On November 29th, Spotify released their 2023 Wrapped to all platform users. Unique for everyone, Spotify wrapped is a personalized receipt of any Spotify listener’s year in review. Spotify Wrapped makes anyone feel nostalgia as we all move on to the next year, with a listening history that highlights things such as our top artist from July or the song we listened to the most times in 2023.
Although almost everyone looks forward to seeing the annual Spotify-wrapped “staples” such as top artists and top songs pop up in their Spotify Wrapped, users tend to be excited about different parts of their unique Spotify highlight reel. The app’s interactive slideshow has piqued the interest of many DHS students, who had several different responses when asked about their favorite part of their Spotify Wrapped. Many students such as Bryce Ford, Morgan Leahy, and Ella Cherenek mentioned that they liked being able to see how many minutes they listened to music throughout the entire year. Ingrid Cavanna, another DHS Spotify user, liked how Spotify made a playlist of her top songs. Something new to Spotify Wrapped this year was artist messages, which Annabelle Capola mentioned to be her favorite. Like a TikTok or Instagram reel, users could scroll through short videos of their top artists for the year, who usually were thanking their fans for a year of listening to their music. Another new part of Spotify Wrapped this year was a guess of where users might live based on the music they listened to. This was not based on anyone’s specific location, but the general location of people with similar interests in music genres. It would be interesting to see what artists were the most popular in Darien!
There were some aspects of Spotify Wrapped that students did not like this year, one being that some users’ Spotify accounts “bugged” out and gave them a review of their music history that was completely incorrect. Finn Hagen and Charlotte Volz both experienced this issue with their Spotify accounts this year, as well as Noah Kahan, who even mentioned it in his Artist Message this year.
Additionally, some students were slightly offended about Spotify’s classification of what type of listener they were this year. Every user was given a different characterization of their music taste, and the most popular character according to Spotify this year was the “Vampire”. Are people starting to “embrace darkness” as Spotify suggests? Annabelle Capola stated that the app was “just calling everyone emo”. Even so, a smaller amount of listeners such as Oscar Barton were classified as “Luminaries”, who listened to upbeat music more than most. Maybe next year, if you were classified as a Vampire, you might want to listen to less “emotional and atmospheric music”, according to Spotify.
It is important to mention that although Spotify was the first to release a music timeline of every user’s listening history every year, other platforms have started making similar versions. Apple Music’s “Replay” is also a topic of conversation as it is also released every year at around the same time. Hopefully, in the future, more streaming platforms such as Pandora will be releasing an overview of their listeners’ yearly tastes, so more people can better understand their music tastes.
Spotify Wrapped is like the first present of the holiday season! Music is such a big part of most people’s lives these days, and looking back to appreciate how one’s taste has developed over the years is incredibly fulfilling. At a place like DHS, where high-school-age students are a part of the demographic listening to Spotify more than most, Spotify Wrapped is a fun gift that the entire community is talking about. What was your favorite part of Spotify Wrapped this year?
