He has already created the most debated video of the year with ‘This Is America’, but Childish Gambino is not done yet. For the release of his ‘Summertime Magic’ single, he and RCA Records have worked with Snapchat to create a series of geofenced lenses that were rolled out across 23 cities around the world, with the first three being New York (two separate locations), LA (also two separate locations) and London.

The lens automatically popped up in the carousels of Snapchat where users could hear a clip of the track and see a 3D AR rendering of the word “Summertime” that could be added to the clips created by fans, with the goal being to get them to share it with their friends.

The dedicated website served to collate all the fan-generated Snaps. There is a rolling selection of them, with the option to embed a particular clip or easily share them. Also on the site is a list of all the cities where the lens will be available and the dates and times of availability (generally 16th-18th July).

The timing of this is all very interesting (and telling). Snapchat did get something of a hammering earlier in the year when it redesigned and some users were massively irked by it; and there was also the issue of Kylie Jenner saying she was abandoning the platform and its share price went into a nosedive.

On top of that, Instagram (see this issue’s cover feature) and Facebook (with Lip Sync Live) are leaning heavily on music, in a large part to attract and hold younger users. So Snapchat had to start its pushback against the competition – and this is part of that effort. It has also just partnered with Pandora in the US so users can share what they are listening to on the streaming service with their friends or add to their Story feature on the social app.

At Midem earlier in the summer, Snap Inc’s VP of partnerships Ben Schwerin gave a talk with Geffen Records president Neil Jacobsen where the subtext was about getting labels to work more closely with Snapchat as a marketing partner. “If we can highlight a couple of songs every week, and make them available to all of our users around the world, we can really make a big impact,” said Schwerin.

It is clear that Snapchat is throwing a lot at music at the moment, so tracking the success (or otherwise) of the Childish Gambino partnership could suggest how much deeper it goes with music – or how quickly it runs away