SAYLISTS

Silver Eurobest Award

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleSAYLISTS
BrandWARNER MUSIC GROUP
Product/ServicePLAYLISTS
Category A05. Health & Wellness Tech
Entrant ROTHCO, PART OF ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE Dublin, IRELAND
Idea Creation ROTHCO, PART OF ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE Dublin, IRELAND
Production ROTHCO, PART OF ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE Dublin, IRELAND
Additional Company WARNER MUSIC London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Conor Cunniffe Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Copywriter
Rob Maguire Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Creative Director
Shane O’Riordan Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Design Director
Bronagh O'Donnavan Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Strategist
Aisling Clarke Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Art Director
Sam Caren Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Art Director
Niall Eccles Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Developer
Hannah Gallagher Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Post Producer
Jessica Derby Rothco | Accenture Interactive Executive Producer
Cristiane Schmidt Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Art Director, Designer, Motion Designer, Editor, Stop Motion Artist
Raphael DaSilva Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Art Director, Designer, Motion Designer, Illustrator, Animator
Gabriel Teixeira Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Art Director, Designer, Motion Designer, 3D Generalist
Paul Power Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Video Editor
Ray Swan Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Agency Creative Director
Jen Speirs Rothco Part of Accenture Interactive Executive Creative Director
Alan Kelly Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Chief Creative Officer
Richard Carr Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive CEO | MD Accenture Interactive
Patrick Hickey Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Executive Chairman
Zara Flynn Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Managing Partner Rothco Accenture Interactive
Sean Cushen Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Senior Account Manager
Lauren McNinney Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Agency Resource & Operations
Clair Fleming Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive Agency Resource & Operations

Background

As part of Warner Music Group’s corporate social responsibility, they support initiatives in music with positive social impact. Musicians have long used their art to help with speech sound disorders (including WMG’s Ed Sheeran), so this area was a perfect fit. Speech and language therapists have an arsenal of tools at their disposal which can help their patients. Most of these patients are children, however, which raises a problem that most tools can’t overcome - how to keep kids engaged in their therapy. We set out to provide speech and language therapists with a unique and accessible new tool that could help their patients practise the sounds they struggle with in a way that doesn’t bore them: by reimagining speech therapy within the world of popular music, using the same easily accessible technology that these patients use to stream music itself.

Describe the creative idea

Repetition is key to overcoming a Speech Sound Disorder, but for kids, repetition is boring. Except when it happens in music. On average people stream 26.9 hours of music a week, while speech and language therapists struggle to get young patients to spend the recommended 20 minutes per week performing practice exercises. We utilised a music streaming service to combine these two worlds, tapping into the raw data contained in song lyrics to isolate and categorise phonemes as units of data. Warner Music teamed up with Apple Music to analyse over 70 million song lyrics, isolating songs in which particular sounds occur in particular patterns that are beneficial for speech therapy. These songs were collated into Saylists: playlists categorised by problem sounds, providing an easy, accessible, and enjoyable way for kids to practise the sounds they have trouble with, simply by singing along to their favourite songs.

Describe the strategy

Our algorithm was initially developed and tested on smaller sets of lyric data, with the rules refined by both data analysts and speech and language therapists. Confounding factors were identified and removed through composing of additional rules. Consultation with speech and language therapists also provided the target phonemes that were the most common sources of difficulty in the English Language, and a list of ten were chosen. A linguistic analysis of sounds in speech therapy is not dissimilar to linguistic analysis of poetry, or lyrics. This meeting of two worlds is particularly relevant when our target audience was considered: a group which overlaps both the audience for pop music, and the age-group most likely to have a Speech Sound Disorder: young people. Saylists provides this cohort with an easily accessible way to practise the sounds they struggle with in a way that’s fun, engaging and – importantly – not boring

Describe the execution

Through a combination of data analysts and speech and language therapists we developed an algorithm to analyse song lyrics for specific sounds occurring with a certain frequency, as well as other conditions such as proximity to similar sounds and placement within a sentence. Consultation with speech and language therapists also provided the target phonemes that were the most common sources of difficulty in the English Language, and a list of ten were chosen for analysis. The algorithm analysed over 70 million songs in search of those that demonstrated genuine therapeutic value - the largest data analysis of lyrics ever. All were scored and ranked. Songs that scored highest and fit listener profile (the latter a crucial human curation element necessary for audience appeal) were compiled into Saylists categorised by problem sound.

List the results

Within a week of launch, Saylists were already being recommended by therapists, and used in therapy sessions; the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy expressed their excitement at the project’s release, and the department of English Language Teaching at Cambridge University has gone so far as to publish lesson plans to bring Saylists into classrooms. The project was enthusiastically welcomed and praised around the globe, reaching an audience of over 42.5 million purely through earned media and word of mouth. Due to these results, Apple Music are now developing the project for other music in other languages.