How Spotify Wrapped changed the way we share
As each year comes to a close, we reflect on our favorite moments, our ups and downs, the goods and the bads. For some of us particularly, the end of a year marks the beginning of our Spotify year-in-review, something I, and many others, spend most of our year looking forward to. For people passionate about music, and more specifically, sharing music, this feature is a gold mine. It’s engaging, memorable, and sanguine.
In 2016, Spotify introduced Wrapped, a feature that allowed users to take a look back on their last 365 days of music and audio listening. The tool included statistics such as the user’s favourite artists, top played songs, and the number of hours of music they listened to that year. Since then, Wrapped has evolved into a powerful, interactive tool that only ever proves to outdo itself each year— In 2021, that was no exception. With Spotify offering what feels like its most impressive recaps yet, their newest additions included a color-changing gradient “audio aura,” an interactive quiz, personalized movie soundtracks, global listener rankings, and more.
But it’s not only regular listeners that get to enjoy Wrapped, in all of its glory, but artists as well. Artists can access their own customized recaps filled with their total number of streams, countries they reached and more to share to their millions of fans.
It’s a brilliant example of how understanding your users and demographic can help develop interfaces that elevate user experiences. Not only that, but Spotify’s Wrapped helped to solidify a dedicated consumer base — one that would come back to their services each time to view their next year-in-review. For many of us, the yearly roundup has almost turned itself into a game, one where we attempt to “outdo” ourselves year after year in the number of minutes we’ve listened to.
The success of Spotify wrapped has ultimately triggered a domino effect of similar year-in-review features from not only their music-streaming counterparts, but social media companies as well in an attempt to achieve even a sliver of their success.
Think about it: each year, Spotify manages to execute a brilliant marketing campaign facilitated entirely by their own user base, no strings attached. Spotify Wrapped gets millions of users across the globe to spend their last days of December posting free Spotify advertisements to every social media platform imaginable. Why wouldn’t others want to follow suit?
In fact, three years later, Spotify’s top competitor, Apple Music, released their own version of Wrapped titled Replay. In 2020, Tidal followed suit.
Several social media companies have also implemented their own takes on the year-in-review, including Snapchat and Reddit, to name a few. On the other hand, these renditions haven’t nearly been able to take off externally in the way that Spotify Wrapped has.
To put it into perspective, Snapchat’s user base is generally young teens (Gen Z), who use fleeting memories to communicate with one another. Snapchat’s year-in-review works by taking content from a user’s saved memories and pairing them with fun captions using AI algorithm detection. What resulted from this was almost entirely inaccurate captions, paired with unsettling memories that one would rather not want to remember. It doesn’t help that most of their users’ memories are filled with embarrassing moments, random selfies and pictures of them crying — something most of us would probably prefer not to share.
A new way of connecting
The success of Spotify Wrapped ultimately lies in the realization of the power of sharing and truly connecting with your users. What Spotify understood about their users was that they (of course) love music. In addition to that, they love socializing and recommending music. What emerged from these discoveries was an interactive tool that has easily captivated their users, all the while, has been able to take social media by storm, year after year. Spotify was able to take their UI to new heights through the realized power of two key things — sharing and personalization.
It is no secret that humans love to share. We share our achievements online, what we ate for breakfast — we share everything. Humans are social animals. When it comes to music, this is no different. Our greatest connections and relationships grow from a shared love of music, making playlists for one another, and bonding over new song recommendations. Spotify understood that. They understood that music plays a central part in the the everyday lives of people and their memories, and when experiences feel personal and impactful to a user, they’re more likely to share them. Conveniently, Spotify Wrapped is formatted exactly like an Instagram Story, and users can tap to share each one directly from the app. It is a feature that was explicitly designed with cross-platform sharing in mind, allowing user’s to save their results in formats suitable for multiple platforms at the click of a button.
In addition to this, Spotify was able to utilize the power of personalization to make experiences feel special and connected to the user. Like many things, music taste is unique to the listener. Each user has different listening habits, genres and artists that they enjoy — and people take pride in what’s theirs. Spotify was able to use their powerful algorithms and user data for a real human-centric experience, creating a product that was the musical embodiment of a high-school yearbook. In doing so, they opened up conversations, connections, and that feeling we all know and love — nostalgia.
What all of these examples teach us, however, is the importance of fostering community and connecting with your user base. Sharing is a powerful tool that can elevate the way humans interact with your system. When done right, we can create safe digital spaces where interacting with one another is rewarding, rather than scary. Taking the time to research and innovate, rather than just following trends, can make all the difference in how your users experience your system.
So, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you Spotify — for helping us feel a little bit more connected, and little bit more human. We applaud you, wholeheartedly.
