations on back catalogue.

We gave 20 artists, including Grammy award nominees Mat Zo and Fatum, a simple brief: create a one-hour mix of your favourite Anjunabeats records ever. The week before each release, we announced a digital pre-order on our music store and iTunes as well as a pre-save on Spotify and Apple Music. Artists were given a custom-designed “Anjuna A” and tracklist asset to share on socials. Each artist shared a personal statement about the mix and their history with the label.

Each album has three sides:
1. The original ‘mixed’ album;
2. Unmixed ‘edits’;
3. Extended and unmixed.

This is the first time that many tracks on these compilations have existed on streaming DSPs in their ‘extended’ or ‘edit’ format. The extended mixes appeal to our collectors, who are now able to listen to music that they own on vinyl on streaming services. The edits have allowed us to highlight a priority track from each record to streaming editors, resulting in playlist adds for older works in frontline Spotify playlists such as Power Hour. We have seven releases to go in the series, plus a “secret” mix by label owners Above & Beyond.

To date, the campaign has driven 5m streams. Other activations around #Anjunabeats20 include:
1. A three-hour interactive Twitch livestream by Above & Beyond on the Thames, which was delivered to streaming DSPs and uploaded to YouTube.
2. A merchandise collaboration with designer Mark Farrow.
3. A 20 Years Of Anjunabeats Spotify playlist generator. A custom algorithm suggests a playlist of music from our back catalogue.