Spotify Wrapped: Does it Change the Way We Listen to Music?

It's that time of year again folks. The season of sharing what you got online, comparing with your friends, receiving things you didn't want, and photoshopping the things you did want onto it; no, not Christmas, but Spotify Wrapped.

I enjoy when Wrapped comes out for specific reasons only; witnessing people embarrassingly defend why a particular artist made it to their top 5, why their top genre was pop, and how some underground artist they “love” failed to show up. For some reason, Spotify Wrapped has turned into the new Judgement Day and I’ve come to realize that music is a more significant part of how we view ourselves than I thought. 

For those Apple Music listeners out there, let me fill you in. Spotify Wrapped is an Instagram-story-like feature that appears when you open your Spotify app in early December, which reveals the year you had with the app; your top artists, your top songs, and more niche things like what your personality type is based on the music you listen to (I'm an ENVU by the way). This seems as if it’s a lighthearted and amusing way for you to reminisce about the year you had. You’d be surprised how much of a bloodbath it becomes. 

On November 30th I opened my Twitter app and the only thing that appeared on my timeline were screenshots of people’s Wrapped and I was instantaneously reminded of that scene from Mean Girls. You know, the one where the Burn Book pages flew around the school hall and everyone was doing some assortment of screaming, crying, and uncovering the dirty truth about others. That's precisely what Twitter was that day. You’d be amazed how seriously people take this event, from commenting literal hate underneath someone's tweet about their top artists, desperately defending their top songs, to others photoshopping artists on top of another to pretend their top artist wasn’t Kanye West. And then you head over to Instagram and can’t watch a story without involuntarily learning about the music taste of someone you probably barely know. But here's the thing - if you don't share your Spotify Wrapped, you’re hiding something or being fake. But if you do share, you’re offering many unwanted people the opportunity to judge you based on two stats. 

Many of my friends have told me “just post your Wrapped, just be real,” but the fact is, Spotify’s sum up of the year is highly curated and in actuality “not real” and here's why: whenever you decide to turn off your listening activity in Spotify (aka when you're listening to something embarrassing and don't want your friends to see it on the “friends listening activity”), Spotify has said themselves that they will not count it toward your wrapped. So really, only the things you want your friends to see are portrayed at the end of the year. And I don't know about you but whenever I listen to the Les Mis soundtrack (I'm so sorry) I turn off my listening activity, and I’ve got to believe that the Glee Cast would also be a lot higher on my list if I didn't have that turn-off option. So, to all of you who only had niche underground music, I must ask, how much are you using that turn-off option? Or do you know what Glee is? 

So why has music become such a stressful ordeal? Why can’t we just listen to music that we enjoy without worrying about how it will look on our Instagram story? How many people don't even listen to the music they really want to listen to in order to promote an image? Yet, Spotify Wrapped isn't the only time of the year that I find myself in this epidemic of music insecurity- when I use a friend's Spotify account to play a song (usually something from the iCarly soundtrack), the phone is typically snatched out of my hand saying something along the lines of “I don't want people to see I’m listening to this, it’s embarrassing!” “Shakespeare” by Miranda Cosgrove is not embarrassing. We forget how social every platform has become; I always spent so much time stressing out about Instagram likes but overlooked how Spotify is just as invasive. I mean, I’ve had people take a picture of what I’m listening to on their feed and send me the photo back with a tone of judgment, and that was enough to make me want to cancel my subscription altogether. But this notion of identity or image when it comes to music isn't new, technology just allows us to experience it differently.

In a conversation with my dad about this bizarre mayhem that is Spotify Wrapped, he recollected a similar form of music identity with his growing up in Scotland in the 80s. According to him, students at his school would arrive to class with their latest album attached to their hip, and this he said, would determine how “cool” you were. Depeche Mode, The Smiths, New Order, etc. were all signals of an angsty and “with it” persona, but people were quick to judge if you carried more pop-curated albums, or something more unfavorable like Rush, which was my dad's choice. The album functioned as a social “badge;” something that would help construct someone's personality amongst a sea of school uniforms. But who knows if they really listened to those albums, as to me, it appears evidently for show. It seems like this “curation” of music that Spotify Wrapped perpetuates is old news. 

Music has been and always will be a way to prove something, whether it be your taste, the communities to which you belong, or where you stand socially. And sometimes that can be fun! I love sharing new songs with my friends by making shared playlists or showing each other albums in the car or learning about the history my mom has with a specific artist or genre. But that's intentional and personal. Spotify Wrapped feels more like a box, one where people force me to show them that Ariana Grande has made it into my top 5 yet again. I don’t know how I do it every time. 

I love Spotify as much as the next music lover, but there is obviously a blatant issue with the way that we use it if people feel the need to photoshop or crop their stats, hide listening activity, and experience so much intimidation to share something as subjective as music. We are already socially connected in every way imaginable today, so is it necessary to add our music to that social pressure? As you may be able to sense, I’m not the biggest fan. But if you are, no judgment here, I’m sure you already get enough from posting your Wrapped online. Just make sure, that when you go into this next year, you’re listening because you want to, not because you think you should. Share your music for passion, not just perception.