Whether your Spotify Wrapped is a triumph or an embarrassment, there's no doubt it's a cultural phenomenon.
As December rolls around and we reflect on the year behind us, one thing that will never get old is Spotify Wrapped. Waking up to see people’s top five artists posted on their stories and quickly opening Spotify to see your own feels like Christmas came early.
Swiping through, we’re reminded of the music we listened to throughout the year. Perhaps we’re surprised by how much we listened to the artist we claimed not to like, or maybe it’s no surprise, as our favourite artists are confirmed once again with 380 plays this year.
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Designed in 2016 by then-intern Jewel Ham, the viral recap of your music stats has grown into a worldwide tradition for music lovers. Originally presented as an email, it wasn’t until 2020 that it became an easily navigated, playfully designed multimedia experience. Clearly, Spotify knows what it’s doing, as in 2022, 156 million Spotify users interacted with Wrapped.
So, why do we love Spotify Wrapped so much and what keeps our obsession with it going each year?
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People have always held music to high importance, especially because of the way it resonates with us and forms our sense of identity. We let it represent our personality, highlighting our emotions, values and unique tastes.
Spotify Wrapped appeals to our love of introspection and reflection, our desire to better understand ourselves and how we fit into society. It even resonates with our love of understanding personality types through its own Myers-Briggs style ‘listening personalities’ that define our listening style through binary attributes.
You might find yourself to be The Connoisseur, whose listening habits are outlined by familiarity, timelessness, loyalty and commonality, or perhaps The Adventurer, who is characterised by exploration, newness, variety and uniqueness.
Of course, the question arises, how much can we define ourselves by our music data?
As well as that, one of the things we cherish most is feeling connected. As Spotify Wrapped releases worldwide, everyone experiences it at the same time and of course wants to share.
We hold high importance in music, letting it frame our level of coolness or uniqueness, so of course we post our Wrapped on our socials to receive validation from our peers. What’s most exciting is if you had an incredibly obscure artist in your top five, or if you made your way into the top 0.1% of an artist’s listenership.
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Beyond the obscurity competition, it also just allows us to understand people’s music tastes that we might not have known before, giving us further insight into who they are as a person and the niche subcultures they may or may not be a part of.
As much as Spotify Wrapped gets praised, it also gets plenty of criticism. Some people claim that it’s just another flashy marketing ploy designed to reinforce Spotify’s dominance in a market of competing streaming services and that it encourages people to stick with the subscription until the next Spotify Wrapped.
The digital experience is perfectly crafted to be posted to your story, acting as a sneaky ploy for free advertisement as millions share worldwide.
It is also criticized for its emphasis on consumption as identity. It rewards frequent listeners and reinforces the idea that music should be consumed in vast quantities, rather than something to be experienced thoughtfully.
Another issue is that Wrapped is built on data, shining a light on something we already know, but so often choose to block out: that our every listening habit is being tracked and analyzed. As much as we welcome Spotify Wrapped, we also have to consider the extent of Spotify’s surveillance habits, especially considering their lack of transparency.
Aside from the criticisms, Spotify Wrapped generally appeals to our sense of nostalgia. It’s a time capsule of the past year, evoking memories brought up by certain songs that we would’ve otherwise forgotten about. We see how we might grow and change and be reminded of certain life events as reflected by the changes in our music taste throughout the year.
With 2024 coming to a close and our thoughts travelling to the future, Spotify Wrapped ties into a worldwide tradition of reflecting on the past year and making goals for the one ahead. At the end of the day, music is important to most of us, and sharing one of life’s biggest joys with our community is what makes Spotify Wrapped so appealing.
For more on Spotify Wrapped, head here.
