Spotify has launched a campaign to encourage users to vote in the upcoming European Parliament elections. The ‘Play your part, Europe’ campaign will notify all free and premium users over 18 with an in-app message to remind them of the election cycle. Europe will vote for its next parliament in elections between 6-9 June this year.
The European elections have had a recent upswing in voter turnout after a 40 year downward trend, but the youth vote turnout is still comparatively underrepresented. This has inspired new measures by some European countries to . Belgium and Germany have both lowered their voting age to 16 – joining Malta and Austria.
Greece also lowered its voting age to 17 ahead of the last set of EP elections. Now, Spotify is attempting to encourage younger voters by reminding its European users to vote in the elections. The music streaming app has also launched a playlist full of European artists, as well as providing links to the EU website in its messaging.
This isn’t the first time Spotify has run a voting campaign ahead of elections. The Swedish company recently put out a similar notification for the UK local elections, and for elections in Sweden, the Netherlands and the US. Come June, around 365 million people will be eligible to vote in the EU elections.
But how will social media sites impact the next five years of EU policy? As a music streaming platform, Spotify is able to run its campaign without much concern over partisan involvement. However,.