The long awaited date has arrived. December 1st not only is the start of the holiday season, but it marks the official date that Spotify wrapped releases for users globally. Spotify gives users the ability to see their top genres, artists, and songs of the year and tells them how many minutes they listened in total, as well as how many minutes they listened to specifically their top artist. Every year people have seemingly different reactions about their own wrapped songs though. Some claim that “it’s a glitch” or “they didn’t even listen to that song at all”, but how can you argue with data? It all comes down to the fact that all the data that Spotify wrapped gives us can be a bit embarrassing.
The decision to post your personalized wrapped stats on your Instagram story is one for debate. Spotify encourages users to spread their stats everywhere, but people rarely do. It’s the one day of the year when people can judge as much as they want, and they will. If you post it to your story, be prepared for people to pay close attention to each artist and song. I have seen countless people discussing in person as well as online some of their followers’ wraps. It’s interesting to see what other people listen to, but it also shows tons of Instagram followers a vulnerable side. This is your personalized data, and listening to “Drivers License” 800 times does not really tell your followers that you have a great love life.
In addition to all of the old stats, this year’s wrapped tells users their audio aura. It’s basically a box with two words and fancy colors (but it’s super cool). When my friends and I were comparing all of ours, I was impressed with how much it did fit their personality quite a bit. For mine, I got kindness and hopeless romantic, which I was just offended by. Spotify did not need to call me out like that.
My favorite part of Spotify wrapped is seeing how many minutes of music I have listened to in the past year. With my 60,000 minutes, I am reminded how often I have my AirPods in playing Spotify every day. But there are always other people’s Spotify wrapped, where you just think, how did they do it? I saw a TikTok where someone had listened to 500,000 minutes of music. That’s basically a full year of listening to music nonstop!
So overall, is Spotify wrapped embarrassing? Of course. But it also shows so much about people. Has One Direction been my top artist of the year for the past two years? Yes. And I may be slightly ashamed of it on the first of December, but during the rest of the year I love it. So, I’ll continue to listen to my boyband music all of next year too, because it’s me.