As fall wraps up, Spotify Wrappeds appeared! Each year, Spotify users are eager to share their results, which can range from surprising to disappointing to utterly unpredictable. Spotify listeners all over the world, including many here at Inglemoor, not only share their favorite music with friends but also enjoy the updates and changes to their Wrappeds every year.
It’s been an eventful year not only for Spotify listeners, but for the streaming service as well. Spotify has already revolutionized the listening industry with features like Wrapped Mapped, which tallies top songs, artists and albums around the world, and their own personal podcast, Spotify: For The Record, which creates a daily in-depth story on every aspect of Spotify, from noteworthy updates to their Wrapped this year to deep dives into musical trends. But 2023 may be their best Wrapped yet. In this year alone, Spotify has launched two exciting new features in their Wrapped this year that give users personalized information beyond just their top songs.
One of these is Sound Towns, which analyzes the musical habits of each listener and assigns them a spot around the world that has listeners with similar preferences. Users may find themselves in sync with listeners in Berkeley, Cambridge, Cuiabá, Jakarta or any city around the world. This feature highlights unlikely connections between Spotify listeners and creates a unique music-based portrait of hundreds of cities.
The other new feature is Me in 2023, which gives each user an eccentric “listening personality.” From the playlist-creating Collector to the singular artist-dedicated Fanatic, there are 12 listening personalities, each characterized by the way users listen. Whether they listen to albums from the first to final second, skip through songs in search of new music, search for darker, atmospheric tracks or upbeat dance music, each of these quirks factor into a user’s final listening personality.
Almost 32% of respondents said their listening personality was Vampire, characterized by mainly listening to emotional and atmospheric music. Time Traveler — people who tend to listen to songs on repeat — was a close second with the assigned personality of 25% of students, followed by 14% of survey respondents who had Collector, which is somebody who curates playlists full of frequent listens. Inglemoor had a diverse palette of genres we listened to, 30% of surveyed students said their most listened-to genre was pop. The runner-ups were indie at 21%, and rock at 11%.
Though Spotify Sound Towns sort through a range of over thirteen hundred analyzed cities to assign to a user, there has been some debate over the accuracy of their results: Spotify users were quick to discover that their Sound Town results didn’t seem completely personal. In fact, over three million listeners found out the relatively small city of Burlington, Vermont was their Sound Town.
“I got Burlington. I thought that was fun, but it seems like everyone has the same one.” Jerome Ramde (he/him) said about his Spotify results. His top music genre this year was rap, and his listening personality was Alchemist, meaning a user who frequently creates new playlists. “Like, my Burlington, USA is very different from all the other people’s Burlington, USA is, but they’re all Burlington. So it’s just everyone in Burlington is listening to everything,”
Spotify’s listening personalities seemed to have elicited a more positive reaction from Spotify users due to their accuracy and interactive aspects; every musical choice
made over the course of the year composed the personality a user ultimately would receive, as well as their top genre and songs.
“I’ve got a mariachi person in my top five. I didn’t know that was gonna happen,” Zane Mills (he/him) said. “I do make Mexican food every Tuesday and listen to mariachi music and that’s why a mariachi artist landed in my top five. So yeah, I kind of theme my music at different times of the year in different times of the week.”
From indie to lo-fi to constant Taylor Swift, 2023 was a music-filled year. There was a wide range of favorite genres, artists, and songs listened to at Inglemoor, showing the variety of musical tastes among students.
Senior Jerome Ramde (he/him)
Minutes: 60,884
Top song: Lover, You Should’ve Come Over by Jeff Buckley
Top artist: Tyler the Creator
Top genre: Rap
Listening personality: Alchemist – creates more playlists than the average listener
What’s your opinion on Spotify’s new features such as listening personality and Soundtown?
“I got Burlington. I thought that was fun, but it seems like everyone has the same one. Like, my Burlington, USA is very different from all the other people’s Burlington, USA is, but they’re all Burlington. So it’s just everyone in Burlington is listening to everything,” Ramde said.
Why do you like that kind of music?
“This year I’ve been super in my head; I’ve been very mindful. Last year, I felt like I was struggling with a lot of things. I feel like this year I had a lot more clarity. And so I felt more cool with what I wanted to listen to,” Ramde said.
Teacher Zane Mills (he/him)
Minutes: 35,586
Top song: You Belong With Me
Top artist: Elvis Presley
Top genre: Rock
Listening personality: Shapeshifter — skips from artist to artist
Is there a specific time this year that you think reflected the most on the results you got in your Spotify wrap?
“The Taylor Swift stuff definitely comes from Skandia late nights,” Mills said, “I do make Mexican food every Tuesday and listen to mariachi music”
Why do you like the type of music that you listen to?
“As soon as I go home I’ll turn on music; my classes — I’ll play music all the time. It makes me feel comfortable.”
