Every year, 433 million people anxiously await their end-of-the-year Spotify Wrapped. Spotify Wrapped, a campaign that began in 2016, is just about the only time when Gen Z-ers feel comfortable letting a multi-billion dollar company track and share their data.
Most Listened to Song
There are multiple components that make up the Spotify Wrapped statistics. Though each year is slightly different, most things stay the same. The first consistent feature highlights the listener’s most played song. Mine was 070 Shake’s “Under the Moon.”
Despite listening to a wide variety of songs this year, I am very aware that I did in fact spend at least the entire months of January and February playing this on a loop. This feature on Spotify wrapped is usually the most predictable for users like me, who hyper-fixate on their favorite songs.
Most Listened to Artist
The next highly anticipated component is the data that tells us our most listened-to artist, as well as how often we listen to that artist compared to other fans. In my case, my #1 artist was Drake, who actually happens to be the #1 most streamed artist in the US this year. I guess you could say my taste isn’t all that unique…
Listening “Personality” Types
However, this year, Spotify helped us listeners feel that our tastes are slightly more personal. The new feature on this year’s Wrapped seems to allude to the Myers-Briggs personality types. There are of four different “personality types” that Spotify generated. Mine was ENVC, or “The Early Adopter” which appears to be a much nicer way of repeating what I already knew — once again — my taste isn’t all that original.
Like Myers-Briggs, each letter in our “personality types” has a meaning. The first letter will either be E or F (Familiarity or Exploration). The second letter, is either L or V (Loyalty or Variety). The third letter can be either T or N (Timelessness or Newness), while the final letter will be either C or U (Commonality or Uniqueness). My “personality type” consisting of Exploration, Variety, Newness, and Commonality, essentially tells me that though my music taste might be generally mainstream; at least I branch out more than others. The other types, The Adventurer, and The Deep Diver are probably reserved to people with more niche interests, while The Devotee could describe someone who really only listens to the same songs over and over again.
Spotify Wrapped, though only technically capable of telling us our listening habits, if we read between the lines, the data also tells us about ourselves. It reminds us of what we’ve been through over the course of the year as it is reflected by the sounds we were drawn to.
Exposing Our Year
Our Spotify Wrapped could tell us how many hours we cried over our exes or how many times we needed to listen to white noise in order to fall asleep. It can tell us how often we explored outside our comfort zones and exposed ourselves to many genres of music, or if we are subject to pop culture trends and billboard top 100 songs.
No matter who our top artist is, or what songs we had on repeat this year, Gen Z is collectively fond of Spotify Wrapped, especially if we spend twelve months anticipating it. Every year, we decide whether or not our data is incredible and worth showing off on our Instagram stories, or if it turns out to be highly embarrassing and we wouldn’t dare to share these statistics online.
I personally, fall somewhere in between the two.
