30k Minutes on Spotify: Why Your Wrapped Sucks
I recalibrate my music taste as you read on.
note: this was a pretty last minute idea, and because of that I missed all the evidence collection that came out during Wrapped week. you’ll just have to believe me when I make certain claims!
Move aside, Christmas. Move aside, Thanksgiving. Move aside, Winter Solstice and any other end of year celebrations that I missed out because I am not all-knowing when it comes to end of year traditions. The only event I’m concerned about is non other than Spotify Wrapped Day (SWD). And looking at, not just mine, but everyone’s Spotify Wrapped this year, I can safely say we fell off.
Hey man, you posted your top artists on your Instagram story, not me. If the truth is hard-hitting, then I’m swinging a hundred kilogram mallet at you. I have the free will as the viewer to heavily scrutinise who were in your ears this year. And as a pseudo creator of content, what better way to turn something harmless and fun into semi-ragebait content?
Though today I want to explain why it seems everyone’s Wrapped seemed ever-so-slightly more disappointing than last year. Fret not! As they say, nothing exists in a vacuum, and your warped Wrapped isn’t all your fault.
Tension and…tension?
While I can’t access my 2023 Wrapped and make stronger comparisons to this year’s Wrapped, what I know is that SWD 2024 came much, much later than previous years. SWD 2024 was 4 Dec. Here were the dates of SWD in the past 5 years.
This is the first SWD in 3 years that was in December, and the first after five years to appear after the 1st. Analysing trends will not make you land on the assumption that this year’s SWD would end up late in the first week of December. This didn’t help with the fact that Spotify constantly created growing expectations of Wrapped by giving a pop-up of previous top songs every time you opened the app. Just give me my damn minutes, you green thing.
First Impressions Count More Than Your Minutes
And all that build up, all that tension, for what?
For this:
What, what IS this? I’m just realising the pink thing is the number 24, as in 2024. This Microsoft Windows 2000s glitch window effect threw me off immediately when I unwrapped my Wrapped. All that waiting, and I get what’s akin to a poorly made brush effect on Procreate? This was last year’s Wrapped design:
What happened to fun? To being whimsical? Do we not have enough darkness in this cruel world? I can name at least 5 colours in 2023’s Wrapped design, I can name at least 5 things wrong with 2024’s Wrapped design.
But let’s press on. Surely they would have incorporated more intricate designs as you tapped through your Wrapped?
Oh. Sorry for being hopeful.
Concepts Still In Their Conceptual Phase
Previous years’ Wrapped had tons of concepts and graphics that were fun to follow. I do love a good diagram, and this particular one in 2023’s Wrapped tickled me greatly:
Sure, it’s a pretty awful way to convey data, but damn, does it look fun!
And here was 2022’s design for top genres:
What makes Spotify Wrapped great is because it packages your data in such an entertaining way. Sure, maybe all you listened to was the same song 1000 times, but you could always count on Spotify to take away the insanity associated with it by packaging it in some colourful graphics!
So tell me, why did it seem like the concepts for this year’s Wrapped stayed in the conceptual phase?
I believe that in some employee’s laptop there IS a plan with all the fun stuff, but for some reason they said, No, we are not doing that this year. No top genres, no exploration, no personality indicator. All we had was some genre evolution that, for me, didn’t even cover past May. And the titles all looked AI generated.
And I’ve seen a lot worse on Instagram.
Summing Up
So yes. Too much build up, not enough results to justify it. Some say that it’s because an intern created it. My god! That’s what they say every year! “Wrapped was so good this year because a Gen Z intern created it,” “Thank you to the intern for making Wrapped unhinged,” “They made an intern do it, that’s why it’s so bad,” Stop this intern slander, I say. The interns did nothing wrong. And I’d expect they’d put everything into Wrapped given how interns take the oddest jobs.
I do think a more plausible answer are the lay offs that Spotify employees have been facing. With almost 1/5 of their workforce gone, there is probably a more massive strain on getting content out. With the use of AI, who’s to say that actually maybe this Wrapped was designed by a robot and not humans?
But enough about Spotify. Let’s talk about you.
Okay, Now It’s Your Turn
You have some blame on this. I know it because I suffered from decisions I made 11 months ago. I was in disbelief when I saw that one of my top songs was from ILLIT.
“ILLIT?!”
My genuine reaction to seeing them on my top 5
I’ve barely listened to them, as far as I could recall. And this is where trap #1 lies. We really only remember what we listen to in the recent 4-5 months. January and February are miles away from where we are now. But just because they’re distant, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Furthermore, I believe for those with school years starting in September, there is then a fundamental disjunct between how you perceive yourself in the first and second half of the year. I’m a new person this year, you say to yourself in September. Well, your Wrapped disagrees. To them, you’re the same person who listened to Magnetic at the start of the year on repeat.
Let’s Wrap Up
We have an idea that our top 5 artists need to by interesting, lowkey, underground. And it is painful when half of your top 5 are artists you abandoned in the middle of the year. Wrapped has caused us to stop looking at our listening linearly and rather as one year chunks that don’t make sense to us. We look back and say, hang on, I don’t remember that. While sometimes it’s a good nostalgia kick, other times people are upset because the music doesn’t reflect who they are anymore. I remind you that a year is a long time, and that at the end of the day, Wrapped is just a collection of data. I say listen to whatever you want, have some fun with Wrapped, and that whatever comes out next year will of course not be accurate. Not in the sense of data, but more of a insight to who you are. That being said, I will be reconsidering what I listen to next year.
Lastly, to all my Apple music users, cope or something, I guess. I never really know what to say to you guys.