Why Spotify Wrapped is a Cultural Moment Every Year

What’s so important about Spotify Wrapped? We break it down here.

Spotify Wrapped is finally here. The fact that everyone was looking out for it was proven by the flood of social media posts showing off your stats, plus the amount of people on TikTok who were making fun of the former the very day it came out. It’s hard to believe that’s a coincidence.

But why were we all so excited? What’s so important about Spotify Wrapped? We break it down here.

What is Spotify Wrapped?

Spotify outdid themselves this year. Every year the app offers up a quick look back over your listening habits, but it was usually contained to top songs and top artists.

You were no longer the person with your name. Now you were the person whose favorite song was Bohemian Rhapsody, but your favorite artist was Kendrick Lamar. Don’t try to argue, Spotify could prove it with data.

This year, Spotify made you into a well-rounded character, providing you with not only your favorite artist and song, but also your top five, your favorite podcasts, and your top five, your “aura” when listening and a whole host of other factors, including how much of a fan you were of your favorite artist.

But why do we care? We’ve got so many fun platforms: Facebook, Instagram, ggpoker.com and Twitch to mention just a few. What makes this one important?

Individualism

The sheer trendiness of Spotify Wrapped proved something: we were all trying to show off our stats. Where once our individualism was expressed in what we wear and our personal hobbies, now our individualism is expressed in data.

Spotify is also in a sweet spot that other social media platforms can only leer jealously at: it provides music. Music taste has always been one of the major things that has signaled individuality. In the 70’s people asked, “Rock or disco?” and that determined if you are cool to them. In the early millennium, the emo and hipster subcultures prided themselves on not listening to what everyone else was. Music taste was one of the major factors that made you, you, and that hasn’t changed since.

Now, however, we showcase the need to be individual on our social media platforms. We have data proof of how individual we are, and we’re going to show that off.

We still have our personal styles and hobbies to indicate who we are, but they are displayed on social media. The rockers, disco-dancers, emos and hipsters never had that. They simply had to be self-assured that their music taste made them unique. Now we have the data to back it up.

Lookbacks

The other side of the addiction to Spotify Wrapped is the lookback culture. Every year, every brand is looking back over the past year in some form. Television is filled with “Most Shocking Moments in …”, tabloids look over the past scandals, and there are even quizzes on the past year’s events.

As the saying goes, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, and we’ve become a culture who takes some time every December to analyse our own history, be that good or bad.

As for social media, all of the platforms offer you some way to look over the past year. Facebook even lets you look back a year ago today every year. TikTok is currently informing creators of their best viral videos. Even Audible is showing its users how many books they got through throughout the year.

Not only does this encourage individualism, but it allows users to see how they have grown over the years. How does their current reading habits compare to last year? How has that haircut from last year aged? Has our sense of humor or self-confidence improved? And is there some context to all these discoveries?

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

SHARE ON FACEBOOK SHARE ON TWITTER

Tags: Media Stop, Music, Spotify, Spotify Wrapped

About the Author

Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.