Spotify Wrapped: The Best Time of the Year

Generally speaking, October to December is the best time of the year. Halloween, colored leaves, Thanksgiving, Christmas. But what I look forward to every year... is Spotify Wrapped.

What is Spotify Wrapped?

Since December of 2016, Spotify has been sending listeners a summary of their year’s most popular music and podcasts, as well as their statistics from January 1 to October 31. Listeners can learn more about their listening history through visualizations called “cards.”

Spotify Wrapped cards show the songs, artists, genres, and podcasts most listened to during the year. They can see how many minutes they've listened to their top artists, how many of their songs are "danceable," and many other fun statistics. Listeners are encouraged to share their cards with friends and followers on social media.

How does it work?

Essentially, Spotify has an algorithm that counts the amount of seconds you listen to a certain song by a certain artist. A "stream" or listen, only counts if you've listened for 30 seconds or more. From there, Spotify keeps track of your listening history and stores it into your profile.

That being said, for your top artists or top songs, Spotify tracks their data by the amount of plays rather than the amount of seconds listened.

So for instance, if I listened to the same song 50 times, but only for 30 seconds, that would count as a lot more plays than listening to the whole song through 25 times.

The Best time of the Year

I always enjoy looking at my Spotify wrapped. I think it's so cool to see how much music I listened to and what kind of music I listened to. I also love seeing other peoples Spotify wrapped as I feel like music can tell you a lot about someone.

If you have Spotify, are you excited for the 2022 Wrapped?