Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that for the past few years around this time, music streamer Spotify releases their annual “Wrapped”, a recap of your audio consumption for the year. Since day one, I thought this was a brilliant idea! Each year Wrapped comes out, and each year social media gets flooded with posts of people sharing their recaps and comparing with others. It’s what we in the marketing biz call “earned media”, and this generates a shit-tonne of earned media for Spotify. That is, media that they didn’t have to pay for.
I’d be no different from those sharing their end-of-year lists, if it weren’t for the fact that my kids ruin my Wrapped with their music. It’s not that they have bad taste in music…they don’t. Their taste is typical of an 11 and 17 year-old, with a bit of the classics thrown in thanks to mom and dad’s influence.
The larger issue is my daughter…stay with me here.
You see since she was a baby she has gone to sleep listening to the same album by the same artist every single night. That album is Automatic For The People by R.E.M. I’ve tried many times to change things up with her, but she’s rejected every attempt.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love R.E.M. and that album is an all-timer! But it’s gotten to the point where our Spotify stats are so skewed to that album that it renders my Wrapped useless.
Case in point, here are the first three slides of my Spotify 2024 Wrapped:
This puts us in the top 0.001% of R.E.M. fans on Spotify. That ought to earn us something, don’t you think?
Anyway, in the past few years, Spotify has also provided a Wrapped for their creators. This is a lot more useful for me, since I’m a podcaster and Spotify is the #1 podcast aggregator on the planet…for now.
As you may, or may not know, I produce 3 shows, two for Moneris, my employer, and one as a hobby. Here are my Wrapped‘s for all three…
Just Good Business
Yes, We Are Open
The Produce Stand
I’m loving the growth! Thank you to everyone who has listened to any of my creations. It means the world to me!
I don’t know if Spotify was the first to do something like this…but it’s certainly the best execution of it! I actually use Pocket Casts as my podcatcher—not Spotify—and they’ve begun to provide their own version of Wrapped. They call it Playback 2024. It was also well done. But Spotify just has so many more users which means much more data which allows them to tell richer stories.
What does your Spotify 2024 Wrapped look like?
What are you thinking?