Spotify Wrapped is your audio yearbook, providing a twelve-month summary of your listening behaviors. How wrapped works is simple. It tracks your music played until mid-November and enters the analytics into the Spotify system. Including your top artists, time spent playing, most replayed songs, and frequently listened-to genres, Spotify hits every checkbox to give you a personalized summary. This year, Spotify Wrapped said hello to the holiday season on the 29th of November. Unsurprisingly, over 547 million Spotify listeners awaited their musical diagnosis, ready to share with friends and family.
Most people know about Spotify wrapped or have had Spotify for long enough to experience last year’s summary. Spotify listener Olivia Horn a Junior, mentioned Spotify wrapped as the “highlight” of her year. She also shares that she uses Spotify “all the time” and listens to music during routine activities. Similarly, Junior Ryan Cohen shares with The Blue and White that he listens whenever he has free time. Students at APK and Spotify users worldwide were ready to compare and share their long-awaited results.
Minutes go by
Objectively, the most popular feature of Spotify Wrapped is a summary of the total minutes spent listening to music. After averaging the listening minutes from six Apopka High students, the average was roughly 46,500. How do you compare to the average? Were you higher or lower? Sophomore August Rice discusses they listen to music whenever and wherever. Despite listening to music for a whopping 39,837 minutes, they thought their total minutes “would be higher.” Ryan Cohen believed quite the opposite on the matter. He shared that he felt “a bit embarrassed” about his total minutes because it was considerably higher than his peers. Even though minutes don’t necessarily measure love for an artist, we all know it’s a competition. Horn shares that at first, she was satisfied with the amount she listened to (42,000) but compared to everyone else, she was left “disappointed.” Junior Brady Braun offers a different perspective and acknowledges they may have listened less than most, but cherished their top artist just like a fan with 100,000+ minutes would.
Who do you listen to?
At Apopka, we discovered a common trend of most listened-to artists. I feel almost required to mention the legendary Taylor Swift. A standard Taylor Swift fan has Taylor in their top 5 or as a number one artist. Rice shared that Taylor was their fourth most listened-to artist, despite only listening to her Reputation album. Aside from Swift, the second most streamed Spotify artist, The Weeknd, was a popular listening option. Cohen mentions that he is proud of having the “amazing Abel Tasfaye, also known as The Weeknd, ” as his top artist. Aside from American artists, international music made a mark on this year’s Wrapped.
On the rise in popularity, is the KPOP sensation TOMORROWXTOGETHER. TXT is known for covering a variety of genres such as K-Rock, K-R&B, K-Punk, and more. For many fans of TXT, their most listened-to songs came from the Dream Chapter Temptation Album, released in January of this year. From the release alone, TXT snuck into numerous top 5 lists and finished as number one for numerous Spotify listeners. To put it in perspective, TXT finished as my top artist with over 14,000 minutes listened, putting me in the top 0.05% of listeners.
Dive into genres
Another sub-section of Wrapped is a display of your most listened-to genres. To my surprise, Spotify trans-
formed how it presented the most enjoyed genres. This year, they introduced the genre Sandwich, which included components showing your top five most listened-to genres. What caught my attention was how each part of the sandwich was a different size based on what genre you listened to the most.
Some of the most popular genres at APK were American pop, indie rock, rap, R&B, and K-pop. Based on these styles, Spotify categorized each user with the type of listening style that suited them best. A popular result was the “Vampire,” claiming those had a darker music style. Looks like Spotify called out some undercover emos at this school (don’t worry we won’t judge).
Replay
Spotify wrapped featured your most listened-to song for users who loop a song like their life depends on it. Some averaged 100-300 times for playing their most listened-to song. Or if you were on the more deranged side (like me) you’ve most likely enjoyed the same 3-minute song over 800 times. But as Spotify said, the song is just as perfect as when you listened it to for the first time. And besides, songs are there for you to listen to whenever necessary. If that means hundreds of times, then so be it.
Suggestion Session
Now this can’t be a music-based article without some student suggestions. From students at APK, I curated a list of suggested artists to get you on your feet.
Foo Fighters (Alternative Rock)
Conan Gray (Pop/Indie Pop)
Taylor Swift (Pop/Country)
TXT (K-Pop)
Cigarettes After Sex (Alternative/Indie)
Clairo (Bedroom Pop)
Mitski (Alternative/Indie)
Avenged Sevenfold (Progressive Metal)
Drake (R&B/Hip-Hop)
Prince Royce (Latin Pop/Urban Bachata)
Troye Sivan (Pop)
Kanye West (Hip-Hop/Rap)
Arctic Monkeys (Indie Rock)
The Smiths (Alternative/Indie)
SZA (R&B/Soul)
Flaws
There’s no doubt we love getting our Spotify wrapped. But there’s a problem. Brady mentioned they felt “something was off” when their Spotify wrap-up arrived. There seemed to be songs listened to on a loop but were surprisingly low on the list. This may play into the “shuffle dilemma” where Spotify doesn’t shuffle playlists and plays (without fail) the same order of songs each time. However, this was the only documented flaw of this year’s wrap, with the pros heavily outweighing the cons.
Wrapping it up
Spotify users get to play a part in their unique musical journey. It may be the end of the 2023 music era, however, the new year comes with music and new listening habits bound to form. And with that, I’m tying a bow on this year’s music wrap-up.
For all those who got Apple Music replay, I would like to inform you that Spotify wrapped is infinitely better 🙂
