Marketing teams in the music business get million dollar budgets to be able to get people talking about a particular song, feature in a platform, or series, but the most organic way to get people talking has always been by building cool stuff. That was exactly the idea behind Spotify wrapped. An idea that started off in 2015 as “Year in Music.” The idea was to create something that just shows a recap of what listeners have been paying attention to for the past year. It was rebranded in 2016 as Spotify Wrapped incorporating social media ready visuals, and it has never looked back.
A feature that began as a quirky play to make users have a sort of report card for the streaming of the past year has turned into a million dollar marketing tool that has reshaped the listeners perspective of the end of the year. What makes it more fun? Spotify doesn’t beg users to share it. Users just organically have been doing it for years, excited to share what they have been enjoying.
Let’s revisit how we got here.
Spotify Wrapped Provided Self-Expression
Music is the expression of an artist. In the past, audience have accepted that listening, and going to shows are the ultimate forms of showing that you resonate with an artist.
Enter Spotify Wrapped, another way for audiences to express themselves. The reports for the listener at the end of the year represents more than just data, it shows a picture, an identity and a keycard to a culture of whichever artist you listened to the most.
In this age of social branding, Spotify didn’t say “Share this” they said “This is you” and with self expression being the currency of this modern Gen-Z age, the audience humbly obliged. Wrapped turning listening data into identity content accidentally gave Spotify a viral event every December.
Myth vs Reality
Due to size of Spotify Wrapped, it is natural for the public to have a certain type of inquisitiveness towards the origination of the idea. There is a widely shared story that Jewel Ham a former intern helped created the story version of Spotify Wrapped which helped make it the global phenomenon that it is today.
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What is true ? Spotify Wrapped began in 2015 as Year in Music and according to Spotify, Jewel Ham was an intern that did help with some work that has helped wrapped to it’s current state, but Spotify acknowledged that while interns did contribute, it was a case of multiple people contributing to get it to the current state. Whatever contributions Jewel might have suggested would not have been enough to twist a five year project into “her work” especially in an era where the story format has been copied by everyone.
An interview with Jewel from a few years ago disputes some of this, but we’ll let you decide.
Artists get in on the buzz
Spotify Wrapped took it a step further when they created an artist version. it enabled not only the music audience but the entire community in 2019 when they added the story feature and Wrapped for artists. Instead of paying artists for marketing they devised a means to get artists to tell their audiences to *use* Spotify over their competitors, little wonder why Spotify has 713 million subscribers and 31.7% of the music streaming market share (according to Forbes) over 50% more than it’s nearest competitors.
Competitors can’t compete
Being the first doesn’t necessarily mean mean you would stay the best, but reverse has been the case with Spotify Wrapped. Competitors Apple Music have rolled out Replay in the last couple of years and Youtube Music with YouTube Music Stats but that has not affected the value of Wrapped. It is actually a tenable argument to say that has strengthened the social currency of Wrapped even more. There’s less people posting the data from the competition but their adapting the yearly roll out is an admission of the brilliance that Wrapped is and in turn draws even their audience towards the Wrapped social cult even more.
How Long can it last
Spotify Wrapped being rolled out this year made it 10 years since the first version under the defunct “Year in Music”. That is longevity and that has played a part in improving their social currency but like Blackberry and Nokia in the past, we all know that without innovation there is always a chance of being swept away. The aim for Spotify should be to reduce the naysayers with better quality data, keep the designs as socially centred as possible and add new features like a chance of seeing friends wrapped before they share and more in-depth on the music and why the listener has such listening patterns.
Spotify Wrapped 2024 was underwhelming, 2025 was definitely better and had a lot more buzz and next year’s can definitely take it up a notch, we can’t wait.
