November often serves as buildup for the winter holidays that span over December and January; however, it can also lead into a more modern tradition for all sorts of music listeners.
Typically, around the end of the month, streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music unveil a personalized recap of each user’s year in music. The tradition started off as a warm welcome for December, but now closes November on a high note as several recaps were released on the 28th and 29th. These campaigns record data from the beginning of the year until early November on average–in which some users will joke about an obligation to clean up their records in the remaining few weeks. While the algorithms of streaming services tend to struggle in staying truthful, there is a certain sentiment to the end-of-year-tradition that cements its importance in the music community.
“I got ‘Riptide’ as my number two song and Vance Joy was my number one artist. Honestly, I don’t go out of my way to listen to him the way I do with other artists. I think Spotify was literally just spitting him at me,” Ana Borbolla ‘26 said.
Campaigns such as Spotify Wrapped have cemented themselves as the pinnacle of marketing in the world of music, using funky graphics and niche concepts to draw in several million accessors. Like many features of major social networking platforms, it can take away from some of the drawbacks of the service.
While Spotify is not directly blocked by a paywall, its standard edition is much less accessible in comparison to the works of Spotify Premium. Under the circumstances of the unpaid subscription, tracks cannot be looped—allowing for more limited streaming. In this case, Wrapped is purely reliant on the algorithm, and less of what the user chooses to listen to.
The notion of music-centered marketing campaigns can be unifying throughout all sorts of groups of people. Spotify Wrapped introduced a handful of new reels that focused on a deeper level of personalization for its users. Users would receive a pre-recorded message from their top artists of the year, if said artists were to engage in the affair. This new practice could further connect artists to their fans, along with fans and other fans. There was also a feature that assigned users cities in the United States based on their listening activity, in which fellow subscribers could bond over the obscenity or accuracy of their given region.
“I probably saw at least 15 other results for Spotify Wrapped. I enjoy seeing the ones with a music taste that is similar to mine,” Julz Nigro ‘26 said.
Recaps in music tend to accumulate an exponential amount of thrill each year, with new discussions surrounding each successor. Even with the flawed mechanisms of the algorithm, practices such as Spotify Wrapped or YouTube’s Recap cement themselves as a significant conclusion to each year in pop culture.
