With the year drawing to a close, the music streaming service Spotify has released its annual review of user statistics and listening patterns called Spotify Wrapped. Spotify compiles the top artists and songs of listeners, reporting them with entertaining graphics and several references to pop culture. This year, highlights included assigning certain “characters” based off of a user’s listening habits, and assigning users “Sound Towns,” or cities that have similar user listening patterns, based on their music tastes.
Taylor Swift took the top of the most listened to artists, with last year’s chart topper Bad Bunny taking second. The Weeknd, Drake, and Peso Pluma made up the other top five. Bad Bunny’s 2022 album Un Verano Sin TI made the most listened to album, with Taylor Swift’s Midnights album, also from 2022, making second, and SOS by Ice Spice taking third. Fourth and Fifth place were the 2016 The Weeknd Album Starboy and the 2023 Mañana Será Bonito album by Karol G, respectively.
The more personalized parts of Wrapped are where Spotify got creative every year, reporting new things in new ways, making unique graphics and comparisons. Like usual, Spotify reported the most listened to genres, but this year, the listener’s genres would be represented as different ingredients on a sandwich.
Spotify Wrapped also assigned a “character” based off of user’s listening habits, like the “Time Traveler,” given to people who listened to the same songs on repeat throughout the year, or “The Hypnotist,” given to people who listened to whole albums over playlists or radios.
Possibly the most talked about part of Wrapped this year was the new feature of “Sound Towns,” cities around the planet that Spotify selected user data from, and matched users to cities based on the common listening habits in those cities. In the United States, college towns tended to have the most people matched to them. San Luis Obispo, Florida, was the most matched town in the United States.
Students had some interesting results on their top artist of the year. Senior Martin Goff’s top band was They Might Be Giants.
“I started listening to them on a long trip this summer, just to have something to listen to, and ended up listening to their entire discography of 23 albums,” he said.
Sophomore McKellen Johnson listened to Olivia Rodrigo the most this year.
“I’m going to two different shows during her GUTS tour, so I want to be prepared,” Johnson said. “I love Olivia because she makes a lot of relatable and catchy songs. I guarantee that every girl can relate to at least one Olivia Rodrigo song. Olivia is just such an amazing artist, and I really admire not just her music, but her as a person.”
As the year wraps up, Spotify will begin collecting data for the 2024 wrapped on Jan. 1.
