If I’m feeling adventurous, I might try one that the algorithm has deemed to be similar. I don’t know whether it’s my own failure of initiative and imagination, or one of product design and the paradox of choice, but when I open up the app each morning I mostly go with Spotify’s flow: I listen to albums I’ve recently been listening to and artists I already know I like. Nevertheless, every year, I get the sense of my listening habits becoming increasingly tightly wound – into six daily mixes: my six modes – and increasingly like everyone else’s. After 10 years as a Spotify subscriber, it’s my longest-ever relationship, and I’ve never considered giving it up. As someone who used to spend hours painstakingly tending to her iTunes music library, who felt a gap in her Last.fm history like an archival omission, I am exactly the sort of pedant who should be all for Spotify Wrapped – and yet I find it banal and depressing. This time last year it led to a 21% surge in downloads of Spotify’s mobile app as users rushed to share their numbers on social media. Either way, since it began in 2016, Wrapped has become as anticipated as Black Friday a new tradition in corporate Christmas. Others parade their stats like a badge of honour (“hours spent listening to Post Malone”). Some users take it in that spirit, taking stock and finalising their pandemic playlist for posterity. The platform itself presents it as an opportunity for sombre reflection, like the Queen’s speech: a prompt “to look back on the year” on the music that “helped us get through”.
It’s an effective marketing scheme, Spotify leveraging its own user base to create buzz on its behalf. Yes, ’tis the season for Spotify Wrapped: the streaming service’s festive display of user data, presenting listeners with their most-played songs, artists and albums of the year in shareable graphics. ’Tis the season! For all of your Swiftie friends to find themselves in the top 5% of Taylor Swift fans worldwide, for Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo to loom large on your Instagram Stories, and for the Weeknd’s Blinding Lights to be named everyone’s song of the year for the second year in a row.
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