Fostering Inclusion During Election Season

At Spotify, we want our users, creators, and employees alike to feel empowered, seen and heard. This is a main objective of our Equity, Diversity and Impact (EDI) team, which helps to build a thriving culture at Spotify and to make a real impact in the world around us. In fact, since 2016 part of the EDI team has been specifically focused on using our platform to encourage our millions of listeners to vote. This year, an estimated 4 billion people in more than 50 nations — almost half the world’s population will vote, and as a global company, that means that bandmates all over the world will be voting.

Voting is personal, and politics can be polarizing, which makes it even more important for us to maintain an inclusive approach on the Spotify platform and in our workplace around elections. We encourage our bandmates to participate in the democratic process as much as our users. It’s not about who they vote for, but making sure their voice can be heard. No matter what political party a person belongs to, election stress and anxiety is on the rise, and we want to ensure that bandmates feel supported during this election cycle. 

Elections are important for our democracies, and they can also bring a mix of emotions, impacting mental health, productivity, and overall well-being. Therefore, recognizing these impacts and knowing how to prepare, manage, and recover from them is important. That’s why, we’re working with our Heart & Soul team and our partners at OtherKind Health to develop custom training for Spotify leaders so that they can support their team members during the election periods. The resources we’ve produced are aimed at helping managers to understand and recognize the physical, emotional and behavioral signs of election anxiety, and offering practical steps to help manage the election related feelings that may come up, including:

• Mindful media consumption: Techniques to avoid constant media consumption, which can amplify stress.
• Relaxation techniques: Practicing mindfulness techniques to help cultivate a sense of calm and resilience​. 
• Reading and self-help: Books and resources that offer strategies for managing stress and anxiety. 
• Community engagement: Reminders on connecting with friends, family, and community, as this can provide significant emotional support. 
• Self-care practices: Tips and guides for self-care activities, which can significantly improve overall well-being and reduce the impact of stress. 
• Professional help: Seeking help from a mental health professional might be the best way to support someone through election anxiety, especially if it significantly impairs their daily functioning or quality of life. We provide tips for recognizing this, mental health first aiders for support, and promote our Employee Assistance Program.

In addition to support for bandmates and their own mental well-being, we know many Spotifiers feel a great sense of pride, and can connect to the sense of company purpose, because of the way we’re using our platform to support Spotify customers. For the past 8 years, we’ve been running non-partisan civic engagement campaigns that are culturally relevant and speak to each market’s electoral environment. 

Our campaigns focus on making voting easier and more exciting. Our global and in-market teams collaborate to create campaigns that are culturally relevant and speak to each market’s electoral environment. For each campaign, we produce timely, topical, and local content that leverages our platform and is focused on overcoming barriers to voting by, for example, explaining how to register and where to cast your vote. To date, we’ve reached nearly 300 million listeners and have driven nearly 6.6 million visits to resources on civic engagement, such as helping users check their voter status, register to vote, or learn more about their local elections. 

For the 2024 election season, we’ve been running our Play Your Part Campaign across multiple markets. In addition to robust on-platform marketing, each campaign comes to life in a way that will best resonate with the local audience.

• In India, we encouraged users to vote by scanning their finger next to the Spotify code to unlock a voting playlist. 
• In the EU, our editorial team curated a robust playlist with tracks from various and diverse artists across the region. 
• In Mexico, we added our Play Your Part stickers to Instagram that users could use on their stories. 
• In the UK, we’re encouraging voter registration through in-app messages and billboards. 
• In the U.S. we’re continuing our partnership with Headcount to help voters get real-time voting information. 

Strong democracies are core to the success of businesses and institutions and as a global audio platform with a huge reach, Spotify has the responsibility and the opportunity to encourage people to vote. We’re proud that at Spotify we are able to generate civic engagement in a way that is creative, inclusive and impactful. And we’re mindful that we should do our best to make sure no one’s left out of the process – including our bandmates. No matter where our band members come from, or what’s playing in their headphones, we want to create a place where they feel supported to participate in civic engagement and their voices can be heard.