Each year during the holiday season, Spotify gifts listeners a present of their music statistics, “wrapped” in a vertical video format. Between late November and early December, users of the digital music streaming service are able to access a feature in the mobile app called “Spotify Wrapped.” Clicking on the tab displays an animated and personalized summary of your listening that year, including statistics like your top five artists, favorite genres, and how many minutes you listened to each artist. It has gotten to the point where there may be too many features, for example the “Your listening as a Hero” slide which didn’t add much value to the Wrapped this year.
But, Wrapped was not always this advanced. In 2016 when it was first released, users were given the option inside the Spotify home screen to add a playlist to their library containing their top five songs of the year. It was only in 2019 when it started to resemble today’s Wrapped design, where the Wrapped contained a short slideshow in vertical screen format, similar to an Instagram story.
There is something that has stayed the same for these seven years though.
Even from 2016, people were sharing their Wrapped with others, whether in person or on the internet. This phenomenon occurs every year during winter. In turn, Spotify has seen massive growth since its release of Wrapped. In 2020, it is reported that there was a 461% increase in tweets relating to Wrapped, and the next year saw a 20% increase in app downloads. According to some company analysts, Spotify Wrapped is one of the most successful marketing campaigns during the 21st century.
Of course, with success from a concept, there are always going to be people chasing that same success. Launched in 2019, Spotify’s competitor Apple Music released their take on Wrapped named Apple Replay. In order to compete, they have been releasing their Replay a few days before Spotify releases theirs each year. Similarly, streaming services like Tidal and YouTube Music have been adding year end recap features similarly to Wrapped in order to compete.
Though Spotify Wrapped may seem to be a small gimmick, taking only a few minutes for consumers to read each year, it has had a massive impact on the route that competitor listening services are taking due to the extreme success of the Wrapped campaign.
