Spotify takes real playlist names from its streaming app to the streets

Spotify has launched a new advertising campaign, called "Playlist It," that takes real playlist titles created by its own users and prints them on billboards in public spaces, adapting the message to fit whichever city the sign goes up in.

One early version was spotted in Los Angeles, next to one of the city's main freeways: a billboard reading "I refuse to take responsibility, so I'm blaming the 405," paired with a photo of cars backed up in traffic. What gives the joke away as more than an agency's copywriting is a small Spotify icon, the user's actual username and the label "Public Playlist" printed on the sign, which reveal that the line was pulled directly from a listener's own account rather than written for the ad.

The idea began in June, during the New York Knicks' run through the NBA playoffs, when Spotify put up a poster reading "Waiting for this since '99," again the real name of a fan's playlist, marking the team's return to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. That single sign became the template for the wider rollout now appearing in other cities.

Sam Shepherd, creative director at Uncommon Creative Studio NYC, the agency behind the campaign, described playlist-making itself as one of the most honest forms of creativity for young listeners, whether they're working through a breakup or getting ready for a job interview. "We wanted to take something so personal and give it back to the streets, where it really lives, connecting it with culture," Shepherd said of the approach.

By building the campaign entirely out of material its own users already created, Spotify is leaning further into a marketing style it has used before with year-end Wrapped rollouts: turning ordinary listening data into public, shareable moments rather than writing new slogans from scratch.