Itās that time of year again. Today, November 29, Spotify users all over are sharing their year-end āWrappedā recaps, which try to sum up your past year of musical taste by giving stats and rankings on your most-listened-to artists and songs, alongside a sleek graphic to share on all your socials. I look forward to it every year. But as Spotify Wrapped has practically become an internet holiday, I canāt help but notice that itās gamified how we listen to music throughout the year.
I donāt think about Spotify Wrapped throughout most of the year, but as November nears, part of me wants to make sure it actually reflects my musical tastes that year, rather than getting hung up on that one time I listened to the Glee cover of āSmooth Criminalā for three days straight. Knowing that Spotify Wrapped looms over my account and is keeping a tally of every time I leave a song on repeat does tend to subconsciously get me to switch songs just out of the irrational fear that someone might find out I listened to the stolen version of a Taylor Swift song while waiting for the new version. Heaven forbid a stray repeated song derail Wrappedās ādefinitiveā look at my musical year.
Can raw numbers really capture musical tastes?
Wrapped says my top-ranked artist in 2023 was Sleep Token. Not surprising, as Iāve been looping the prog rock bandās eclectic album āTake Me Back To Edenā all year. Itās easily my favorite record of the year, so it felt right for them to rank up top, and for three of their early singles to be my most-streamed songs. Ethel Cain and Troye Sivan came in second and third, which I was also happy with given Sivanās new album āSomething To Give Each Otherā was a late-year obsession. It only launched in October, leaving only a month for the Australian pop king to fly up my list.
Aries, the last artist in my top five, is the odd one out. I only really listened to his absolute banger āSnake Eyesā after discovering it on TikTok, but I listened to that one song obsessively. Iām talking about having it on repeat for days on end. āSnake Eyesā is my #4 song of the year nowāwild.
Ultimately, I have no one to blame but myself for where the chips fall, but it does make me really aware that my Wrapped doesnāt reflect how much I listened to some full albums that launch later in the year, like SZAās āS.O.S.ā
Spotify Wrapped is for sharing, so we put on our best face
The weird, meta min-maxing some of us now engage in thanks to Spotify Wrapped and its ilk is an interesting phenomenon because even now, I see people on platforms like TikTok joking about how they are now āfreeā to listen to whatever they want since Wrapped stops tracking your yearās activityafter it launches (though the actual end date has seemingly fluctuated over the years). The second Spotify Wrapped shows up on our phones, we feel free to embrace the cringiest of guilty pleasures on repeat without having to expose ourselves in a year.
But as we all compare and contrast our respective lists and stats, Iāve also noticed a trend that makes me feel like I am simply built different than the average Spotify user. Reader, I almost always have headphones in. Iāve never needed dead silence to write, talk, or even edit a podcast. Apparently, this is not the norm for most people, because most of yāall have some rookie numbers when it comes to āminutes listened.ā
In 2023, I listened to music and podcasts for 144,866 minutes on Spotify alone. Thatās not even counting the times I switched over to Soundcloud or YouTube for a more obscure remix or video game soundtrack. Every time I scroll past a friendās Wrapped and their minutes listened is a mere four figures I remember some people apparently donāt have sick beats playing in their ears at all times.
Part of me would like to challenge everyone reading this to beat my āhigh scoreā next year. Iām at the top of the 2023 leaderboards (so to speak) among my friends, and itās been that way every year since Spotify Wrapped started in 2016. At this point, Iām starting to fear I might be the weird one. But trying to challenge people to listen to music differently also feels against the spirit of what these year-end recaps are meant to do. Spotify Wrapped can impart a tacit pressure to change your listening habits so the numbers represent some imagined passion we have for an artist or song; that sentiment has even been weaponized by stans believing certain content creators donāt seem passionate enough for their liking. Thatās no good, so Iāll just be content here at the top of the scoreboard having listened to music forālet me check my notesā100 full days in 2023.
The recaps are fun, but we donāt need to game them
Like most social media trends, Spotify Wrapped is an extension of all of us putting on a performance and projecting a version of ourselves out to the world that is cool and has their shit together. But these year-end roundups, including video game equivalents that track our video game habits like PlayStationās Wrap-Up, give us a data-driven reason to expose the part of us that might be less cool, or in the case of my Overwatch 2 playtime, worrying to the average passerby.
I love seeing a Spotify Wrapped that exposes someoneās niche interests and guilty pleasures. Even if that is in and of itself performative and makes for good posts, it does show that some of us game the music we listen to the same way we might deliberately play as certain characters in a fighting game, to ensure they show up on our stats page. We want people to know our mains, not the character we tried out for a day in a fit of boredom. So even if you come away from Wrapped or the like feeling like it doesnāt really represent your year or your preferences, remember that raw numbers canāt account for all the ebbs and flows of our musical tastes.
And hey, the weirdest top-ranked song or artist can make for especially tremendous posting. Like this one:
