Spotify Wrapped is an annual feature released by the music streaming app Spotify between late November and early December, showcasing a user’s musical evolution throughout the year. This personalized summary helps increase overall user engagement. It provides statistics such as a user’s top five artists, the total minutes spent listening to those artists and the overall listening minutes for the year.
To generate the statistics for Spotify Wrapped, the app records data using a variety of techniques. Cluster analysis labels a user’s specific musical taste while k-means clustering groups users with similar artists and genres together. This, paired with the use of Natural Language Processing, allows Spotify to personalize Wrapped for each user.
Before the 2024 Wrapped came out, NHP students and teachers made predictions and shared their expectations for this year.
“My Spotify Wrapped hasn’t been the most accurate in recent years since I use my account when I play music for my art classes, and my students often contribute to different playlists,” art teacher Ms. Livoti said. “So, it will probably reflect what we end up listening to in class, which is a varied mix of classic rock, current pop, 90s alternative and 2010 pop. It will also probably tell me I’ve listened to Taylor Swift 90,000 times this year!”
“I’m expecting Drake, Hamilton and Lana Del Rey as my top three artists. I don’t think Spotify Wrapped will be accurate though because my mood changes every season,” senior Jaimy Mathew said.
“I think my top artists will be The Neighbourhood, Fall Out Boy and Melanie Martinez. I think it will be accurate because for the past few years I felt like Spotify Wrapped has really captured my essence for that year,” junior Nayana Kabir said.
“I hope to see a lot of 2000s pop, Bollywood and rap this year,” senior Katelyn Vadakkan said. “However, normally I would get artists I don’t listen to anymore as my top choices.”
On December 4, Spotify Wrapped 2024 was released for users worldwide. This year, Spotify Wrapped has introduced new features, such as the longest listening streak for a user’s top artist and a Music Evolution that highlights unique music genres like “After Hours Football Rap” or “Pink Pilates Princess Hollywood Pop” the user listened through over the course of the year. Gladiators shared their thoughts on this year’s Spotify Wrapped and whether it matched their expectations.
“My Spotify Wrapped did mostly match my expectations,” junior Emily Lee said. “I was slightly surprised by my top songs, however. Even though they were all songs I listened to a lot, the order of the songs was not exactly what I expected and some songs I thought would be there weren’t. Most definitely, though, this year’s Wrapped seemed more accurate than last for me.”
“I think Spotify Wrapped met my expectations. I feel like since I don’t use Spotify as much though, some artists ranked much higher compared to how much I actually listened to them,” senior Madhav Shibu said.
“Spotify Wrapped matched my predictions. I had a lot of artists that I listened to pretty often this year,” Vadakkan said.
“Spotify Wrapped was both accurate and inaccurate for me because, on the one hand, they got it correct that my favorite artist is Imagine Dragons, but the ranked songs they had were from earlier on in the year and didn’t reflect who I am right now,” senior Karise Buckley said.
Spotify Wrapped not only offered individual summaries for users, but also provided a global overview of statistics. The top three global artists of 2024 are Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Bad Bunny. The top three global songs are “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter, “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone and “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” by Billie Eilish.
As Spotify Wrapped unveils musical journeys from various NHP students, many students expressed that the data presented in their personalized Wrapped summaries aligned closely with their actual music choices, reinforcing the platform’s ability to track and showcase individual musical tastes. With the year coming to a close, there is growing excitement to see what next year’s Wrapped will reveal about their changing musical journeys.
