How BMW and Tomorrowland Created an AI Music Platform
In a musical collaboration, vehicle manufacturer BMW and EDM festival Tomorrowland created the ‘Future Record’ platform. The interactive AI experience has the audience choose from several different options to create a custom festival track through pace, mood, feeling and computer generated lyrics – all embodying the unique experience of Tomorrowland.
As AI has become a talking point across many industries, the BMW brand is keen to weigh in on the conversation by utilising the new tech in an innovative way. The brand has been keen to showcase the synergy which exists between its products and music through storytelling and unique memories. With a mindfulness around being as user-friendly as possible, the website design had UX at the heart of everything and so the site was intentionally easy to navigate for users.
When it came to ideating and creating the options for each track, there are 180 variations which users can compose, the ‘vibe’ of which dictates one of 800 unique album covers to go alongside it. Considerations such as time of day and subject matter play into the outcome in the end. With all of that said and done, each user is left with a personalised brand experience to share online or just keep for themselves.
To share more about bringing it to life, the BMW Group’s digital marketing lead Sascha Behmel and the team from Media.Monks – digital producer Adriana Dinu, senior UX designer Delano Kamp, creative director Matthijs Klip, associate creative director Jamie Moodley, technical director Richard Heuser and social business lead EMEA Daniel Díez de Dos – take us through the process.
LBB> How did the collaboration between BMW and Tomorrowland first come about and what did the festival and brand want to create together?
Sascha> BMW has been pushing an international expansion of its music strategy since 2019, with music being one of the most important pillars in the global marketing mix of BMW. Music inspires, shapes memories and encourages people to come together. It speaks one global, emotional language. As a relationship brand with 'joy' at its core, Tomorrowland is a perfect match for us as a brand engagement.
LBB> Can you share a little bit about the ‘Adscendo’ theme of the festival this year and how you incorporated it?
Adriana> When we started working on the experience, the Adscendo theme was still a bit of a mystery as the story wasn't revealed yet. While we wanted to hint at Adscendo in the art direction, we didn’t want to highlight it too much in the storytelling, with BMW being the main client. We mainly incorporated the theme into the 'vibe' of the AI-generated album covers, though these could also be considered in line with the general Tomorrowland style.
LBB> Why was it important to use new tech, in the form of an AI assistant, in this spot and what were some of the initial ideas you discussed?
Delano> By incorporating AI, we could perfectly convey the sense of innovation that’s also heavily embedded in the BMW brand. Rather than doing tech for tech’s sake, our focus was on cultural relevance considering the ongoing rapid advancements in AI. The integration of an AI assistant felt like the strongest fit, as it enabled us to venture into newly available territories and take a first step towards redefining the future of generative customer interactions.
The ‘Future Record’ campaign served as a perfect canvas to showcase this vision, as it allowed users to personalise and customise their creations while staying true to the brand’s essence. On the backend, we stayed in full control of the narrative to ensure that the end result turned out to be an electrifying fusion of individuality and brand identity.
LBB> Talk us through the design of the site, how you prioritised UX and the process of incorporating the AI elements. Where did you start?
Matthijs> From a UX perspective, we wanted to keep it simple and intuitive. Users should be able to choose the genre, vibe and person to dedicate the track to, without having to navigate complex menus. We ended up having clear instructions and intuitive interactions which resemble real world controls that most people are already familiar with, making the process seamless and straightforward. We also made sure users had a variety of options to choose from in creating the lyrics and dedicating the track to someone. As such, we created an experience that everyone could use to craft something unique for their friends.
LBB> The site definitely has the feeling of a real collaboration. Can you share some of the subtle details that remind the audience of both BMW and Tomorrowland?
Jamie> The connection to BMW is clear from not only the innovative technology used to make this experience possible, but also the future-forward mindset that’s reflected in the concept and all the copy. For those paying close attention, you can see that the logo consists of elements that may remind you of the BMW logo, which is another subtle hint of the collaboration.
LBB> How is it seamless across both web and mobile devices? Can you tell us about some of the considerations which factored into that?
Jamie> We made sure that we had a visual to match the track genre by assigning the time of day or weather situation to it (e.g. golden hour, night-time, etc) and that the aesthetic and vibe matched the music. The mood input that the user gives in the experience also creates a prompt, which in turn adds an extra element to the visual that matches that mood, such as butterflies or lighting.
LBB> In terms of creating a track, how many different iterations of the music are possible and did you have a go with creating your own?
Richard> For each of the five different genres, we came up with three different vibes: euphoric, energetic and melancholic. Our sound department then composed three unique tracks per genre and vibe combination, which they then further diversified by creating four variations of each of these 45 unique compositions, creating a total of 180 unique tracks. In practice, when a user picks a genre and vibe, a track is randomly selected from the remaining set consisting of 12 tracks.
To create the tracks, we composed and produced a lot of different melodic and rhythmic parts and used AI to help us mix and process them. All were created with the structure of the song in mind:
First, the intro with the AI DJ announcing your song. Then the introduction of the instruments, stacking a melody and chords in the vibe you selected. Followed by your unique AI-generated lyrics, that are run through FX in real time, building towards the big deep voice right before the drop.
LBB> Tell us a little bit about the album covers which were generated and how they end up matching the tracks that are created.
Richard> In total, we generated and manually curated 12,256 unique album covers, featuring 15 unique themes, corresponding to the 15 possible combinations of genre and vibe. The genre dictates the time of day (day, dusk, golden hour, night, storm) whereas the vibe dictates the subject (butterflies, lightning, trees), which leaves over 800 unique covers per combination, of which one is randomly selected.
LBB> What was the most technically challenging part of the process?
Richard> AI generation and video rendering take time. Quite some time. Getting the takeaway creation time down to an acceptable amount to mitigate user drop-off meant we had to come up with all sorts of optimisations, including pre-rendering album covers, pre-composing and layering music, pre-rendering animation layers, rigorous optimisation of the video rendering pipeline, and pro-actively scaling cloud infrastructure.
LBB> How do you hope people will use the track and what are some of the responses you’ve seen so far?
Daniel> People love customised and tailor-made content, and we can see that in the number of users that complete the process of generating the personalised track. It’s amazing to see people from the BMW community in countries across the globe taking part in this experience and altogether creating an incredibly diverse range of sound.
LBB> Are there any other elements of the campaign to keep an eye out for?
Daniel> Music and innovation bring people together - and so does social media. That’s why we also focused our attention on collaborating with content creators and influencers to expand the reach of the ‘Future Record’ campaign beyond BMW’s social channels across Europe.
