For two years in a row at Active Theory / Buttermax, I produced Playlist in a Bottle in collaboration with Spotify’s in-house creative team.

Playlist in a Bottle 2023 was the inaugural experience, where Spotify invited users to select music tracks in response to a series of prompts, thus building a musical snapshot of that moment in time. We designed 6 different 3D time capsules for users to seal their playlists in, to remain untouched until January 2024. The site was full of other animations, micro-interactions, and sound design by Plan8.

The first PIAB reached more than 15M users across the world, and it was such a success that Spotify asked us to build a bigger, better experience for 2024. Not only did we create an engaging, shareable unsealing moment for last year’s playlists, but we also produced 6 new time capsules and a brand new colorway for users to create another Playlist in a Bottle for 2024.

PIAB was built for use in mobile browsers and Spotify in-app, and localized into 18 languages. PIAB 2024 was the winner of an FWA Site of the Day and CSSDA Site of the Day.