The Spotify Wrapped hype and its evolution since 2016
Spotify Wrapped has finally rounded up our year of listening with a personalised playlist of our top 100 songs of 2022.
Spotify Wrapped 2022 was released on Wednesday after weeks of self-promo by the platform across social medias. [Image Source: Spotify]
With a monthly user base increasing 19% to 433 million at the beginning of the year, Spotify is the most popular music streaming service in the world and contributes the fourth-highest artist royalties.
Paying an estimated £0.34 per 100 streams, artists are paid more for streams on rival platforms; Tidal, Apple Music, and Amazon Music which estimate £1.03-£0.43 for royalties.
So, why is Spotify the leading streaming service? Its end-of-year Wrapped spectacle could be the reason.
Wrapped playlist covers over the years. [Image Source: Spotify]
It has become trendy to post your Spotify stats during Wrapped season – a time to reflect on your music journey over the year and to scrutinise your habits at the same time.
Wrapped stats include the main stars of the show: a top five count of songs, artists, and genres personalised to each user’s streaming patterns from January-November.
As these aesthetically appealing graphics of our music taste are plastered all over social media each December, there have been an influx of dupe sites replicating the same data-tracking algorithm.
[Image Source: Recieptify]
This Wrapped algorithm turns your top Spotify artists into a dream festival line-up. [Image Source: InstaFest]
Since Spotify Wrapped began in 2016, the platform has incorporated new features into each release.
2019 featured a pop-up of the first song you listened to in the new year, and 2020 presented a variety of playlists alongside your top songs: like Missed Hits and On Record.
2021’s Wrapped was the most experimental yet (and arguably had the most cringeworthy taglines and questionable graphic design choices).
With a 2 truths and 1 lie section, a Main Character Soundtrack element, and an Audio Aura visually displaying a colour gradient representing the feelings of your most listened to music.
Taking ‘down with the kids’ lingo a little too seriously. [Image Source: Spotify Wrapped 2021]
In 2021, Spotify added a new collaborative feature to its main app: Blend. Connecting users together and blending music tastes which update daily changing the songs throughout.
Some users have wished these friend-crossovers could be part of the Wrapped experience.
What could have made this year’s Wrapped even better?
Tweets on the #SpotifyWrapped included ideas such as evolution roundups, covering listening patterns over several years instead of a single 11-month period.
Another user critiqued the platform’s experimentation and wishes it would retreat back to its humble beginnings – a single playlist of top songs with less of the trying-too-hard-to-be-relatable elements.
But regardless of the complex design updates, the statistics for artist listening have become stagnant in the last few years. 2020 and 2021 both seen Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny as the most streamed artist of the year globally, and with his sixth studio album Un Verano Sin Ti: breaking the record for the fastest album to reach six billion streams in Spotify history, and 2022’s Wrapped results have secured his third year at the top.
Particularly since the pandemic in 2020, TikTok has become a significant influencer for turning songs viral overnight.
Indie-rock and R&B singer Steve Lacy’s 2022 hit Bad Habit has become a TikTok legend with almost 650k videos on the platform featuring the song. Its success has earned Lacy two Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, competing with pop sensations Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Adele.
Viral hits may be the reason this year’s top song was harder to predict.
The fast success of Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero which recently broke the record for the most digital sales in one week of all-time was a contender, but the mellow pop track was overshadowed by Harry Styles’ As It Was.
According to the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Style’s lead single for his third studio album Harry’s House, earned the most weeks at #1 in 2022 and broke the record for the longest-reigning song by a soloist in history – topping Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You and Mariah Carey’s We Belong Together. Trumping Lacy’s Bad Habit, As It Was garnered 2.5 million TikTok hits and statistically proved its influence over the charts this year.
2022 Wrapped Statistics. [Image Source: Spotify]
This annual opportunity to flaunt your music taste, meanwhile silently judging everyone else’s, is the true magic of this time of year.
Why listen to music religiously if you can’t subtly flex that you were in the top 1% of Arctic Monkeys’ listeners in 2022?
