Spotify Wrapped is an algorithmic sadfest
You're ok and all, but we're not besties, Spotify. Quit pretending like we are.
I fear it’s both a little too late for me to be writing this post and it’s also going to come off as too cranky. Spotify Wrapped was SO last week, and the culture has moved on. The internet is now awash in healthcare CEO murder discourse and god knows what else, but we’ve definitely left Spotify Wrapped behind. But more than that.. what about this topic is even worth complaining about? People LIKE getting a customized report on what they listened to last year. We ENJOY mining the data for little surprises or nuggets of confirmation that yes-I’m-as-big-a-fan-as-I-thought’s and then posting those affirmations to Instagram. I’m already on record explaining why I think Spotify sucks, so why go back and re-hash the same talking points just because we all had a Your-Personal-Faves-of-2024 playlist pushed to our phones?
That’s all fair. If you like Spotify Wrapped (and just from seeing posts on the ‘gram and having general conversation with people, I get the sense that most of you really do), I’m not here to persuade you otherwise. It’s fine for people to like things, as I learned from the internet once.
But for me, Spotify Wrapped is a mild, inconsequential irritant, and that’s the stuff that all good ranty blog posts are made of. I’ll give you my reasons, and I think they are good reasons, but you may disagree. First though, just speaking at a high level, it’s worth noting that the wrapped-ness of it all is out of control. Big data has given us Spotify Wrapped. And Duo Lingo wrapped. And Strava wrapped, and Starbucks wrapped.1 And, dear lord, Grindr wrapped. And Goodreads and Letterbox’d wrapped. And I mean.. fine! None of these in isolation is that objectionable, and it all kinda makes sense and is even worth celebrating on some level. I want to know how many books I read this year, which movies I watched, how many miles I ran, etc. These are good things! But like… it’s also a depressing reminder of just how many apps have all our data, and just how happy they are to compile it, aggregate it, slap a cute graphic on it and turn it back to us. We’re all willing partners in a rapaciously capitalist network of apps that is looking for any possible leg up on the competition — and the only thing these apps have to do to get us to hand over every minor detail about our lives is just appeal to our vanity. That’s not a new phenomenon, of course.. but Wrapped Season just emphasizes all of it that much more.
But what about Spotify, specifically, is bad? It’s true I’ve learned some interesting things about my listening habits this year, I suppose. I apparently listened to Spotify for 16,278 minutes for the ten months from January 1 to October 31. Is that a lot? Not really, I guess? I’m not a listen-to-music-while-I-work person, and I never drive anywhere, so my number is generally lower than a lot of people’s, I think. Anecdotally I saw a few people on the ‘gram who were at 100k+ minutes, which.. dear lord, that’s five and a half hours a day, every day, from January to October. Yikes? My top artists were generally a bunch of indie-folk-rock bands — Maggie Rogers, Waxahatchee, Adrianne Lenker.. a one-off french pop artist from the 2010s called Lescop. Even my most listened to song2 was only played 17 times, which isn’t crazy, is it? Like not even once every two weeks?
But this is where I start to get irritated. Wrapped’s version of my listening habits just isn’t accurate. It doesn’t capture what my year was *actually* like — and it can’t possibly reflect how I *felt* about my relationship to the things I listened to. The truth is that a year is a long time, and I went through several moods. There was a long period this summer where I aggressively sought out French pop music (because I was excited about an upcoming trip to France, and was also deep into my French DuoLingo era), and so I pulled up a bunch of playlists with French artists I had never heard of and really had no connection to (bonjour, Lescop). It was also cold and wet and depressing through a lot of March/April, and so I listened to 80s sad boy Brit pop.. a lot of Belle & Sebastian and the Smiths3 and Mazzy Star thrown in for good measure. More recently I hit a rut with even caring about music at all, so I spent election season feeding an unhealthy obsession with political podcasts, followed by a deep (and I think understandable) aversion to anything political, and so I listened to cozy murder mystery audio books.4 Part of the time I dumped Spotify entirely and just listened to audio content in other apps that had nothing to do with anything.5 Where’s any of that in my Spotify Wrapped?? I like reflecting on my year in audio entertainment, but not when it’s filtered through Spotify’s insistence that “the data doesn’t lie, here’s what actually mattered to you.” The answer is.. no, that’s not actually true, and I shouldn’t have to pretend like it is.
Not to mention, my Spotify Wrapped report can’t possibly be right in the real sense. Like.. according to Spotify, the single day where I listened to the app the most was January 20, 2024 (483 minutes, or just over eight hours). The thing is though, I know what I was doing on January 20, and it wasn’t endlessly listening to Spotify!6 I’m not trying to allege a big Spotify conspiracy or anything, I’m just saying — none of this data has been QC’d and there’s no reason to suspect it *isn’t* lightly made up. There’s no access to the raw info that underlies it, and it’s susceptible to whatever random aberrant circumstance might completely throw it off. Hosting a dinner party where you want a soft jazz playlist? Hanging out with your friends for a long weekend and just generally letting Spotify do its own thing because you don’t want to endlessly curate six or ten hours of music? Playing a song a dozen or two dozen times because it’s part of some bit you’re doing, but it’s not actually like, something you earnestly want to listen to? Spotify doesn’t care. Spotify is just aggregating data and then telling you it’s yours, and that it says something about you. But it’s all just kinda trash data, and the conclusions it draws aren’t real.
Maybe what I’m getting at here is really that .. Spotify Wrapped is inaccurate because it’s necessarily based on Spotify’s own algorithm presenting me the artists Spotify favors — its implicit assumption is that my own personal likes are the things that Spotify served me and that I chose not to skip — and who’s to say these are the things I really liked?? I don’t dispute that the app fed me a bunch of Adrianne Lenker, but the truth is I only think Adrianne Lenker is only sorta ok! She absolutely had a big year, her new album was popular and got great reviews, but if forced to spend 2025 on a desert island with a pre-set curated collection of music, Adrianne Lenker wouldn’t be in my top 5. Probably not my top 20! Wrapped is a version of what I “liked” based on the hyper-curated, overly algorithm’d version of music streaming that Spotify chose for me.
Also, and I feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but Spotify Wrapped is dumb. The aesthetic of it is dumb. Everything about Wrapped is written in this style that’s cringey, over-enthusiastic, overly familiar, and waaay too thirsty for my attention. It’s drawn out to an absurd degree, every little data nugget given its own, personalized 10 second story card in the hopes that you’ll just stare at the thing, slack-jawed, wrapt in wondrous ecstasy while Spotify tells you about yourself. It’s all transparently orchestrated as engagement bait, and I don’t want to be baited that way.
It’s like a friend-of-a-friend acquaintance who insists on a big, dramatic hug and screams, “It’s been so LONG, tell me EVERYTHING!!!” when we pass each other on the street. You haven’t earned the right, Spotify! We’re not friends! Stop pandering to me in such a sniveling, pathetic tone, talking about all the happy , wonderful memories I shared with you in the past year — that’s not how it actually was, you’re WRONG about almost all of it, and I can create my OWN fucking memories about the music that I liked, thanks!
And maybe, for me, that’s where the sadness part comes in. The engagement is all so forced and artificial. I’m watching everyone post and post their Wrapped images, and it’s like I’m at a Christmas gift exchange where everyone’s just exchanging presents that suck and then gushing over how thoughtful and unique they are. I dunno… I mean.. some people are obviously thrilled to be told their in the 1% or .1% of biggest Taylor Swift fans or Beyonce fans or whatever. But like.. are you, though? Like first, is it actually true that you’re in the tip-top .1% of fans, which.. maybe, but who’s to say, right? The algo knows all. And second, that just seems kinda repetitive to me? That involves listening to A LOT of the same mega-mega popular artist over and over and over to the exclusion of a lot of other stuff and other moods and interests and passing fancies, and well.. yeah. It’s fine. It’s fine for people to like things. I get that. I should shut up.
I also want to point out that Starbucks wrapped used to tell me how many times I had actually been to Starbucks during the past year and how much money I had spent there (aren’t those kind of like.. the only two obvious data points for something called “Starbucks Wrapped”?). But they’ve absolutely wised up that this is an *embarrassing* number for most people, and is only going to inspire Starbucks patrons to resolve to cut back in the new year, and so.. yeah. No more iced coffee tally!
24 Hours in Paris by Blusher. But again — does this mean it was my *favorite* song? No. It means it was at the top of one particular playlist that I played and edited a bunch during about a two-month period when I was putting together a French vacation soundtrack with friends.
Not to mention the week where I listened to Oasis basically non-stop because I was low-key excited that they’re going back on tour next year. Am I going to see them in concert? Probably not, but definitely maybe.
(ok, I’m apologizing for that one, sheesh).
So far as I can tell, my meditation app hasn’t packaged up a Meditation Wrapped for me yet this year. Bless.
If you must know, it was my birthday weekend and I went to a Korean spa with some friends and we hung out at the spa — quietly vibing away from our phones and definitely not listening to Spotify playlists.