December is the month for wrapping gifts, closing out the year, and Spotify stats.
Spotify Wrapped is a marketing campaign created by the music streaming service Spotify. It tells Spotify users their top five most listened to songs, artists, genres, and more through bright, colorful, fun visuals.
“The Spotify Wrapped graphics are always super cool to look at and make it super fun, on top of getting to know all of my stats for the whole year,” said Plainfield North High School senior Veronica Nosek.
It was first released in December of 2016 and has been released annually ever since then. The specific day it is released changes every year, but it has always been almost exactly a week after Thanksgiving.
“I kind of hate having to wait so long and still not being able to know when exactly it comes out. It’s super fun getting to guess when I think it’s coming out,” said senior Lilia Collazo.
Not only does Spotify Wrapped have fun visuals, but also has a special surprise every year and a playlist of the user’s top 100 listened to songs.
“I think it’s so cool that I get to see my top songs of the year,” said sophomore Ava Stroz. “I really don’t expect some of them to be what they are, but at the same time it makes so much sense.”
Every year, there is a different surprise that Spotify releases with the Wrapped. Last year, Spotify matched users to a random city based on their music tastes. They also released “character cards” that matched users to a specific character or personality that matched with their music tastes.
“The character cards were actually really cool,” said senior Shelby Wozniak. “I remember being able to match with people online and seeing who I had similar taste to. It was also cool because it was like a personality test but with my music.”
This year Spotify released a “Music Evolution” that shows users their different “vibes” throughout the year.
“The names of the phases were so random,” said Nosek. “Like I got some of the weirdest names for some of them, they make sense but I don’t know. I also feel like this year was a little more boring than past years.”
With the rise in popularity of Spotify Wrapped, other platforms have started to do similar ideas. This year, Apple is trying out a new “Apple Music Replay,” which does the exact same as Spotify, but for users on Apple Music.
“I feel like Apple’s is almost better because I get to see my top artists and stuff by month,” said senior Rabiha Othman. “I use Spotify and Apple Music and seeing who I was listening to every month was really interesting.”
Apple isn’t the only platform mimicking Spotify. Pandora, Youtube Music, Amazon music, and even Soundcloud are also doing the same. While some have the same gimmicks as Spotify, others are just doing the top 100 songs playlist.
“I’m so glad that Amazon is finally doing the recap thing,” said senior Jackie Held. “I barely ever use Spotify so the recap is never accurate. I’m glad that I finally get a recap of music I actually listen to year-round.”
Thousands of Spotify’s users look forward to hearing their top songs, and getting a special message from their top musical artist.
“I really like my Spotify Wrapped this year,” said senior Annabelle Alonzo. “It was pretty on-par with what I thought, but there were a few songs I had forgotten I listened to that much.”
