By Erin Howatson (she/her)
It’s that time again as the year comes to a close and Christmas is quickly approaching, music lovers all over the world receive their highly anticipated (or dreaded) Spotify Wrapped!
For those who don’t know, Spotify Wrapped is an annual marketing campaign released by Spotify that allows its users to view a personalised compilation of data detailing the last 12 months of their listening habits and encourages its users to share their stats forward to social media.
Since its initial release in 2016, it has become impossible to go on social media on Wrapped day without being bombarded by friends boasting about their music taste through screenshots of brightly coloured charts and graphics, all designed by Spotify.
However, the rollout of these statistics can be embarrassing and shameful for certain users. Spotify Wrapped has become more than just a compilation of listening habits. It has subconsciously become a way for users to boast about their self-proclaimed great music taste. Or, in contrast, Wrapped now makes some users anxious about sharing theirs, because it contains some embarrassing statistics that they would rather not showcase to the world.
Spotify is always watching, and before you know it your Wrapped arrives and announces loud and proud all of your embarrassing listening habits that you never want your friends to know about. Those drives to work where you give your own rendition of the Hamilton soundtrack, all characters included? Spotify remembers. Or those nights when you regress back to your cringey teenage years and find yourself listening to all of your old favourite emo bands? Yup, they caught that too.
There is a way around this, however. Popular speculation claims that Spotify stops counting your data on October 31 every year in order for the service to have enough time to produce each individual Wrapped.
Therefore, from Halloween onwards you’re free to listen to whatever your heart desires. The Glee soundtrack? Cheesy 90s boybands? As much Christmas music as your heart desires? Go for it!
Just remember to spare a thought for those who went through a tough break-up this year, though. I sincerely hope your Wrapped’s aren’t completely plagued with Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo.
As someone who has been burned before with embarrassing wrapped results, I say you just have to embrace your embarrassing music taste every once in a while. And who knows? Maybe your friends are also cropping out just how many times they’ve listened to the Encanto soundtrack.
