Wrapped up in Ourselves: How Spotify hypnotises culture for a week

“I’m terrified of what my Spotify Wrapped is going to give me this year,” a friend of mine admitted. Given Eliza’s bizarre and all-over-the-place tastes, perhaps she should be terrified. But her comment got me thinking about Spotify Wrapped (and Apple Music Replay and YouTube Music Recap) and the cultural vibrations it sets off every December.

This time each year, Spotify presents its users with a report card of the music they’ve been listening to over the past year, breaking it down by most-streamed songs, genres, listening time, and other listening habits. Accompanying this information are graphics and animation which get more lurid every year – I dread to think how hallucinatory this year’s presentation will be. (P.S: Surprisingly not as much of an attack on the eyes as last year’s… However, it was an attack on the soul when considering this year's Wrapped was driven by AI in favour of the human creativity of the staff that were fired in multitudes.)  

When Wrapped drops, it’s on most people’s tongues. You're bound to get asked what your Wrapped was, just like how you'll be asking others the same question. Your social media feed will turn into a long wall plastered with everyone’s music tastes. It’s an inescapable cultural moment that lasts for no more than a week. No wonder Apple Music and YouTube have come up with their own versions.

Allow me to go on a ridiculous tangent which I swear serves a purpose. I work at a café where we use an app called Deputy to clock in and out of our shifts, check our rotas, request holidays, and other work-related admin. Deputy have also jumped on the Wrapped train with their yearly round-up called Clock Out. The only personalised information it gives you is how many shifts you’ve worked that year; the rest is generic stuff like how many total shifts were logged that year and in how many countries. That’s a whole lot of animation just to tell me I’ve worked 161 shifts this year. I guess that’s because Deputy doesn’t collect as much user data as, say, Spotify or Apple Music. I’ll come back to this later…

Duolingo has one. Reddit has one too. Who’s next? And I mean, why shouldn’t companies sink their teeth into this marketing-strategy-turned-cultural-touchpoint? It’s free advertising for them. Sharing the results on your socials and talking about it with people is at the heart of this trend. One’s intimate and inexpressible dialogue with music suddenly becomes quantified, the whole transcript of the conversation on display for those you choose to share it with. You could, of course, not share it. Keep your dirty secrets to yourself. But that excludes you from the moment. How are you supposed to air your musical laundry if you’ve got nothing hanging on the line?

This very sudden publicity of your music tastes can be quite daunting, especially if you don’t know what’s going to turn up. Music is a large part of a lot of people’s identities, 812 million people to be a bit more precise, if we take the combined number of active users on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. And genres play a key role in this identity creation.

Rivers of ink have flowed over acres of paper in trying to typify genres. But music defies easy classification, especially on the overlapping and permeable margins of its genres. “In my opinion” chimes in Eliza, “all genres that have been solidified in taste and vocabulary only get a definitive set of qualities in hindsight, or once a substantial set of traits can not only be traced but articulated into a Wikipedia article.” Entire cultural movements are founded and defined by musical genres, and listening to a specific type of music often clocks you as a card-carrying member of said group. Normies, weirdos, hippies, snobs, metalheads, ravers etc, (an admittedly haphazard and inexhaustive list of groups) have specific or multiple genres associated with them, listening to which validates your involvement. So, naturally, people take their music tastes very seriously, wearing it as a badge of honour or disrepute.

“Over time,” says my friend Belle, “musical genres seem to be getting more and more specific and niche.”

Mine and Belle’s friend Tabby, on the other hand, thinks that genres – powered by algorithms and personalised playlists – have become more fluid and transitory. I’m getting some suspicious Liquid Modernity vibes here.

Belle continues, “Although music rivalry has existed, I think the pressure of putting a label on yourself and aligning your tastes to one hyper-specific musical genre is alienating people and actually preventing them from discovering new music outside of their prescribed tastes.”

Alienating as they can be, my coworker Connor believes genres also allow for connections between people out in the wild. “Genres have become very weird. They’re subcultures within subcultures now. If I started talking about Neurofunk or Bristol Rollers, most people would think, ‘what the fuck is he talking about?’ They probably wouldn’t even be able to tell them apart from traditional drum and bass. But listeners of the genre can hear it in their head and describe what makes those genres unique. And when you do run into someone else who listens to the same niche genres as you, it’s a really special thing.” There’s a certain subcultural capital in knowing the esoteric ins and outs of a niche genre. That currency, however, is only useful within the bounds of that subculture; outside of it, it might as well be Monopoly money.

Based on what Connor is saying, Tabby believes genres still hold value as cultural markers. “They serve as shorthand for describing music styles and subcultures, giving both artists and listeners a way to identify with certain sounds or movements.” With their explosive proliferation, genres have become a confusing morass for the casual listener. Hence, umbrella terms are useful for people to chart their way to the niche sounds of a particular genre.   

“Fuck genres!” my friend Chloe begs to differ. “They’re complicated and there’s too many of them. That’s a little harsh, I think genres are good in that I can say, yes I enjoy metal or indie. I have a tribe. I just don’t like it when people take their tribe too seriously. A lot of gatekeeping comes with music genres. The metal community is particularly bad for this. If your metal isn’t heavy enough, you’re a poser and clearly haven’t listened to g0oD metal. I just want to listen to my songs without having to prove I’m a platinum member of the genre. YOU LIKE GRUNGE? NAME A BAND OTHER THAN NIRVANA they’ll say… I can like my handful of Nirvana songs and still enjoy grunge, just like I can enjoy a few Ariana Grande songs and still not be a fan of pop music. I want to have several hands in several pies without feeling like I’ve gotta be all up in em’, you feel?”

Music is one of humanity’s common heritages. It belongs to us all rather than the cultured few.

Far from an accurate representation of one’s music tastes – the Minecraft album dominates my rankings simply because it’s on my sleep playlist – Wrapped does indeed validate, and to some extent legitimise, one’s musical choices. Music streaming is more algorithmic than organic, but many people don’t care about that. They just want the numbers! But who are the numbers really for?

Chloe thinks, “Your tastes are no longer just for you. If Wrapped has any cultural significance, I don’t think it should. It’s quite performative and I’m not sure it has much significance other than seeking reassurance that your extremely specific music tastes gathered by an algorithm are socially acceptable, or not (if that’s what you’re into).”

Eliza, meanwhile, has a different conception in mind. “All things adjective to cultural taste are political, and to have a diagnosis made for you [by Wrapped], using zero effort, technological knowledge or deep personal reflection, is a volatile tool with both qualitative and quantitative repercussions.”

This advertisement of your identity gives rise to those who, with picky discernment, exclude things from their taste profile so it doesn’t get included in their Wrapped. A snob, for example, who only wants math rock or pirate metal to show up on their Wrapped but also likes Taylor Swift as a guilty pleasure might exclude her from their taste profile so it doesn’t get registered. Kind of like listening to music in incognito mode. Other complications arise when sharing your music account with another person. Having shared my Spotify account with my ex in the past produced a wildly mismatched Wrapped that placed Doja Cat and Beyonce among the top artists alongside King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, The Rolling Stones, and Kikagaku Moyo – a fairly accurate result for both sides. Now, you could go policing what your friend, lover, or family listen to on your account by excluding it from your taste profile, but then you miss out on the gloriously freakish amalgamation of your differing tastes.

A person’s identity isn’t a solid and rigidly defined mass; it has no edges or geometry. Instead, it’s a loose collection of memories, relationships, experiences, and objects. Like a cloud of space dust and debris orbiting around a celestial body. Alongside the people you surround yourself with (or not), the things you do (or don’t), and the items within (and without) your life, all contribute to who you are.

This is pretty obvious, why am I telling you this? It all comes down to one of the vital organs of a capitalist society: consumption. We’ve lived in capitalism for long enough that it’s embedded into the bones of society. From the moment we’re born we’re conditioned into consumptive beings, our perception waterlogged by a deluge of adverts, whether explicit or implicit. The insidious art of advertising is inherently a psychological one.

“Having a unique identity is important to us,” Eliza tells me. “People want to be different, noticeable, and they want validation or their quirks.”

Chloe seconds this by saying, “We as human blobs love to prove that we aren’t othered and can also get with the programme.”

Advertising weaponises this desire for individuality and convinces us that aspects of our identity can be reinforced, created, and removed through what we consume. Naturally, this applies to music too.

Eliza continues, “As much as physically owning a piece of your favourite musician’s legacy (vinyl, cassettes, magazines, paper tickets) has been phased out in the current digital age, there is still a hunger for something tactile to prove our dedication, and Spotify Wrapped eagerly satisfied that craving. However, the primal flaunting of possessions is not seen as appropriate in our current climate, so Spotify Wrapped - a little less tactile and more sensitively conceptual - lets us assert self-worth and status without the conditions of being a materialist.”

An important question to beg at this point is, can a person’s identity exist in a vacuum or must it be held in relation to others? Must it be witnessed by others for it to be validated? Humans are naturally social creatures and we live both for ourselves and for others, but if only one person existed, would they have an identity? It’s similar to the question of if a tree fell without anyone hearing it, did it fall at all? But that’s not a question we’re concerned with here, what we care about is if a tree fell, would it create a sick beat? And what are the chances of that ending up on my Wrapped?

Here's what Belle has to say about people. “I think people love to talk about themselves, especially in the digital age where social media cultivates an environment where people’s online personas define their social statuses. Showcasing your musical interest just helps solidify your digital personality to your followers. I think Spotify saw this need to share every aspect of your life online and took the opportunity to capitalise on it.”

Eliza takes this further by saying, “It gives individuals the gratification of a year of sonic self-indulgence in a pretty little graphic that’s super easy to share on social media. I think the integration of music into communicative channels (TikTok, Instagram, etc) means our personalities can be projected even more easily on art made by others. Think of how difficult it would be to relay your internal dynamics without decades’ worth of music to cushion the blow of blunt emotion.”

Chloe feels that the world has become more guarded and closed off, so Wrapped’s potential to find human connection isn’t lost on her. “Social media has become such a performative shield. You can share everything you want people to see about the many facets of your personality, but you can also re-touch and reshape, edit and delete entirely. I think Wrapped - for better or worse - forces people to be more vulnerable. Unless you are specifically catering your music listening habits to create the “coolest” Wrapped line up (which is sad as all fuck), it does force you to share the private parts of your day-to-day self. If you choose to share it that is. I guess it’s a way to connect people on topics and musicians they wouldn’t know they had in common. If you share your intimate music line up with me, I feel more inclined to also share mine with you and receive validation based on it. We all just need a hug.”

Yes we do.

With all this baggage I’ve dumped at your feet, let’s drag it all the way back to the conversation about genres and taste.

Our beings are bifurcated into the public and private self. Often enough we keep certain traits private while others come out only around other people. That, I think, is simply the natural effect of being conscious, self-aware creatures. The constellation of music aligns itself with the stars of our public and private selves. Not necessarily the rule, but there’s stuff we’ll listen to in our most private and intimate moments, whereas there’s music that only makes sense in company.

For my coworker Connor, those two halves of the self have layers, unfurling differently depending on the people he’s around. “Some of my friends don’t like drum and bass or early 2000s pop music, so I definitely won’t be playing that around them. I bring out what I think is acceptable in the company.” Or unacceptable, for there is definitely a tantalising drive to commit aux-cord terrorism (I’m looking at you Eliza) by playing music that will illicit responses along the lines of, “Who the fuck put this on?!” The point is, the company often determines what parts of your private musical self you bring public.

“I would be lying,” admits Belle with a blush, “if I said there weren’t times when I thought to myself ‘oh no this isn’t going to look good on my Wrapped’ when listening to a guilty pleasure song at home.”

Our private and public relationships with music influence each other. “To have one is to have the other,” Chloe says sagely. “It’s not exactly public or private but rather the personal relationship someone has with music. It’s nice to share this relationship and invite people to feel part of something you enjoy. As much as I think Wrapped is performative, I also love to post a good song on my Instagram story!”

Eliza agrees. “You can pin music to your Instagram profile now, and if this isn’t an alternative to a verified sticker, I don’t know what is.”

As mentioned before, our identities and all their corresponding detritus are things we often put on display; so it’s in the presentation of the private and public self that ideas of taste and culture are tangled up.

Some people take their music tastes seriously. Too seriously. I have a reputation to uphold! says the person whose entire personality is based on their ostensibly refined musical palate. Taking their public musical selves to the extremes introduces condescension towards listeners of genres like pop. Which, in turn, probably stems from some private insecurity about how they’ll be perceived. They wouldn’t be caught dead listening to certain music. And Wrapped might exacerbate this pompous behaviour.

As happens with any kind of art, the consumption of its ““““““““““higher”””””””””””, more intellectual forms is often misconstrued as the reserve of the elite. A misconstrual steeped in the historical snobbery of the upper class looking down upon ““““““““““lower”””””””””” forms of art and the people who consume them. Ultra-specific and niche preferences in any art have the potential to be misappropriated for status symbols. Look at me and how discerning my ear is, I listen to noise on purpose, unlike all you sheep! This can explain why some people might use their music taste – and by extension, their Wrapped – for clout.

My friend Taro has some pretty strong imprecations for such folk. “If I catch anyone using their Spotify Wrapped for clout, it’s heavily beam-me-up-softboy coded. It’s virtue signalling. Imagine somebody forcing themselves through hundreds of hours of Xiu Xiu so the CSM student with the Onitsuka Tigers will text them back. They might, but they still won’t sleep with them until their trust fund matures and they can open a doomed gallery space in Deptford and they turf-out the rough sleepers from the doorway just before the private view starts.”

In other words, Eliza thinks that “in a more direct way, Wrapped is vain and ostensibly gives ammunition to pricks to brag indirectly about their shallowness. Wrapped is the ultimate ‘I like your band T-shirt, now name three songs’ of all media trends.”

This inflation of the snob’s ego lies in Wrapped placing dedicated listeners in the top percentage of a musician’s listeners. Usually some tiny minuscule number. Belle elaborates, “People will boast about being in an artist’s top 0.1% of listeners to prove their dedication as a fan or show off their niche underground music taste to their friends.”

To shove all this rambling out of the realm of angry speculation and into the real world, let me frisbee a case study your way.

Concerning the brandishing of pitchforks and flaming torches against a super fan.

2022. Viral TikToker Brittany Broski, affectionately known as ‘kombucha girl’, is virtually crucified for not having Harry Styles on her Spotify Wrapped. Brittany - whose TikTok personality is largely drenched with her being a Harry Styles super fan (‘stan’, if my editor will allow me to leave this in) – revealed her Spotify Wrapped and her fans weren’t happy. They were quick to point out she didn’t have Harry Styles anywhere on her top artists. By proxy, the fans of a Harry Style-adjacent influencer are also Harry Styles fans. . The general consensus among her fans, known quite unimaginatively as ‘Harries’, was that she wasn’t a dedicated enough fan for not having Harry in her top artists.

Sense prevailed in the many people who came to her defence and urged her critics to go touch some grass.

I knew fandoms could be toxic but I didn’t know it had reached as far as stanning other stans. It’s a parasocial relationship, not just with a celebrity but also with other people who have a parasocial relationship with them. Weird implications for the concept of celebrity which I don’t have time nor space to get into. What I will get into, however, is the significance Wrapped held in this saga. Is that the criterion by which we judge people and their tastes against now? This kind of behaviour suggests that people aren’t allowed to have more than one thing they like.

This refers to the subcultural capital from one culture being useless in another. Chloe says, “A Cardi B fan isn’t going to give you clout for liking Nine Inch Nails. I think it goes back to belonging to a tribe and proving that you’re worthy to be a listener and part of that genre or fanbase, which inherently can be quite toxic.” In this case, Brittany’s fans disregard her love for other musicians – her Wrapped line up was Bad Bunny, Tame Impala, The 1975, Hozier, and Rosalia, for those who are wondering. Also, following and engaging with the content of an influencer whose entire persona is based off being the fan of the same celebrity you’re a fan of, I can’t think of a more solid validation of your tastes than that.

Dear reader - for anyone who’s reached this far down into this twisted rabbit hole – I’ve trespassed on quite a bit of your time and patience by trying to frame Spotify Wrapped (and Apple Music Replay and YouTube Music Recap, see I haven’t forgotten about you after all) as some deviant force out to turn us into music fascists. Reading all this gibberish you may have been thinking, who gives a shit? Does anyone even care about all this? And you wouldn’t be the least bit wrong. There’s a fair few freaks out there, but does anybody among the normal even care about this stuff? You will come across a friend’s Wrapped on your social media, look at it, and scroll past without a second thought. Or you’ll discuss it once with everyone you know. Perhaps an inside joke might come out of it. But other than that, after a week everyone forgets that Wrapped even was a thing. At least as far as the equilibrium of culture goes, though Spotify Wrapped has some significance, it’s not a danger.

Which means I’ve spent that entire section wasting your time. You’re welcome.

If you’ve still decided to read on after that, you’ve either become numb to my ravings or you’re somehow still interested in the subject.

What’s worth remembering is that Wrapped is the creation of Spotify, a corporation selling a product. And if there’s one thing corporations go into an orgiastic frenzy over, it’s user data. The more they can gorge themselves off, the better. Their servers are like ravenous black holes, sucking up data without an end in sight. It’s all in service of knowing their customers better to sink hooks deeper into them.

Data collection is in Wrapped’s DNA. What are the implications of that?

Tabby thinks “It feels strange that Spotify tracks every song, genre, and artist people listen to, creating detailed reports on their behaviour. The fact that a streaming service knows this much about your habits can be unsettling for some, maybe? Especially if you’re not used to thinking about how much data is being collected.”

Taro is decidedly unsettled about the whole thing. “My Wrapped,” he says, “is causing me more and more anxiety over time. It used to reveal cute and welcome insights about my listening that would make me feel like a real person. I used to like the experience of feeling seen by the algorithm. It’s sinister now - nothing has essentially changed about what Wrapped is, but now it’s hard for me to ignore that it’s an app showing off how granular and detailed it can get with the digital version of me that it’s been building. It will undoubtedly be used to narrowcast increasingly specific adverts into my real life.”

For an algorithm to understand us, it minutely studies all of our habits, creating an algorithmic copy of us based on every interaction. It feels like each stream, each time we skip a song, each recommendation we accept, all these are the bits by which our algorithmic selves are created.

Taro continues broodingly, “I feel like I’m looking into the heart of the autonomous crime prediction software stored in a hot server in the bowels of Scotland Yard - they are drawing conclusions on the likelihood of future transgressions and are just waiting to pre-emptively pounce. So when Wrapped tells me I’m in the top 10% of JPEGMAFIA listeners worldwide, I just feel cold. And unsurprised.”

It doesn’t inspire much faith when you think that some authoritarian regimes already employ crime prediction algorithms in their surveillance. Spotify’s algorithm is simply an adolescent version of that. Only difference is, where every personal detail like health, banking history, and interactions are used to create a simulacrum of a person in the data banks of a surveillance state, every track listened to on Spotify becomes “part of a gestalt musical golem that gets reanimated every year”, as Taro writes.

Discomfiting as it is, from a marketing standpoint, Wrapped is genius. It’s the ultimate UNO Reverse. Not only does this corporation get to harvest every morsel of data out of you – often without your knowing – but then it hands that data, decorated with pretty colours and cool animations, back to you, only for you to share it on your socials, giving them free advertising. The uncompensated and uncredited intern who came up with such a radical idea was really done dirty by Spotify.

Data collection is really having a moment right now. Algorithms are out, roaming the forest in packs armed with hunting rifles, and it’s open season on customer data.

Chloe has given up on the idea of data privacy. “I think at this point we have so much personal information online that is accessible to numerous third-party organisations, health organisations etc. For obvious reasons, I will keep the important things guarded such as my banking information and things I absolutely would not want on the internet. But the idea that ANYTHING on the internet these days is private or ethically sourced when it is accessed by third-party companies is a joke. They can have my data scraps at this point.”

Ever the discerning consumer, Belle thinks, “It is difficult to exist nowadays without your data being harvested. Spotify has my data either way, so I’d at least like to see it. In fact, I’d like more apps to give me a Wrapped. I want all the data.” Well isn’t she lucky, given how many companies are deciding to adopt this yearly trend.

This does mean that companies are now in a race to siphon as much data out of their customers as possible. They’re even aware of the fact that data supremacy is what keeps them ahead of the curve against other corporations. Is there a possibility that companies will only ramp up tracking and studying their customers to stay ahead of the curve?

I wouldn’t put it past them.

I’ve spent all this time moaning about Wrapped yet I was just as excited as last year when it finally dropped today. And I wasted no time in sharing it on my Instagram. Even though my Wrapped this year is cracked. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe. Do you have to renounce all enjoyment of Wrapped and take a vow of musical chastity? Of course not!

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with enjoying Wrapped and sharing it with your friends. Inaccurate as it tends to be, it is still, after all, a celebration of music listened to. For a species that revels in nostalgia and looking back upon the past, this is the perfect indulgence. It calls forth music that has mesmerised, anchored, or propelled us through the year. For me, music is the closest thing to time travel I’ve witnessed, as it transports me back into emotions and states of mind during which a particular song left a strong impression on me.

“Imagine,” asks Taro, “being on your deathbed and getting to look at your lifetime Spotify Wrapped. That’s kinda cool actually. Maybe they should get that going.” Good idea, but knowing Spotify’s tendencies, Taro will get no acknowledgement for having thought of the idea.