NEW YORK — It’s almost that time of year: Spotify is gearing up to release its annual Wrapped, personalized recaps of users’ listening habits and year in audio.
Spotify has been giving its listeners breakdowns of their data since 2016. And each year, it’s become a bigger production — and internet sensation. Spotify said its 2023 Wrapped was the “biggest ever created,” in terms of audience reach and the kind of data it provided.
So, what will 2024 have in store? Here’s a look at what to know ahead of this year’s Spotify Wrapped.
It’s the streaming service’s annual overview of individual listening trends, as well as trends around the world. Users learn their top artists, songs, genres, albums and podcasts, all wrapped into one interactive presentation.
The campaign has become a social media sensation, as people share and compare their Wrapped data with their friends and followers online.
Past iterations have provided users with all kinds of breakdowns and facts, including whether they’re among an artist’s top listeners, as well as a personalized playlist of their top 100 songs of that year to save, share and listen to whenever they’re feeling nostalgic.
Spotify also creates a series of playlists that reflect national and global listening trends, featuring the top streamed artists and songs. In 2023, Taylor Swift was Spotify’s most streamed artist, unseating Bad Bunny who had held the title for three years in a row.
Each year has something new in store. In 2019, Wrapped included a summary of users’ streaming trends for the entire decade. Last year, Spotify matched listeners to a Sound Town based on their artist affinities and how it lined up with those in other parts of the world.
So far, the streaming platform has kept the highly anticipated release date of Wrapped under … er, wraps.
In past years, it’s been released after Thanksgiving, between Nov. 30 and Dec. 6.
Each year, rumors tend to swell on social media around when Spotify stops collecting data in order to prepare their Wrapped results, and this year was no exception. Spotify quickly squashed those presumptions, assuring on social media that “Spotify Wrapped doesn’t stop counting on October 31st.”
A representative for Spotify did not respond to a request for comment on when the company stops tracking data for Wrapped.
When Wrapped is released, each user’s Spotify account will prompt them to view their interactive data roundup. It can be accessed through the Spotify smartphone app, or by logging on to the Spotify website. Wrapped is available to users with and without Premium subscriptions.
There are a handful of third-party sites that you can connect your Spotify account to that will analyze your Wrapped data.
How Bad is Your Spotify is an AI bot that judges your music taste. Receiptify gives you your top songs on a sharable graphic that looks like, yes, a receipt. Instafest gives you your own personal music festival-style lineup based on your top artists. How NPRCore Are You assesses how similar your music taste is to NPR Music’s.
Other major streaming platforms such as Apple Music and YouTube Music have developed their own versions of Wrapped in recent years.
Apple Music’s Replay not only gives its subscribers a year-end digest of their listening habits but monthly summaries as well — a feature that helps differentiate itself from the one-time Spotify recap. That’s released at the end of the calendar year.
YouTube Music, meanwhile, has a similar end-of-the-year release for its listeners, as well as periodic seasonal releases throughout the year. It released its annual Recap for users earlier this month.
