The Significance And Popularity Behind Spotify Wrapped • The Daily Fandom

Table of Contents Show

The excitement and joy of the holidays always seemingly bring others together, but not quite like the annual Spotify Wrapped of the year. Spotify, a leading musical platform, releases a snapshot of your musical preferences through the reveal of your top 5 songs, genres, and artists every year in the form of Spotify Wrapped.

For the Spotify Wrapped of 2023, specific information on your listening town, ¹ and even your listening personality showcases Spotify’s ability to capture who you are based on the music you listen to. This capability relates to why Spotify Wrapped has become an almost cultural event everyone looks forward to. The app’s marketing genius has led to its mass success. However, for the price of collecting personal data, Spotify is able to categorize and curate your Spotify Wrapped to guess, predict, or validate how you are as a listener and individual.

Spotify Wrapped’s Early Beginnings

Spotify Wrapped and its popularity online was not as large about eight years ago. With the concept first started in 2013, known previously as “Year In Music,”²it included data about the listeners most played songs, and the total hours they listened to music for the year. In 2017, personalized statistics and interactivity would increase as 30 million³users would access the feature as it was then renamed what we now know today as Spotify Wrapped.

With added engaging and fun graphics, the redesign of Spotify Wrapped in 2020 increased its visual appeal and popularity. By 2021, 120 million ⁴accessed Spotify Wrapped, a number that has been continuously growing.

Harmonizing Tunes, Uniting Hearts: The Intersection Of Music & Community

Music is a form of self-expression most people partake in; several subcultures that have been defined and connected to music have always existed. Sharing your favorite genres, artists, and songs is one form of connecting with a community. With music streaming platforms holding a more individualist and convenient manner to discover music, Spotify Wrapped serves as the modern replacement for partaking in the collective as a single user when sharing your Spotify Wrapped.

Yet, according to research by Linda Chang et al., one of the reasons Spotify Wrapped is addicting in the first place is because we can compare ourselves in contexts with others by rankings ⁵ mentioned on Spotify wrapped.

My personal minutes of listening this year. — My Spotify Wrapped Minutes e.g. Spotify.

On every popular social media platform, seeing thousands share their Spotify Wrapped is inevitable. Nowadays sharing your Spotify Wrapped has almost become almost a requirement ⁶ online. If you don’t share, many feel it insinuates that person’s music insecurities. Sharing your music tastes for many is, in fact, a vulnerable act. Reasons as to why you listen to certain types of music and the assumptions music can reflect about your personality are nerve-wracking.

This term “Spotify Wrapped Anxiety,” ⁷ describes the dreadful anticipation Spotify users feel as the release of your Spotify Wrapped gets closer, fearing your results, and how you will be perceived once you share your Spotify Wrapped is widespread. Specifically, the statistics of our listening behavior can amplify the anxiety of revealing your music tastes for the sake of potentially ruining your online image⁸.

A Spotify 2023 Editable Template Via Kapwing.

Users anticipate judgment, and the relentless defense users can feel after sharing their Spotify Wrapped on social media has gotten intense to the point where individuals have photoshopped ⁹ their top artists or songs for ones they really wanted.

Listening to hours of songs from Lofi playlists may not define your personality at all, but the performativity of sharing Spotify Wrapped to align yourselves with a group or identity is there.

Melodic Mirrors: Exploring The Intertwining Threads Of Music & Personal Identity

Sharing your Spotify Wrapped allows you to curate an identity online, a tactic necessary for branding yourself. Although self-branding is associated with influencers¹⁰, your online persona becomes a way of personalizing the content you see, or followers you attract by social media algorithm.

2022 Spotify wrapped personalities. — Anonymous. Spotify Wrapped. 2023.

If your perception of yourself does not match with your music taste, it can be disorienting, and the differences between the two would corrupt the manufactured identity¹¹ you formed intentionally or not on social media. Self-validation ¹² and the reassurance we feel about our identity is another reason how Spotify Wrapped successfully rose in popularity.

Spotify Wrapped listening identities. — Anonymous. Spotify Wrapped. 2023

Viewing our Spotify Wrapped has become one of the seemingly casual ways we categorize ourselves into certain personalities; recently, the 2023 Spotify Wrapped released listening archetypes such as Vampire, Roboticist, or Time Traveler; another way Spotify takes advantage of users urge to further categorize their identities.

The conflict between avoiding criticism and maintaining a form of uniqueness through your music taste has even led to people taking extreme measures of creating Spotify burner accounts¹³ Feeling enough pressure to create a form of privacy in your listening habits highlights a desire for uniqueness in a community. But also, Spotify’s success in surveilling your listening habits.

Harmonious Insights: The Unveiling of Musical Trends Through Spotify Wrapped’s Normalized Data Collection

Spotify Wrapped would not be successful without Spotify’s ability to predict and curate listening habits by collecting the personal data of its users. Using an algorithm ¹⁴, Spotify is able to generate playlists by tracking the artists and music genres you listen to in comparison with other users. Despite this, the desire to construct a perfect online extension of our identity can be fulfilled through Spotify’s algorithmic accuracy ¹⁵.

Spotify's Mood Booster and Sad Hour playlist cover as of 2023. — “Sad Hour” and “Mood Booster” e.g. Spotify

Spotify Wrapped’s niche genres are one aspect individuals can utilize to brand themselves; the implications behind Spotify’s algorithm when creating a Spotify Wrapped can be invasive. Other than tracking songs skipped, your listening history, and playlists, research by Paul Lamere et al., identified that Spotify is able to identify your IP address, and from there your location¹⁶. In fact, Spotify’s 2023 Wrapped reveals which town you belong to based on similar user listening activity. Yet, the marketing for Spotify Wrapped obscures most users’ concern for their online privacy because it’s fun, engaging, and communal.

Not only can your location be easily identified, but your mood¹⁷ can be predicted based on your listening habits. Premade Spotify playlists such as “Mood Booster,” “Villian Mode,” or “sad hour” all generalize and represent a certain mood to predict a user’s emotional behaviors in the future.

Official diagram explaining features of patent. — Hulaud, Stéphane. (2021) “Identification of taste attributes from an audio signal” (U.S. Patent No.10891948)

Recently, however, Spotify has patented¹⁸ technology that allows the company to analyze and observe a user with speech recognition technology. If this is used, Spotify claims that they will be able to suggest songs off your emotions, your setting, or an aspect of your identity. So, suggesting music based on the context of your voice data on your “emotional state, age, gender, and accent” will be stored as a means to improve music recommendations.

Other patented ¹⁹ technology approved such as the ability to overlay your vocals with a track, or having music match the cadence of your running also have raised privacy concerns for Spotify users. One hundred eighty-plus musicians along with organizations such as the Union for Musicians and Allied Workers have signed a petition against the implementation of these patents.

With Spotify’s various methods of collecting data on users, Spotify Wrapped becomes an increasingly accurate, but somewhat invasive way Spotify has been able to make profitable success.

Safeguarding Serenity: Navigating The Balance Between Musical Discovery & Privacy Protection In Spotify Wrapped

Since most music platforms collect some form of personal data in the first place, a few measures²⁰ Spotify users can take is to listen in a “Private Session,” which only prevents others from knowing what they are listening to. Users can also go to settings, then advanced settings, and block “all cookies for this installation of the Spotify desktop app.”

Sharma, A. (2023, April 13). 6 Spotify privacy settings for private sessions and playlists. Guiding Tech. — Sharma, A. (2023, April 13). *6 Spotify privacy settings for private sessions and playlists*. Guiding Tech.

Turning off targeted advertising and Facebook data from Privacy settings is another way to prevent data collection. Ultimately though, the only way to prevent personal data from being stopped is by account deletion²¹.

Harmonious Reflections: A Year In Review Through The Lens Of Music & Spotify Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped is no doubt invasive, as the platforms’ ability to recommend and predict artists and types of music you will love in summary through data collection can be worrying. The ties music has in a community you belong to, and your personality all are able to be utilized to manufacture an extension of yourself many choose to share online.

Billboard Photographed by Spotify. Spotify. 2023.

Spotify Wrapped is the beautifully decorated corporate model that profits off communal engagement (good and bad), self-expression, and personal information that we open every year.

References

1
Here’s what’s in store for your 2023 wrapped. Spotify. (2023, November 30).
2
Pau, K. (2021, December 2). Spotify wrapped, unwrapped. Vox.
3
Guzman, C. de. (2023, December 6). Your complete guide to Spotify wrapped, 2023. Time.
4
Guzman, C. de. (2023, December 6). Your complete guide to Spotify wrapped, 2023. Time.
5
Purcell, K. (2023, November 30). Unpacking spotify wrapped: The behavioral science of our yearly music obsession – irrational labs. Irrational Labs – Behaviorally informed design for better products and a better world.
6
Sutherland, A. (2022, December 27). Spotify wrapped: Does it change the way we listen to music?. NYU COMM CLUB
7
Sinclair, L. (2022). The Fear of Spotify wrapped is real: Why analysing our musical taste fills us with dread. stylist.co.uk.
8
Sinclair, L. (2022). The Fear of Spotify wrapped is real: Why analysing our musical taste fills us with dread. stylist.co.uk.
9
Sutherland, A. (2022, December 27). Spotify wrapped: Does it change the way we listen to music?. NYU COMM CLUB
10
Pau, K. (2021, December 2). Spotify wrapped, unwrapped. Vox.
11
Ogle, T. (2023, December 1). What do people’s spotify wrapped tell us about them? Harper’s Bazaar Australia.
12
Purcell, K. (2023, November 30). Unpacking spotify wrapped: The behavioral science of our yearly music obsession – irrational labs. Irrational Labs – Behaviorally informed design for better products and a better world.
13
Braun, T. Andrew, “”Dance like nobody’s paying”: Spotify and Surveillance as the Soundtrack of Our Lives” (2020). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 7001.
14
Aoun, N., Wardrop, C., Currie, C., & Harrington, A. (2022, May 26). Discover weekly: How the music platform spotify collects and uses your data. Montreal AI Ethics Institute.
15
Pau, K. (2021, December 2). Spotify wrapped, unwrapped. Vox.
16
Pau, K. (2021, December 2). Spotify wrapped, unwrapped. Vox.
17
Aoun, N., Wardrop, C., Currie, C., & Harrington, A. (2022, May 26). Discover weekly: How the music platform spotify collects and uses your data. Montreal AI Ethics Institute.
18
Minsker, E. (2021, May 4). Over 180 Musicians Protest Spotify’s Speech Monitoring Patent in Open Letter. Pitchfork.
19
Minsker, E. (2021, May 4). Over 180 Musicians Protest Spotify’s Speech Monitoring Patent in Open Letter. Pitchfork.
20
Burgess, M. (2021, August 7). All the Ways Spotify Tracks You—and How to Stop It. WIRED.
21
Data rights and privacy settings – Spotify. (n.d.). Spotify Support.