The much anticipated Spotify Wrapped came out this morning, and there are some mixed feelings about it.
In the good old days of physical media, we had to work to hear our favorite songs. Maybe you’ve used a pencil to rewind a cassette tape or played a record so many times it’s completely worn down. Either way, you couldn’t just play whatever song you wanted to hear whenever you wanted to hear it … unless you owned it, of course.
It’s different in the age of streaming. One report estimated that last year an average of 103,000 tracks were added to streaming services each day. They’re all available to play with the tap of a screen, as long as you’re willing to pay a monthly subscription fee. And there are a lot of platforms competing for our ears. One of those, Spotify, sets itself apart by releasing an elaborate, highly personalized end-of-the-year music breakdown.
Since 2016, Spotify has used the listener data it collects to put together this Spotify Wrapped. Don’t ask me what else this data is being used for, but you get to see your most played songs, artists and genres as well as how many different songs you listened to and how many minutes you spent listening to said songs … as well as a lot of other statistics. Much of this is meaningless and sometimes it borders on the ridiculous – like two years ago, when users were assigned an "aura" based on their listening habits.
As fun as it is to boast to my friends that I listened to Radiohead for over 64 hours this year, I have to wonder: Is Spotify Wrapped ruining our relationship with music?
The whole point of Spotify Wrapped, if I’m being honest, is to post your results on Instagram. It’s the one chance you get to prove to the world that your music taste is objectively superior to that of your followers. It’s fun, it feels like we’re baring our souls to each other. Or at least admitting that we listen to a lot of Radiohead.
And I suppose it would be OK if that’s where it ended.
I was recently persuaded to get on AirBuds, an app where you can see what songs your friends are listening to in live time, even if you stream music from different platforms. AirBuds has been around for about two years, and it takes music recaps a step further, releasing a new one every single week in a convenient shareable format.
That app is my nightmare. I can no longer listen to whatever I want to in peace. Last week, I caught myself pulling up a song on Youtube because I didn’t want one of my AirBuds friends to know that I was listening to a song they have on repeat, even though the whole point of the app is to share music with your friends.
I’ve found that whenever I listen to music, Spotify Wrapped is in the back of my mind. It haunts me. Even when I listen to CDs and cassette tapes, I’m thinking about how Spotify isn’t going to count it and my Instagram followers will never know how much I love Joni Mitchell.
But why do I care if my Instagram followers know how much I love Joni Mitchell? And am I really only listening to Talking Heads because I think it’ll make me look cool when I post about them being in my top five?
Although I continue to post my Spotify Wrapped statistics on my Instagram story every year, I feel myself getting disillusioned by streaming. I like that I can see all the music I own in my modest collection of CDs and cassette tapes. And I like hanging out at my local record store every Sunday.
Besides, an AI-generated Spotify playlist will never mean as much as a handmade mixtape.
