Goals
Poland-born, Berlin-based Neoclassical artist and composer Wojtek, released his debut album Atmosphere via The Orchard Artist Services on July 24, 2020. The album was recorded and produced with the sole purpose of releasing a completely carbon neutral record, while inspiring others to reduce their own emissions in a larger effort to raise awareness around the climate crisis.
Atmosphere was recorded at Baltic Studios in East London, a studio powered by renewable energy. Remaining emissions from composing, mixing, and mastering were compensated among others through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates. Throughout the Atmosphere campaign, Wojtek’s team and The Orchard worked closely to engage with planet positive activations and opt for sustainable solutions, ultimately showing that anyone — even a debut artist — can make a difference.
Tactics
To effectively produce a record that was carbon neutral, Wojtek and the teams first researched to understand where and how emissions are being generated to the atmosphere during the recording and production of music.
Wojtek teamed up with The Orchard’s design team to launch a CO2 tracker as a landing page for his website, providing transparent data to illustrate the CO2 emissions produced behind each aspect of the recording and production process. The interactive infographic on the website — from traveling, recording, promotion, lifestyle, distribution choices — provides best practices and pro-tips to inspire listeners and other musicians to neutralize their carbon emissions. For example when exploring parts of the website, such as the “distribution” section, one can learn that streaming on a mobile device generates 30% less emissions than a desktop app.
As an extension of his teachings on the website, community building, engagement, and education was very important throughout the campaign. Wojtek shared his planeteer protips on TikTok, growing his audience from 0 to over 4,000 likes on stories, with his top video reaching over 42k views. Wojtek and his manager held a seminar about recording and producing a carbon neutral album at the virtual Reeperbahn Festival in 2020 and collaborated with the Keychange 2.0. Program to share tips and available solutions for recording and producing music carbon neutrally.
Atmosphere was distributed digitally, with no physical component. Any means of promoting the album was done largely by using already existing materials, such as the music video, which was created from exclusively repurposed video footage contributed by The Orchard’s family of artists and creators, including outreach to 40+ labels and management agencies globally.
As an artist whose live audience is a core component of Wojtek’s career, the advertising and social media campaign focused on activating Wojtek’s IRL audience and gaining new active listeners. The advertising campaign incorporated assets created in-house and garnered 140k impressions.
Results
- Features in over 30 media publications including Music Ally, Clash, Electronic Beats, When The Horn Blows, Yuck mag, NOIZZ, Newonce, Sveriges Radio, and more.
- Approximate 30% growth across social media platforms, with active, engaged fans across Wojtek’s Instagram and Facebook profiles
- 140k impressions across advertising campaign; 118k impressions, over 3.1k engagements, and 1.6k website clicks for Atmosphere
- Over 25k video views (21.63% video view rate)
- Grew TikTok engagement from 0 to 4k+ likes on stories, with the top video reached over 42k views
- Over 100k in first week of streaming with Spotify playlist support: Classical X, Kopf kino, Loops, Ambiente (plus cover, impressive for neo-classical debut artist)
- Feature in Music Ally’s Sandbox ‘Best Music Marketing Campaigns of the Year 2020’
