With the end of the year quickly approaching, the popular music streaming service, Spotify, published its annual Spotify Wrapped feature. It provides data analysis for users’ listening habits. Three University of Maryland students reflected on the application’s analysis of their tunes of choice.
Junior Emma Mirizio, an astronomy and physics double major, said that Spotify reported that her top artists were Janelle Monáe, Lizzo and the band Nothing But Thieves. Mirizio said that she found her top artists to be pretty on point, but added that she did find one of the musician’s appearances on the list to be unexpected. “I was a little surprised by Janelle Monáe because I think I only listened to her a lot in the beginning of the year and not so much in the past few months,” said Mirizio. “I should get back into her music!”
Mirizio said that she tends to listen to full albums when using Spotify, so she thinks some of the top songs on her Spotify analysis are because they were in the beginnings of the albums she liked. “A few of my top songs were “Juice” by Lizzo, “Amsterdam” by Nothing But Thieves and “Just a Girl” by No Doubt, which is probably from listening to the “Captain Marvel” soundtrack on repeat,” said Mirizio.
Emma Mirizio (courtesy of Mirizio)
Overall, Mirizio said that she wasn’t very surprised by her Spotify Wrapped analysis. However, the presence of one band in the “Top 5 Artists” category was surprising: “My Chemical Romance made it into my top five? I didn’t think I listened to them much this year, but I might have put them on repeat when they announced a reunion a little while ago,” Mirizio said.
Junior environmental science and policy major, Isabel Armbruster, agreed with Mirizio and said that she found the analysis to be pretty accurate per her music taste. However, she did have a suggestion for the streaming service: “Spotify for the most part got it right, but I feel like they haven’t included any new artists you’re listening to right now; they should wait to release this until after Christmas,” said Armbruster.
Isabel Armbruster (courtesy of Armbruster)
Some of Armbruster’s top artists were Hozier, Tove Lo, Tame Impala and Miley Cyrus. “I kind of feel like my top songs are not necessarily my favorite, maybe they just got played a lot but they’re not my favorite anymore,” Armbruster said. If she had to make her own Spotify Wrapped analysis, Armbruster said it would be the same artists, but with the addition of Two Door Cinema Club, Lizzo, Anderson .Paak and Billie Eilish.
Junior philosophy major Jenna Wallace had a different view of her Spotify analysis. “It was partially what I expected, but I was honestly a little disappointed by it,” said Wallace.
Wallace said her top artists were the bands Surf Curse, Interpol, Sweet Trip and musicians Playboi Carti and Mitski. If given the choice, Wallace said she would choose her top artists to be the bands Interpol, Parquet Courts, Beach Bunny, The Buttertones and Sweet Trip.
Jenna Wallace (courtesy of Wallace)
She was surprised by the amount of time Spotify said she listened to music. “I felt like in 2019 I listened to music basically all the time, especially over the summer,” Wallace said. “So it was pretty surprising to see that the time I spent listening in 2019 wasn’t much different from other years.”
Over the years, Wallace said that she thinks her music taste has changed quite a bit. “I still love a lot of the same music that I did in the past, but I think I’m becoming more open to discovering and listening to new genres,” said Wallace. “I really like the Discover Weekly playlists on Spotify because it reminds me to give new music a try if I’m falling into a rut of listening to the same songs over and over.”
As the decade comes to a close, University of Maryland students found the Spotify Wrapped feature to be very reflective of the changes in their music tastes over the past few months.