Spotify Wrapped immediately gained popularity all over social media when it was first released in 2016. It’s a fun way for people to thank their top artists and show off their music habits from the year to their friends on social media.
Spotify Wrapped’s popularity has not wavered, and it continues to show how much Spotify cares about the chance to bring its community together compared to other music apps.
This year Spotify released Wrapped Nov. 29 and had some new features that sent everyone into a posting frenzy.
One of the best features was the new character cards which you receive based around your listening habits. There were a total of 12 character cards, and people jumped on social media bonding and sharing their cards, even at one point creating a full rabbit-hole-like thread on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Another of the newest features added to this year’s Spotify Wrapped was called “Sound Town,” which attached your listening habits and artist preference to a city that best represents it. Users eagerly compared their assigned towns — with Burlington, Vermont, Berkeley, California, and Cambridge making headlines.
These new additions to Spotify Wrapped continue to show the care and attention Spotify puts into the release each year.
In fact, each year Spotify tries to add new features to Wrapped to encourage users to continue to push interest in it, and I have continuously seen people talk about it more and more.
Not only that but users get the opportunity to hear special messages from artists they love to listen to, adding an even more intimate experience compared to other music applications.
Just days before Spotify Wrapped was released, Apple Music released their own version of Spotify Wrapped that they have been doing since 2019 called “Replay.”
Replay did not get as much attraction or acknowledgment by its community compared to Spotify Wrapped. According to Google Trends, Spotify Wrapped led a significant lead in searches compared to Replay.
Replay attempts to do the same thing as Spotify Wrapped by showing users listening data: their top artists, the top album they listened to and their top songs.
The total run time for an Apple Music replay was approximately 1 minute compared to the approximate time for Spotify Wrapped which was around 2 and a half minutes long without skipping any of the slides.
Not only was Apple Music’s Replay shorter in length but the slides for each of the topics were so simplistic and felt dragged out with not much of a celebration to the artists or even to the users who want to feel accomplished for what they are listening to.
The brief facts and statistics don’t even appear as fun or as artistic as those shown by Spotify Wrapped.
When I look at both of the annual wrap-ups I could see a clear difference between the care and quality Spotify has over other music apps when it comes down to their annual breakdown. It feels as though every single slide is made intimately and with a care for their audience.
People want to know how much time they spent on the app, who they followed the most, what songs they were obsessed with, when they were obsessed with those songs, what podcasts they listened to the most and even special little messages from those artists they listen to.
Clearly, Spotify Wrapped shows Spotify’s dedication to a community of listeners who are interested in their music compared to other music applications.
