Trying to figure out the hoopla surrounding "Spotify Wrapped"

On December 2, Spotify released their signature “Spotify Wrapped” feature for the year, and just as expected, every participant of the streaming platform fawned over it once it hit their accounts. This year-in-review feature for music lovers that is personalized to each listener featured everything from top five songs, to analytics on what genre was listened to the most. 

The release of the feature was such a hit, made clear by the overwhelming reaction by listeners.

But may I just be the first to dare say, what's the big deal? 

From the minute the wrapped playlists arrived, social media exploded. Entire Facebook posts were dedicated to the event and Instagram stories were taken over, all so we could get a glimpse into someone’s shared family Spotify account. 

But why did we all feel the need to showcase what our top 100 songs from the worst year on record were? I mean, I get it, it's a really cool feature to have, to look back on the trends you had, when you listened to the cast album from Hamilton five times to get you through midterms, but is it necessary to screen record the entire four-minute story, only to post it to your own stories?

Let’s learn to keep this for our eyes only, as I’m sure multiple people absentmindedly scrolled through each other's stories without a second glance. 

The countless posts I’ve seen claiming “give me a number 1-100 and I’ll comment with the song on my Spotify Wrapped”, I will admit was really cool to play along with and see a random assortment of songs. But may I just point out that Spotify didn’t do us all a favor and number the songs for us past number five on our custom playlist, so who had the time to sit there and count by hand?!

What I think is even more absurd than this, is that the feature was released in the beginning of December. There still is so much more time left in the month and the year and releasing these analytics now doesn’t make much sense. I’ll be the first to admit that I would love to make the rest of this year go by as fast as possible, but I wouldn't want to rush the year and cheat myself out of the music trends for the last three weeks of 2020. What happened to all the music we are going to listen to from December 3-December 31?

My personal theory is that Spotify knows that once December hits, the trends will completely shift as everyone starts to listen to Christmas and holiday music. And what fun is having a Spotify Wrapped playlist that consists of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” and “Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber?

If my theory is indeed correct, then props to Spotify, they have some pretty smart individuals working for them. If not, then next year would it be too much to ask if we can have our Spotify Wrapped delivered December 30th?

Speaking personally to my own Spotify Wrapped playlist, I feel like there are a lot of songs on there I have most definitely not listened to in this past year. At least not enough times to be considered top 100. My saved playlists range from nineteen hours’ worth of pop and R&B music to a Glee themed workout playlist created by a friend. So, there is no way that the opening song of A Chorus Line ranks top 50 on my top songs of 2020. 

The algorithms just seem off here, but I think it is pretty clever that some songs might have been thrown into my playlist as a surprise. There are some songs I have not listened to in a really long time, and once they popped up it was a nice blast from the past to sing along to. 

And so now, just over a week after the playlists were released to all accounts, the attention has died down considerably, and we have all moved on to the next news cycle. 

Some positives to having this feature come so early are the fact that the feature creates this personal playlist for you, and you can enjoy your most liked songs for the remainder of the year. Almost as if you can reminisce as the songs play. 

We’ve all been through a tough year, and maybe the songs on your top 100 will bring back the few good memories you can salvage from the past few months. Some of my favorite songs from my list bring back memories of the car rides and long walks I took, blasting my music in the car or in my ears all because it was the only thing that would drown out the negativity coming from the outside world.

Overall, I think the Spotify Wrapped playlist is a great way to keep memories as you save it to your music library, and I can’t wait to see what next year’s songs look like!