In an era where music is fragmented across TikTok trends and Spotify playlists, the album as a cultural artefact has struggled to hold attention. Enter Spotify’s immersive campaign for Ed Sheeran’s Play. Instead of a standard drop, fans were invited to step inside the music - with cinematic visuals, high-definition sound, and even a surprise Q&A with Sheeran himself. This wasn’t about streaming numbers, it was about reimagining what it means to “experience” an album.

📊 Supporting Stats

Global album listening has declined, with playlists now making up 32% of total listening on Spotify compared to albums at just 22% (IFPI, 2024).
Immersive events are booming: ticket sales for experiential music activations grew 28% year-on-year (WARC, 2025).
Ed Sheeran remains a top streaming artist globally, with over 110 million monthly Spotify listeners in 2025, making him a natural test case for this format.

🧠 Decision: Did It Work?

Yes - commercially and culturally. Spotify leveraged Sheeran’s mass appeal to reframe the album as a cultural event rather than a background playlist. The Lightroom event, paired with surprise live activations, created the kind of shareable moments that cement loyalty among superfans while also signalling to the industry that Spotify isn’t just a passive platform but an active curator of music culture.

What makes this work strategically is the alignment between artist equity and platform innovation. Sheeran has mainstream reach but often faces criticism for lacking “cool factor” in cultural spaces. Spotify’s immersive staging reframes him as an artist with vision - and by extension, reinforces Spotify as the platform that makes music an experience, not just a commodity.

📌 Key Takeouts

What happened: Spotify launched Sheeran’s Play with an immersive album experience at Lightroom, blending sound, visuals and live fan interaction.
What worked: Multi-sensory staging, surprise moments (Q&A, street gig) and platform alignment elevated the album beyond streaming.
Signal for brands: Consumers crave depth in a world of surface-level scroll culture. Immersive activations are becoming the new premium for fan engagement.
Strategic move: Spotify positions itself not only as a tech service but as a cultural stage, differentiating from Apple Music or Amazon, which lag in experiential offerings.

🔮 What We Can Expect Next

Expect more artists - especially those with strong visual or narrative identities - to partner with Spotify for immersive album rollouts. Think Beyoncé’s Renaissance-style worlds or Travis Scott’s gaming crossovers. But the risk is fatigue: if every drop becomes an “immersive experience,” exclusivity erodes and execution costs rise. For now, Sheeran’s Play proves the model: make the album a cultural event again, and audiences will show up.

That said, Spotify’s cultural capital remains fragile - with ongoing artist boycotts over CEO Daniel Ek’s links to Israeli arms investments casting a shadow over its innovation narrative.