The Yacht Week has launched Soundwaves, an app that analyses a user’s Spotify listening habits to recommend a destination and activities they would enjoy, then provides a personalised ’Sounds To Sail To’ playlist. The Yacht Week is a ‘floating festival’ which provides an unforgettable travel experience for around 12,000 guests a year, with around 1,500 yachts taking to the water. With music central to its offering, the use of music analytics to curate an individual travel experience is an interesting step.
Music and travel are intrinsically linked. Music provides an indelible association to a place or moment; a big holiday hit, a sunset tune, a road trip playlist. Soundwaves by The Yacht Week uses data provided through Spotify Connect to analyse a user’s listening habits against 370 behaviour points, scoring high on some and lower on others, with each point also indicating a certain affiliation to a specific route and activity. Analysis is based on Danceability (how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity), Energy (a perceptual measure of intensity and activity, including dynamic range, perceived loudness, timbre, onset rate, and general entropy), and Genre (the different styles of music), to create a profile, which allows Soundwaves to curate an individual trip.
Whether it’s Croatia, Greece, the Caribbean or Montenegro, each destination on The Yacht Week has its own pace and programmed activities, and a soundtrack to match, allowing Soundwaves to ‘find the rhythm of your route’ based on your music choices. The Yacht Week The brand has invested heavily in music, developing ’the buzz boat’, a floating DJ booth powered by VOID Acoustics, featuring globally renowned DJs (Claptone was a headliner in 2018) and also works with local venues on each route to deliver huge parties. Connect to Soundwaves here: https://soundwaves.theyachtweek.com/.
