Some of 2024’s best musically driven campaigns essentially created soundtracks for life, with several ads using music to illustrate the stages of a lifetime, the feelings that music evokes and the moments in which music creates a core memory.

Other campaigns paid homage to diverse sounds and cultures, acknowledging music as a universal language. And several campaigns used music as a clever and creative device for their messages.

Below, we look at seven of these campaigns and how music made all the difference. Check out our picks for the best music campaigns of 2024 below.

7. Levi’s: Reiimagine
Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day LA

Levi’s recreation of its famous “Launderette” ad from 1985 was impactful not just for featuring Beyoncé but for its phenomenal use of the song “Levii’s Jeans” from her country album “Cowboy Carter.” “Reiimagine” launched at the end of September, just weeks after American pride was on full display for the Summer Olympics. The spot and the song from the former Destiny’s Child singer’s album highlighted America’s “uniform” of blue jeans, attaching a new sense of significance to the music and the attire.

Also read: Why brand historians are CMOs’ new best friends

6. Epidemic Sounds: A Sound for Every Feeling
Agency: Rethink

Global royalty-free soundtrack company Epidemic Sounds created its own soundtrack for life in a campaign by Rethink that acted as a scavenger hunt to attach sounds to hyper-specific feelings. “A Sound for Every Feeling” presented scenarios to viewers through contextual out-of-home and digital ads, pairing them with music to match from Epidemic Sound’s soundtrack library.

More than 500 hyper-contextual OOH ads ran in New York, Los Angeles and London, presenting scenarios such as the feeling you get when you’re “peeking into a stranger’s first-floor apartment as you walk by, but not slowing down because that would make it creepy,” “feeling divinely chosen when the train doors open at the good exit” or “lovingly embracing the city with all its flaws.”

Much like a Sirius XM campaign from 2024 (below), this work captured what it’s like to experience the soundtrack of your life, linking unmistakable feelings to accurate sounds.

5. Spotify Brazil: Do You Speak Anitta?
Agency: Soko

In Brazil, Spotify paid homage to one of Latin America’s most popular multi-lingual artists, Anitta, who sings in three different languages. The music streaming platform opened a temporary exhibit at São Paulo’s Museu da Língua Portugesa (National Language Museum) to celebrate Anitta’s songs, which are described as mashups between Brazilian funk, Reggaeton and pop music, by highlighting the lyrics in which she effortlessly sings in English, Spanish and her native Portuguese.

Created by agency Soko, the exhibition invited visitors to explore the linguistic diversity in Anitta’s songs through an immersive display that explored her’s favorite expressions, speech style and vocabulary. The campaign demonstrated what makes her and her music so relatable and appealing to different groups, showing just how powerful and universal music is.

4. Beats by Dre: Pill Assistant
Agency: Mirimar

In another campaign modeled on the “soundtrack of life” concept, Beats by Dre got comedian Ben Marshall to play Kim Kardashian’s “Pill assistant,” whose entire job is to follow her around and curate soundtracks for her life using the redesigned Beats Pill speaker. The humorous campaign from Mirimar shows how Marshall is clearly besotted with the “goddess” he dutifully serves as he follows her through her daily routine.

3. Apple: Suerte
Agency: TBWA\Media Arts Lab LATAM

In 2024, Spotify and Amazon Music, among other streaming services, reported a surge in the popularity of regional Mexican music known as Música Mexicana, with new artists putting their own modern spin on the genre. On Amazon Music, Música Mexicana grew 249% year-over-year, becoming the No. 1 Latin genre on the service. Which is why Apple’s collaboration with young Música Mexicana artist Iván Cornejo for a “Shot on iPhone” campaign was so well-timed, as it paid tribute to the genre and Mexican culture in an artful film based on the traditional game of Lotería.

The surrealist “Suerte!” film tells the fantastical tale of Cornejo as he tries to overcome a creative block by exploring his roots alongside characters from Lotería—a fish, a devil and a mermaid. While the visual craft is astonishing, the campaign’s focal point is the song that Cornejo pieces together along the way, inspired by conversations and sounds he experiences on his journey. The finished song at the end is revealed to be “Intercambio Injusto,” the second track on Cornejo’s album, which was released the week after the film premiered.

2. Spotify Advertising: Spreadbeats
Agencies: FCB New York and Uncharted

Spotify bombarded marketers with a burst of music and color in June when it distributed a B2B music video to media planners entirely within a business spreadsheet. “Spreadbeats” won the Digital Craft Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for its innovation in creating a mischievous little character coded into the spreadsheet (initially in cell E7) that went on a colorful, animated journey set to a John Summit track. A second page on the sheet highlighted a sample Spotify Advertising media plan.

Spotify began sending the Excel file (Ad Age received a personalized one) to brands and agencies during the first week of June in markets including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India and Singapore.

1. SiriusXM: A Life in Sound
Agency: Uncommon

SiriusXM captured the stages of life—aging, maturity, growth and expression—through music in a stunning film featuring a woman dancing through time. The three-minute film, directed by Kim Gehrig and created by Uncommon, starts with a young Black girl dancing to Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red,” then veers through a medley of songs and sounds as the girl grows up and changes through time as a woman. Each song is met with a different choreography and movement that reflect that stage of her life—aggressive movements and heavy metal for teenage rebellion, contemporary sounds and graceful movements for the maturity of age.

To create the film, the production and creative teams at Sirius XM and Uncommon finalized a medley that the dancers would choreograph prior to shooting. As part of that process, the team intentionally selected songs that would not otherwise be heard in an advertisement. The beautiful campaign conveys emotions and stages people confront throughout life in a memorable and universally relatable way. Many have wondered, at some point, what the soundtrack of their life might be like. This work from SiriusXM brought everyone closer to the answer.