Spotify Wrapped transforms music streaming into cultural highlight

Music streaming is a highly personal experience, but Spotify has found a way to transform it into a viral phenomenon.

Spotify Wrapped began as a marketing campaign, but has evolved into a much-anticipated annual highlight for music enthusiasts. It functions as a virtual time capsule and year-end recap, commemorating artist successes, fan engagement, and dedication to the Spotify platform in a sensational and personalized manner.

“My favorite feature of Wrapped is that it shows what percent of top listeners you are for a specific artist. In 2020, I was top 0.05% of Taylor Swift listeners somehow, which I thought was pretty cool,” said Evan Wang, a senior at Carlmont.

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Someone’s personality and character is also reflected a lot in their music taste, so Spotify Wrapped can help share aspects of yourself with friends.

— Dhatri Vennela

These personalized data packages can also be shared on social media as Instagram story graphics or links, allowing music listeners to compare with friends and connect with others who have similar music tastes.

“Someone’s personality and character is also reflected a lot in their music taste, so Spotify Wrapped can help share aspects of yourself with friends,” said Dhatri Vennela, a sophomore at Carlmont.

In 2020, a study conducted by Spotify found that musical preferences can reflect major personality traits just as well as or even better than big data personality studies. Music is closely tied to one’s emotions, personality, and mood, so seeing others’ Spotify Wrapped often reveals a lot about them as a person.

However, this also means some users may feel the need to tailor their music profiles in order to be perceived in a certain way. For people who care a lot about what songs or artists will end up on their Wrapped, streaming can be about more than just enjoying music.

“I know this one guy that wanted to show how much he liked Kanye so he would loop this 10-second skit on one album, even when he was asleep, to increase how many plays he had,” Wang said.

Beyond adding a community aspect to the otherwise private music listening experience, Wrapped serves as a fun and interactive measure of listening habits, personality, and growth.

This year’s edition, which was released on Nov. 30, includes “Me in 2023,” which characterizes users into personality cards based on their streaming habits, and a “Sound Town” that matches each user to a city around the globe based on their listening and artist affinity.

Despite being carefully analyzed based on user data, these round-up summaries and categorizations may not be the most accurate because of changes in music preference throughout the year.

“I didn’t like the fact that it takes you’re most listened-to songs at the beginning of the year because my favorite songs change over the year,” Vennela said. “Something I want to see in the future is how my genres and songs changed over time, for example, ‘Most Contrasting Genres’ or something similar.”

Wrapped is as much an event for music artists as it is for listeners. Through Artist Wrapped, musicians can also access personalized recaps that showcase when, where, and how fans engaged with their music on Spotify over the past year.

“It’s nice to see the growth of my career expanded in a visual form. My Wrapped this year was a good indicator that I’ve been consistently outperforming my old limits and I’m still growing as an artist,” said Aleebi, an alternative R&B and pop artist from the Bay Area.

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It’s nice to see the growth of my career expanded in a visual form. My Wrapped this year was a good indicator that I’ve been consistently outperforming my old limits and I’m still growing as an artist.

— Aleebi

However, there are also downsides. Wrapped can create a stressful environment for artists who focus too much on performance statistics.

“I find that Artist Wrapped, and obsessing over stats as a whole, is a pretty damaging mentality because artists will start to value their self-worth based on external factors instead of their own artistry,” Aleebi said. “Personally, I wouldn’t care if my Wrapped showed that I’ve grown or fell off because, like I always tell my peers, my job stays the same. I create music for myself, and I’ll continue to do so whether or not my music performs well.”

At the end of the day, Wrapped is about sharing music.

“I mainly post Wrapped to show appreciation to my fans and my followers who have been with me since day one. It’s more like, ‘Hey, thanks for sticking with me. You’re a part of my journey and growth as an artist and here’s the proof,'” Aleebi said.

Wrapped has significantly grown in popularity over the years: in 2017, there were 30 million users engaged in it, and by 2022, the number had surged to over 156 million, according to a spokesperson at TIME. The #SpotifyWrapped hashtag consistently trends on the X platform and boasts over 68 billion views on TikTok.

The success of this approach has prompted competing streaming platforms like Apple Music and Tidal to adopt the year-in-review marketing tactic, showcasing Spotify Wrapped’s innovation in creating a new form of user engagement based on personalized data.

Spotify has successfully transformed music listening into a shared cultural experience. Beyond the raw data and algorithms, Wrapped is a unifying moment that celebrates a community united by a love for music.