- Monumental Magazine
Spotify Wrapped: That's a Wrap!
Updated: Dec 23, 2021
By: Hannah Zozobrado
It’s been less than a month since Spotify users woke up to find that their highly-anticipated music statistics were out in the annual feature known as Spotify Wrapped.
Spotify Wrapped, a feature on the music platform that summarizes the user’s activity within the past year, was released on Dec. 1. Upon release, users got to enjoy aesthetically-formatted sets of data – from the user’s mood aura based on their music taste, to their top five most listened-to music artists and songs.
“I think it’s really cool. For however many millions of users Spotify has, for each person, they’re able to collect and display all this data in a way that's fun,” said junior mechanical engineering major Pranav Chivukula. “In this day and age, data is one of the most important things. Data analysis and anything to do with collecting and analyzing data is just blowing up in every single field.”
Chivukula, who creates music in his free time with the stage name SPKZ, and has his music available on platforms like Spotify, also gets access to the statistics that gauge his own music’s popularity. However, Chivukula looks most forward to his Wrapped as a listener rather than as a creator.
“I look forward to Spotify Wrapped… because as I was saying, I listen to so much music. Almost 24/7. Music’s, you know, obviously it's my thing,” Chivukula said.
Like Chivukula, senior environmental science and policy major Naomi Lichtenstein enjoys Spotify as a music platform more than any other she’s had in the past.
However, rather than looking forward to her Spotify Wrapped, Lichtenstein only finds it “hilarious” since “it never fully captures [her] true music taste.” But that didn’t stop Lichenstein from posting her Spotify Wrapped on social media, nor stop her from looking at others’.
“I like seeing what other people listen to to see if we have shared music tastes, or if there are other artists and songs I should listen to,” Lichtenstein said. “I wasn’t going to post mine because I thought it was stupid, but I thought mine were so interesting, and I listen to good podcasts, so why not share with the world.”
When Spotify Wrapped first came out a few weeks ago, it was a hot topic of discussion – Chivukula said that “it was in a lot of conversations, in a bunch of like group chats and… everyone was kind of posting… and so everyone was just kind of comparing and talking about it.”
Despite the bonding that came along with the release of Spotify Wrapped, both Chivukula and Lichtenstein agree that it shouldn’t be a means of judging a character.
“Because often we get in weird [music] phases… I think the Wrapped really doesn’t say anything super meaningful about a person, ” Lichtenstein said.
With the end of the year approaching, that wraps up Spotify Wrapped 2021.