A screenshot of Spotify's Banner regarding the "2020 music wrap-ups." photo courtesy of The Sun UK orginal photo credit: Credit: Spotify
The music streaming service Spotify gives listeners a look into their listening history through Spotify Wrapped.
The end of a year brings out the old traditions throughout many households everywhere. These traditions can include resolutions for the coming year, making a special dish, or finding a loved one. One of the newer traditions that have come about is Spotify Wrapped. Those who use Spotify as their music streaming service are given analytics of their listening activity from January 1st to October 31st of that year. The company gives users a fun little slideshow showing analytics about everything from most played songs to the top genres explored. The feature is a fun insight into how listeners’ past year was, and they are able to see what their preferences were like during the year. People find it fun to connect with others by sharing their past year’s listening activity with the picture Spotify gives users of their top five songs and the artists they listened to. At the end, Spotify even includes a long playlist of some of users’ most listened-to songs of the year. People enjoy putting the playlist on their social media or sending it to their friends and seeing their statistics.
Spotify Wrapped allows listeners to see the range of their musical preferences (or lack of it). In my case, I had quite a weird range, especially in genres. My results went from pop to rock to adult standards. Yes, I, a 16-year-old, had adult standards as my third most listened to genre of the year. I do not know what I was expecting, as I listen to the band ABBA a lot and most of my music preferences were influenced by my father, but I definitely was not expecting that it would be so high on the list. Others that I talked to also had some funky analytics, such as having one of the genres called Emo rap which, to be quite honest, I did not know existed.
Even though some thoroughly enjoy finding out what others listened to during the year, others doubt that the analytics were even correct. I have questioned it myself. Seeing others’ different Spotify Wrapped reports, I saw a continuing trend where they were part of their top artists’ 5% of listeners or lower. Now, I am no expert at statistics, but it does not completely make sense that almost everyone was in the top 5% on some of the most famous artists in the world. My top song was also very questionable, as I did not remember listening to my so-called “top song” that much. However, my memory could simply be failing me. Nevertheless, even if the analytics are not completely accurate, Spotify has made a fun and entertaining way for people to connect with their differences or similarities in music tastes. Especially in these times where talking to people is not as common as it used to be, this provides a way for people to connect with those who they may not have spoken with for a long time.
