The Mycenaean

Every year since 2016, the first week of December is filled with buzz surrounding Spotify’s year in review– Spotify Wrapped. It has become one of the most momentous events in today’s pop culture. 

Spotify Wrapped is a conversation starter and connects users around the world based on their music tastes. Spotify Wrapped sparks conversations, allowing people to compare their music taste and track connections between their life and their music.

Spotify personalizes Wrapped for each listener — showing their top 5 artists, top 5 songs, total listening minutes, and ends with a full playlist of their most played songs from the preceding year.

Spotify tracks the listener’s activity from January 1st to early November but has never confirmed when they stop gathering each person’s statistics. Podcasts and offline streams are counted towards each person’s listening data. A song counts as streamed when someone listens for at least 30 seconds.

Leesville students had a variety of top artists, spanning across many genres of music. Drake, Gracie Abrams, Jason Aldean, The Weekend, and Laney Wilson are just a few of the many artists represented throughout the student body. 

Rick Routh, freshman, said, “I look forward to [my Wrapped] because I like to keep track of what I’m listening to. It really shows how much you grow as you listen.”

Music has a strong effect on people. Physiological and neurological studies have repeatedly proven that there is a correlation between moods and music.

Many people heavily rely on music in everyday life — to make it through rough patches, or celebrate the win — Spotify is there through it all. 

Max Farzanegan, junior, said, “I don’t even know how to describe [music]. It just makes me feel better… If I am having a bad day, I will put on one of my favorite artists and just listen.” 

Mia Carunana, senior, said, “During the summer my music is more country and upbeat stuff. Then during the winter it is more Drake and slower songs.”

Spotify Wrapped is a nice way to see how your listening personality evolves as your real personality does the same in the course of a year. 

Within Spotify Wrapped is a “listening personality” that Spotify created by analyzing patterns of listening. With the help of AI, listening personalities add to the uniqueness of Spotify Wrapped. Listening personalities are presented in the section of Spotify Wrapped titled, “Your 2024 Music Evolution”.

Specifically, one of these personalities has been trending on social media — a “Pink Pilates Princess… ” personality — followed by words ranging, “Roller Skating Pop”, “Strut Pop”, and “Hollywood Pop”. People often associate this personality with artists such as Taylor Swift, Tate McRae, Charli XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter.

Social media platforms have used these descriptions as a way to create memes and jokes to judge an individual’s music taste. 

TikTok had an outrage during the days following the drop of Spotify Wrapped. Creators have highlighted key details such as these personalities to call Spotify Wrapped inaccurate, sloppy, disappointing, underwhelming, rigged and the worst year ever.

Farzanegan said, “[My Wrapped] only focused on things I listened to at the beginning of the year. It was not accurate whatsoever… The stuff at the beginning of the year is so much different from what I am listening to now.”

Eva Butekno, freshman, said, “Lots of wraps are inaccurate because the media influences what we listen to. They put more spotlight on certain artists.” 

Social media has also pointed out that Spotify Wrapped 2024 contained a significantly less amount of data than previous years. 

Unlike previous years, the 2024 version of Spotify Wrapped left users without a list of their top 5 music genres, a section to highlight podcasts or a breakdown of personalized daily mood trends. 

Other applications have taken inspiration from Spotify Wrapped and created their own end of year reviews. 

Most notably, Apple Music released Apple Replay in 2019. It tracks basic stats such as top artists, top songs and listening milestones. The biggest difference is that Apple Music has a weekly wrap up. 

Duolingo has hopped on the trend, creating their own end of year wrap up for users. Duolingo’s year in review includes the number of lessons, minutes, streaks, and mistakes a user has made in the year.  

Spotify Wrapped has become a staple in modern pop culture. It is an application used to judge and set trends. 

Each person uses Spotify Wrapped as an inkling of how their year progressed. People will continue to talk about it and keep Spotify trending.