For the first time ever festival-goers were able to play their Spotify; songs in a public performance setting – showing the power of crowdDJ as an engagement tool. Q Music, the organisers of BIGSOUND16 Festival also benefited from crowdDJ by keeping the recorded music between bands on-brand and licensed.

Showcased at multiple activations around BIGSOUND16, Spotify Australia’s collaboration with innovative out-of-home music platform, crowdDJ now provides a fully licensed solution for commercial and public spaces.

Artists and festival attendees were amazed that they could create their own soundtrack at key venues, choosing from carefully curated playlists that included past and present BIGSOUND artists.

Playlists extracted from the crowdDJ platform from these BIGSOUND16 selections show the top twenty songs picked were as diverse as the crowd that picked them with a mix of genres. These have been compiled into Spotify^® playlists and can be accessed easily via playlistr

Aidan McLaren, Artist Manager at UNIFIED, saw first-hand how an artist like REMI was able to connect with fans, “We used crowdDJ to run a listening party – after the album played out it was pretty cool to see what REMI’s fans chose as follow up tracks – we turned Beach Burrito into more house party than fiesta!”

Chris Carey, one of the speakers at BIGSOUND16, sees crowdDJ with Spotify^® integration as a key channel for connecting more fans with artists and their music. “The Media Insights Consulting research we presented at BIGSOUND16 highlighted that 50% of the Australian population ‘like music but don’t spend money on it’ and we recommended branded music experiences as one key way to engage these people more. It was great to see this already happening at BIGSOUND16.

“The integration that crowdDJ has with Spotify makes it incredibly easy to engage with the music that is playing and that benefits everybody. For the consumer, it allows them to curate their own experience, and for the band’s music playing in the background, it helps them deepen engagement from just a ‘nice song’ to helping them grow their fan base.”

David O’Rourke, CEO of Nightlife Music – the creator of crowdDJ- sees this industry sentiment, along with the steady growth in consumer take-up since launch, as a great endorsement for the platform. “Nightlife Music is a self-funded, 27 year old business and we are very careful with where we choose to invest.  To date we have already pumped $5m into the development of crowdDJ as we saw immense potential for crowdsourced music in public spaces. Just six short months since launch and the take-up and feedback from the artist community and our customers is like nothing we have ever seen before, giving us the confidence to allocate a further $2m to take crowdDJ to the next level in the coming year. We have no doubt that crowdDJ is the future for fan engagement with music in venues,” says O’Rourke.