And that’s a Spotify wrap on 2024!
Spotify Wrapped might be my favourite time of the year. I love to see what everyone else has been listening to throughout the year. Sometimes I take it as an opportunity to broaden my music and pinch some song recommendations. I also love to revisit my own music faves; often I’ll listen to previous years’ Wrapped playlists and find comfort in the old songs that I’d forgotten about.
But if I’m true to myself, my favourite part is being able to judge other people’s top songs and artists. There’s always someone with the Glee cast as their top artist and that’s just something we have to leave behind at this point. Seeing that someone spent 100,000 minutes listening to the Frozen soundtrack makes me feel a little bit better about my own wasted time.
It can be dangerous though, particularly the minutes spent listening, because I see that as an Olympic sport. I want to have the highest minutes on Spotify and if you have more than me, I see it as a challenge. Maybe we should have an international leaderboard…or maybe not.
Whilst I do love Spotify Wrapped, there are some things I’d change. There are features I don’t love and things I wish it had that it lacks.
First of all, an extensive breakdown of every stat would be fascinating for me. I want to know how many minutes I spent listening to each song, not just my most played, as well as a breakdown of when I listened to it. If you’re anything like me, you have phases with songs. One week it’s all you listen to and then you forget about it again for six months until the cycle restarts.
Sometimes I feel mugged off when that one song I liked back in July made it into my top five, so I want the stats to prove it was a blip. Particularly if it’s one of those semi-embarrassing songs that was trending on TikTok and just got into your head. I don’t love those messing with my stats as it is, so a defence would be nice to pull up if I’m ever teased about it.
It would be fun if our Spotify profiles were more personalised, such as having our top artists appear on our page like our best friends list appears on Snapchat. My curiosity intoleah mass people’s Spotify Wrapped stats is year-round so I’d be checking that.
I don’t love the more recent addition of the genre rundown. Mainly because I don’t always agree with Spotify’s genre categorisation, but also because I like to think I have a varied taste in music and then Spotify comes along and slaps only ‘six different genres’ on me and I feel inadequate. Particularly when they have silly nuances like ‘American teen pop’, ‘British teen pop’, ‘teen pop’… what actually is the difference?
I’d much prefer year stamps. You listened to 25 songs from 2011′ would not only give me the push I need to modernise my music taste but I also think it tells you more about a person. If you’re stuck in the 00s, we would be good friends.
Regardless of the tweaks I’d make to it, Spotify Wrapped has my heart and I’m anxiously waiting for this year’s stats. I think it’ll be a good one.