Tapping out of Spotify Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped gives users a complete look into their listening habits for the year, coming out at the beginning of each December. Since Spotify began the Spotify Wrapped campaign in 2016, listeners anticipate their music streaming statistics every year.

People love sharing music, and Spotify Wrapped capitalized off of that. In 2021, Spotify Wrapped was one of the highest trending social media campaigns, dominating apps like Twitter and TikTok. 

Allowing users to share their favorite artists, songs, genres and podcasts, the marketing campaign has become increasingly popular over the last few years. There’s also a feature that shows what percentile of artists’ top listeners that users fall into. In response to the concept’s popularity, other companies have began adopting similar strategies. 

It’s easy to deduce that corporations want to consider how trends can be utilized for their own brand name, but at what point does it become blatant copying?

Apps ranging from food delivery to digital study resources have used Spotify’s story format and features to a certain extent. 

I think I speak for most people when I say that I wouldn’t care to know what restaurant I ordered the most from during the year. What a person listens to can show an intimate aspect of their identity, but the same can’t be said for which study sets one may use on Quizlet or the frequency of food orders they have. 

The development of Spotify Wrapped is arguably what has put the app at the top in comparison to other music streaming apps. In fact, the feeble attempt Apple Music has made to replicate Spotify’s features has become a running joke. 

Competing corporations are making the fatal assumption that because Spotify users are raving for their data to be collected like nothing before, that somehow consumers will equally appreciate data collection from their own branding. 

Despite the success, Spotify was criticized for their cringey, overdone tendency to quote trends in 2021. Now, more than ever, media companies are trying to appeal to younger audiences and appear to have a more relatable presence. The push for relatability feels extremely forced and irrelevant to users just wanting to see their most streamed songs. 

Marketing is becoming more geared towards what is trending, and that isn’t always a good approach. While trends may reach a wider audience, companies are not considering their own consumer base.