With the release of the Hamilton Broadway Cast Album lighting up Spotify, the Atlantic Records sales team presented the challenge of how the digital team could fan the flames.

The terms in which to do so were to create an activation page that promoted streaming on Spotify. With the deal between Spotify and lyrics annotation site Genius just being announced, and Hamilton being a fan favorite amongst the Genius community, it made perfect sense to bring the two worlds together.

The Hamilton Musical and Original Cast Recording have been a cultural phenomenon and runaway success. The in-house digital marketing, creative and development team at Atlantic wanted to showcase the magic of the lyrics in an immersive experience through a musical timeline of Alexander Hamilton’s life.

Through the web app, you can explore each key date through Alexander’s life; each meaningful point in his life is represented by the song from the play and annotations from the Genius community detailing the importance of this moment. To make sure everything was accurate, Ron Chernow, historian and author of the book which inspired the Alexander Hamilton play, helped verify the facts and associations.

The web experience was launched with social support from Atlantic Records, Genius and Spotify, as well as the Hamilton cast accounts. To take things even further, we scheduled a video interview with Genius and the play’s creator/star Lin-Manuel Miranda. These video clips were then used by Genius on the timeline. Lin also “verified” select fan-generated annotations, giving them the authenticity that only he can provide. Finally, Genius took all of this information and incorporated it into its Behind The Lyrics series with Spotify. Using the track ‘My Shot’, Spotify users were able to read the fun facts pulled from our timeline as the track played in-app. Genius also highlighted this track in its Spotify-curated Behind The Lyrics playlist.