Some artists have been reluctant to embrace the rise of streaming music culture, but Bon Iver is not one of these. Justin Vernon has partnered with Spotify to create an immersive online platform called “Viisualiizer” to augment the listening experience of his new album i,i.
The stand-alone website brings a visual component to showcase how fans are listening to the album, revealing the current number of fans streaming the songs via Spotify at any moment, as well as the country with the most current streams. “Viisualiizer” tracks the hours streamed, trending countries and songs, and links the album artwork to Spotify listening data, with interactive components for the fans. The statistics revealed on the visualizer site are surprising and pretty impressive, with over 3 million hours of the album’s tracks played so far.
“It’s important to look outside yourself for the answers you seek,” Vernon said in a statement. “Even though distilling my mind and heading to the cabin 12 years ago was vital, sharing is the thing now. Sharing and building things without holding on to the concept of authorship is the way. Our music is not ‘my’ music. In fact it never is, for anyone, and that is what i,i represents and how we worked to craft the ‘Viisualiizer’ experience with Spotify.”
Bon Iver released i,i earlier this month, dropping the album ahead of its original August 30th release date. The band will promote the record on a North American tour featuring openers Feist, Sharon Van Etten, Yo La Tengo and Indigo Girls at various dates. The tour launches August 31st in Missoula, Montana and concludes October 19th in Raleigh, North Carolina. Bon Iver hyped the upcoming tour with a mini-documentary, Bon Iver: Autumn, that highlights how they’re presenting the new music for an arena setting.