As the weather gets colder, and the year comes to a close, the only thing that compares to the excitement for holidays is the anticipation leading up to the release of Spotify Wrapped.
The campaign, pioneered by Spotify in December 2016, has become a pop culture staple and inspired spin-offs, most notably Apple Music replay. Even apps that have nothing to do with music have copied the formula; Duolingo recently introduced a “Year in Review” feature that allows users to see how much they learned.
After days of waiting, Spotify Wrapped arrived on December 4th – a little later than usual. As always, the event was met with countless Instagram stories, as users rushed to share their yearly stats.
This year’s Wrapped, however, was quickly met with criticism. People complained about the agonizing wait and lamented the loss of certain features such as “Sound Town,” which assigned users a location based on their listening profile. Other features, such as top genre and top album, were also absent. Instead, Spotify decided to show users their “music evolution” using bizarrely titled micro-genres. One example tells users that “July was your Pink Pilates Princess Strut Pop moment”, among other odd names such as Goblincore and After Hours Football Rap.
Despite the underwhelming response to Wrapped, 2024 was an exciting year for music. Taylor Swift broke countless records with her album The Tortured Poet’s Department. Chappell Roan rose from obscurity to stardom. Fans celebrated the release of new music by Kendrick Lamar and Tyler the Creator.
So where does The Forum fit in all of this? We sent out a form to our members, asking them to share their stats and thoughts regarding this year’s Wrapped; they did not disappoint!
Unsurprisingly, Taylor Swift was the most popular, with four people ranking her as their top artist. In these rankings, Swift was followed by Tyler the Creator, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, and Benson Boone.
Some members of The Forum listened to more music than others, but they spent an average of 36,922 minutes streaming their favorite songs. That’s almost four weeks!
Like most people, Forum members had some frustrations: one anonymous staff writer explained, “The data just feels wrong because I don’t remember spending all that time on certain songs.” Likewise, another anonymous staff writer felt that their statistics were messed up, as they hadn’t listened to one of their supposed top artists since April.
Seeing and sharing our stats is an exciting opportunity to connect with others. Although this year’s Wrapped was met with much criticism, hopefully, next year’s can satisfy expectations.
