Crack some eggs and make some nog because it’s that time of year again! Spotify Wrapped was released (and nothing else notable will happen in December).
Spotify’s annual recap is now a viral phenomenon, being widely shared on social media. “My Instagram blew up with everyone’s Spotify Wrapped. I think it’s overhyped, but it’s a good feature,” said Beacon contributor Katelyn Luu. However, I don’t use Spotify. But with my lack of streaming data, I get to witness Spotify’s best attempt at capturing my taste in music.
Starting off strong, the app tells me that my top song of the year was “有线耳机 (Wired Earphone)” by ChiliChill, beating out 32 others. The lo-fi-esque trumpet intro and the duet vocals in the pre-chorus are highlights for me, so much so that I played the song three whole times.
After showing me my top five songs, Spotify throws me a curveball, playing a song I genuinely do not recognize. I suspect that my haters are hacking my account. Either that or I left the app on autoplay. Ironically, this is the page where they make a playlist of my top songs for 2023. The song isn’t half bad—kind of generic, but I might check it out later.
The minutes listened page needs no explanation. I just think the #relatable corporate-designed remark is funny in context.
On to my top artist, it’s ChiliChill again. I think Spotify got this one right, although “Wired Earphone” is not my favorite song of theirs. My real top song of the year is probably “恋爱困难少女 (Love-troubled Girl)”, also by ChiliChill. What’s crazy is that I was a top 17% fan, listening for an entire 22 minutes. I find this statistic saddening, so I heartily recommend giving “Love-troubled Girl” a listen.
My top five artists are (again) not too far off the mark. After ChiliChill are Kei Sugawara, 長瀬有花 (Yuka Nagase), PEOPLE 1, and Hoshimachi Suisei. My music taste is essentially a few Chinese indie groups and then a bunch of J-pop, which Spotify reflects. For these four artists, I recommend “flyme”, “Torokeru Tetsugaku”, “常夜灯 (Jouyatou)”, and “デビュタントボール (Debutante Ball)”.
And that’s my Spotify Wrapped. Surprisingly accurate, considering I used this app for 0.1 days nonstop, but there was less information than I expected. Those scoundrels won’t even tell me my top genre (maybe because I used this app for 0.1 days nonstop).
With increasing amounts of advertising, I don’t see myself using Spotify soon. After the company’s recent round of layoffs, the third this year, CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a statement to all employees, “Our cost structure for where we need to be is still too big.” Still, I had a marginal amount of fun and look forward to next year’s Wrapped.
