"The end of November used to mean something. It wasn't just that the festive season was mere weeks away, or that Black Friday shopping madness was imminent, but that something fun and exciting was about to drop at any moment: Spotify Wrapped. The annual roundup of users' personal listening data from the audio streaming platform first launched in 2015 at the time, it was referred to as Year in Music and became an online fixture in the mid to late 2010s."
"Like clockwork, social media platforms such as Instagram and X would be flooded with graphics from Spotify users showing their listening tastes over the past year. The feature became so popular that competing platforms, including Apple Music, began releasing their own versions in the late 2010s and early 2020s, to much less fanfare. But this year, the internet is uncharacteristically quiet during the period when Spotify Wrapped typically appears."
"Over the past decade, what has really set Spotify Wrapped apart are the unique features from year to year that summarize a user's music activity in the form of fun visualizations, like colourful auras and cities. These features regularly go viral, spawning memes that last for weeks. Statistics showing such things as the amount of minutes listened to, the number of unique songs played or the top percentage of fans for a certain artist have become a point of pride."
Spotify Wrapped began in 2015 as a Year in Music feature that showcased personal listening data and became a yearly social media phenomenon. The feature's colourful visualizations, viral graphics, and statistics like minutes listened, unique songs, and top percentiles created nostalgia and online pride. Competing platforms released similar year-end recaps with less impact. In 2025 anticipation for Spotify Wrapped has waned amid multiple controversies. Criticism over low artist compensation, the rise of AI-generated music on the platform, and backlash over ICE recruitment advertisements have collectively dampened user enthusiasm and reduced the usual social media frenzy.
Read at www.cbc.ca
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