Billie Eilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, is certainly one of the most hyped/most anticipated (delete as applicable) albums of the year and it is one that Spotify and other DSPs appears to be throwing everything at.
On Spotify’s mobile and desktop apps, it has created a special Billie Eilish Experience playlist. What that means in effect is that the album itself is bookended by (and woven through with) video content. There is a short (it runs to just 21 seconds) video intro from Eilish where she explains the concept. “Below you can see sort of a little peek into my mind and the way that I create everything explained down there [in the playlist]. So have fun.” Then it runs into the album and at the end are videos for four of her singles (‘you should see me in a crown’, ‘wish you were gay’, ‘when the party’s over’ and ‘bury a friend’ – she doesn’t do capital letters).
Those playing on the desktop version of Spotify will, however, only get part of the experience as she has created short videos for every track on the album that can only be viewed on the mobile app. It is a mixture of video and animations of her artwork that last about five seconds each and loop as the song plays. Spotify says it will evolve after release to showcase “new product features”, adding, “This playlist will allow for vertical video content, custom assets, and editorial storylines all with the goal of creating more meaningful and engaging context for Billie’s fans.”
It wasn’t just on its mobile and desktop apps that Spotify was pushing Eilish – it was also in what her and her fans would no doubt call “IRL”. For three days from the album’s release on 29th March, the service opened what it termed an “immersive, highly visceral ‘enhanced album experience’” at The Stalls at Skylight Row in downtown Los Angeles. The event, it says, “will converge art, technology and the unexpected, creating a cerebral storytelling experience that is authentically Billie Eilish”.
She was also the lead act (with her photo of the playlist cover) on New Music Friday on Spotify, but it was not quite the NMF carpet bombing that other acts (like Drake and Katy Perry) have enjoyed from the service in the past. She was cover act for the main NMF and on a handful of regional ones (UK, Canada, Netherlands, Australia & New Zealand, Japan) and ‘bad guy’ was the lead track on all of them. The same track did appear on other regional NMF playlists, but was slightly further down the pecking order. On top of this is an exclusive Fans First picture disc vinyl release of the album that her top listeners on Spotify in the UK and Ireland were emailed about, retailing at £21.99.
Eilish currently has 33.7m monthly listeners on Spotify as well as 5.6m followers. At the time of writing, she is the 23rd most-listenedto artist on the platform. These numbers, of course, will rise steadily through the year proving that, when a major DSP puts its shoulder to the wheel for an act, it can have significant impact. Not all acts can be The Chosen Ones but, when they are, they’ll really see the benefit.
It wasn’t all about Spotify, however, with Apple Music also heavily pushing her album in advance. The service claimed that in the week before its release there had been over 800,000 pre-adds (Apple Music’s version of the pre-save) of the album which Universal Music Group said was the highest pre-add numbers to date for any album.
Even before the album was out, YouTube was building the heat. Eilish was the first artist to feature in a new “mini series” format the video site has developed. Eilish, A Snippet Into Billie’s Mind ran for three episodes and saw her talk about how she makes music and art.
YouTube played a significant part in her rise and this was, in some ways, her returning the favour by working with it first in the run up to the album. But, as with all acts today, not spreading the love (i.e. the content) across all audio and video services is very much frowned upon. Everyone has to be kept happy. Those plates need to keep spinning.
