It seems 2006 was a good year for starting up an online platform, not only did it see the birth of Twitter, one of the biggest social media platforms to date, but it was also the year Spotify was founded.

In 10 years, Spotify has become one of the most popular global music streaming services, now worth over $8 billion, with over 60 million daily users and over 30 million songs in its database.

The small Swedish company was founded by co-founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006, but it wasn’t actually launched until 2008, making millions of tracks available to users at the touch of a button.

The music industry has come a long way in the past decade, going through long periods of struggle down to illegal downloads, but Spotify seemed to be the well designed, user friendly streaming service everybody had been waiting for.

Spotify has managed to bridge the gap and provide a service that remains both a legal, and attractive, option for everyone around the world to listen to their favourite artists and songs, which is why it quickly rose to the forefront of the digital music world.

Over the past few years the range of marketing opportunities Spotify presents to brands has widened dramatically and the platform should now be firmly on every digital marketer’s radar. With millions of users spending, on average, 148 minutes every day tuning in to Spotify, the potential reach is huge. Brands can only reach those users that are using the service for free, but considering they account for 80% of overall users anyway, the potential for brands is massive.

Spotify’s playlist feature is a marketer’s dream. It’s the perfect way to associate your brand with an artist and their target audience. Once you’ve created and verified your brand profile, use your audience research to create and share a playlist that resonates with your target demographic. If they like it, you’ll have people following both the playlist and your profile, thus creating a mini-community of engaged users who are using your brand to listen to their favourite music – for free!

Spotify plays a big part in our day-to-day office life, whether it’s the Throwback Thursday playlist that we look forward to every week, or Feel Good Friday that gets us ready for the weekend, it definitely helps the week go by, and for that, Spotify, we thank you!

So, to celebrate ours and Spotify’s 10th birthday, we’ve created our own playlist here –we hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we do! We’ve each chosen our favourite song from 2006, so there’s quite a variety and hopefully a song for everyone …

 

The Works 2006

Paul – Justin Timberlake – SexyBack

Emma – Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Dani California

Nick – Elbow – Leaders of the Free World

Gary – Gnarls Barley – Crazy

John – Muse – Assassin

Matt – Arctic Monkeys – When the Sun Goes Down

Barry – Kaiser Chiefs – Modern Way

Amy – Nelly Furtado – Promiscuous

Beth – The Ordinary Boys – Boys Will Be Boys

Marnie – Ne-Yo – So Sick

Racheal – Orson – No Tomorrow

Carly – The Kooks – She Moves in Her Own Way

Ian S – Corinne Bailey Rae – Put Your Records On

Ian O – Amy Winehouse – Rehab

Kelly – Scissor Sisters – Don’t Feel Like Dancing

Lindsay – Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars

Tim – Cascada – Every Time We Touch

Florrie – Gym Class Heroes – Cupids Chokehold/Breakfast in America

Rachael – Fergie – Fergalicious

Veronica – Coldplay - Talk

 

We’d love to know your favourite songs of 2006, so drop us a line, message us on Facebook or tweet us.