As the year comes to an end and Harrisites reminisce about the past year, Spotify gives users the opportunity to look back on their year of listening. Since its debut in 2015, Spotify Wrapped has been an integral part of a Spotify user’s experience, revealing data such as the user’s top artists, songs, genres, total minutes listened, and more in an interactive slideshow.
The data used for Spotify Wrapped spans from January 1st to October 31st. This year, Spotify Wrapped was released on December 1st.
Each year, Spotify adds new components to their Wrapped. This year, Spotify gave users a ‘sound town,’ which assigns user’s a town that aligns with their music taste. Aside from this, Spotify showcases various other features such as ‘Me in ‘23,’ which reveals what character the listener was out of categories such as ‘Vampire,’ ‘Mastermind,’ ‘Roboticist,’ among many others.
This year artists were required to create a personalized message for their top listeners. Junior Alyshia Olazabol said, “I think it’s really cool that they added this new feature because it’s something different and unexpected. It felt like a personal video message just for me.”
The genre sandwich section was a new way of displaying each user’s top genres. Senior Shannon Jackman said, “It came as a surprise because the screen started to fill with animated sandwiches. It made more sense once the sandwiches were labeled with my top genres, such as Pop and Rap.”
Like many Spotify users, Harrisites have taken to social media to show off their Wrapped. Senior Zarah Masud said, “I love posting my Wrapped on social media so that I can connect with others over music taste, while also having a memory that I can look back on in the future.”
Among the many features of Wrapped, students have taken a great interest in their top artist and to their total minutes of music listened to. Sophomore, Jazlyn Febles, who’s top artist was Pierce The Veil, said, “My favorite feature is the top listening feature, since I am a top 0.1% for my favorite band.” Senior Alishya Loyd, whose reported top song was Arabella by the Arctic Monkeys, said, “I was really content with Arctic Monkeys being at the top of my Wrapped because I listen to the band a lot so it makes sense.”
Senior Hamza Mohammed expressed that Spotify accurately displayed his diversity in music taste. He said, “I listen to a combination of older music, such as 70s music, and rap, and I am glad that Spotify showed me all of my listening preferences through the statistics and my playlist.”
Many students also use the top music that Spotify creates a playlist for to reflect on memories from the year. Shannon said, “I predicted my top song to be Miss Mary by Sarah and The Sundays because it was in a robotics playlist I made with my friend and it was by far my favorite out of all of them since we spent so much time listening to it in robotics.” She added, “It very much reminds me of the build season and has very good memories associated with it.”
However, not everyone is able to access their music statistics.
Junior, Lynn Eo, who uses Youtube Music says, “Although I love Youtube Music, I do wish there was a “Wrapped” since I wanna join in on the experience of posting it on my story. [However], I’m interested in my peers’ Spotify Wrapped because I want to see if our music tastes are compatible.”
As Spotify continues to grow and increase in popularity, the user experience of the streaming platform also continues to improve and create exciting additions.
