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Journalism of Courage
It’s that time of year again when Spotify users are hyped up about their yearly Spotify Wrapped. For the uninitiated, Spotify Wrapped is an annual personalised feature that gives users a fun retrospective look back at their music listening habits over the past year. It’s essentially a roundup of stats telling you which artists, songs, genres, and podcasts you binged on the most.
So how does it work? At the end of each year, Spotify crunches the data on every track, album, artist and podcast you listened to that year. The platform turns those numbers into flashy, shareable cards and infographics like “Your Top Songs 2023.” The whole package gets presented to you on a shareable page you can access on both mobile and desktop.
The feature drops in the final days of November and immediately takes over social media for weeks as users excitedly share their musical report cards. The #SpotifyWrapped hashtag tends to trend as people compare stats and mock each other’s guilty pleasure listens. It’s all meant to be a bit of end-of-year music fun while allowing Spotify to get some free promotion.
So how can you join in on the Spotify Wrapped craze? The bar is fairly unrestrictive: Everyone can view their Wrapped regardless of when they started using Spotify. For instance, if you got on Spotify in March, your Wrapped will show your listening data from March 1 through October 31 of that year. You also need to make sure you update to the latest version of the Spotify app once Wrapped is out to access your personalised experience.
From there, simply open up the Spotify mobile app and your Wrapped showcase should be hard to miss. This year, the app has received some notable UI tweaks and the ‘Wrapped’ section now sits beside the Music and Podcasts chips at the top of the home page. From here, tap ‘Your Wrapped’ to see your year in review. Tap through the various stories to see your top tunes and how your music taste changed over the year. Once you’ve soaked up your musical memories, tap the “Share” button on any part you want to post to social media.
Another cool feature Spotify has started with Wrapped last year are ‘artist messages’ – special short vertical videos artists record for their listeners who placed them on the platform’s toplists that can be accessed from Wrapped page.
That said, if you are not a Spotify user and are experiencing Wrapped FOMO, you’re not out of luck because many other streaming services like Apple Music and YouTube Music release similar recaps. Apple Music releases its annual ‘Apple Music Replay Playlist’ while YouTube Music has its ‘Year in Review’ that you can access from their respective apps and join in the fun.
As part of ‘Wrapped,’ Spotify also reveals its top artists, songs, albums, and podcasts in India for the year. Arijit Singh has come up on the top as the most-streamed artist, while King and Saurabh Lokahnde’s “Maan Meri Jaan” emerged as the most-streamed song. Meanwhile, Shahid Kapoor’s Kabir Singh was the most popular album of 2023 in India.
