07 FEBRUARY 2025
Welcome to this week’s edition of Culture Wire, a newsletter brought to you by Singapore-based pop culture and lifestyle marketing agency Culture Group.
In this week’s edition:
- Innovation of the Week: Spotify celebrates SEA superfans
- Fax, No Printer: Which band just won a Grammy award for Best Rock Performance?
- Before You Leave: How real is the DeepSeek hype, watch Nike’s UNBANNABLE campaign and more…
Innovation of the Week
💖 SWIFT SIGNALS
The Eras tour might be over, but Spotify is giving Swifties in Jakarta, Manila and Seoul the chance to relive her record-breaking concerts. The immersive This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience brings 11 musical eras and Swift’s most iconic lyrics to life, with a limited edition keychain also available for fans to take home.
The free event debuts in Jakarta (February 14-16) before moving onto Manila (February 21-23), pre-registration is required. While this is a great example of how to build deeper artist-fan connections, there’s more to unpack about why Spotify chose SEA as the first market for this playlist experience and the significance of it…
💡 OUR TAKE
Obviously Swift is a global pop powerhouse – she was just named Spotify’s Top Artist for the second year running with over 26.6 B streams worldwide 🥇. But SEA’s devotion runs deep. She was the 2024 Wrapped Top International Artist in both Indonesia and the Philippines, with Jakarta leading as her top city globally for monthly listeners (2.7 M) and Quezon City making the top five (1.1 M). With this move, Spotify is doing what most brands and artists overlook: recognizing SEA’s influence and putting it at the forefront, not as an afterthought.
The record-breaking Eras Tour also cemented Swift’s ability to unite fans – Variety even called her ‘the world’s greatest community organizer’ for bringing people together across age groups and geographies. Community is a core tenet of the fandom experience and, in lieu of an actual concert, Spotify’s curated experience offers a way for fans to connect with other Swifties. Transforming streaming from a passive activity into an immersive celebration, makes the typically solitary playlist experience a shared cultural moment within Swift’s meticulously crafted universe.
Spotify’s first operating profit in 16 years (and 16% revenue jump to €4.2bn📈) signals the company might continue to diversify beyond streaming. HYBE’s Weverse – initially created to connect K-pop artists with their fervent fans – saw 32% growth in user engagement last year, demonstrating that superfans want more than ‘regular’ content. Will the playlist activation be Spotify’s next step to pivot from streaming service to experience platform? This could be particularly appealing in engagement-heavy markets like SEA where Weverse’s success (and Kakao Entertainment’s reportedly plans for a similar platform) reveals fans’ appetite for deeper fan engagement.
For other brands reading, anything Taylor Swift might be an easier, guaranteed success—but that doesn’t mean she’s the only artist worth investing in. There’s a huge opportunity to create similar playlist activations with other artists who have passionate, engaged fan bases. For instance, both Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga are among the top 10 foreign artists on streaming platform charts across SEA. And what do Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, and Sabrina Carpenter have in common? They all have the Philippines as their second-largest market based on social media following across their official channels.
Fax, No Printer*
For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’
Which band just won a Grammy award for Best Rock Performance?
Scroll to the end of the newsletter for the correct answer!
Before You Leave
Asia’s food scene embraces Latin American flavors
(13 min read)
Nike UNBANNABLE campaign launched before Grammys
(3 min read)
This Week's Trivia Answer
B. The Beatles
The win comes 60 years after the group won its first Grammy, and 55 years after the band members parted ways – and it’s all thanks to a little help from AI. Now and Then in the 1970s but not released until 2023 when Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr used machine learning technology developed by Peter Jackson (you might know him as director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) to clean up the demo, combine it with newer recordings and add instrumentation. Per Billboard, it’s the first AI-assisted song to earn a Grammy award.
As AI’s role in creative fields continues to generate debate, this win warrants context: Now and Then isn’t the result of generative AI. Rather than recreate Lennon’s voice, the technology was used to ‘extricate’ it from the original recording. It functions more like an advanced mixing tool than a replacement for the creative process.
This raises two considerations for brands: how can AI amplify rather than replace human talent? And how might this technology help revive meaningful moments from your brand’s past?
🚀 Over and Out!
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Your Culture Mavens,
Angela, Catherine, Teri, Twila, & Vicki
