To be totally clear, I’m entirely biased for this one. Spotify Wrapped is only one of a million reasons why I care so much about the music listening platform. From a user experience perspective alone, Spotify is wonderful. It not only has all the songs and artists I desire to hear, (from Jazz to Metal) but the app updates me with new releases relevant to my listening and curates playlists and discovery-based lists of music that I genuinely would like to get interested in.
Now, add to all of this a killer social media campaign like Spotify Wrapped! This is why I’m obsessed with the app. The campaign smartly takes user’s data and culminates it all into one visually beautiful, interactive, and most importantly shareable display. Hootsuite, a social media management platform, boasts of this campaign’s success on their list of “7 of the Best Social Media Campaigns (And What You Can Learn from Them)”.
“Since 2017, Spotify has shared year-end data with their users, compiling their most-listened to songs, albums and artists in a personalized “Spotify Wrapped” summary.”
My Reaction
My gut reaction to this campaign the first time I saw it was just utter surprise. The mixture of its simplicity, informative nature, and captivating feel make this a campaign that I literally look forward to on a yearly basis. It’s like second Christmas. I was surprised by the results of my own user data, I was surprised by how accessible so much dense statistical information was presented, and I was surprised by how plain fun the whole thing was to mess with. Amongst me and my avid music-listening friends, Spotify Wrapped is legitimately becoming a tradition on shared media.
An Analysis
Some of what I notice from my personal experience with this viral media campaign is its extraordinary simplicity. And what I mean by this isn’t just the bold, sleek appearance of the campaign itself, I mean the goal behind the advertisement: community and personalization. Spotify is notoriously good at personalization, but I feel that Wrapped is an exercise for them to also dabble with community.
For perspective: I used to be a huge fan of YouTube and content creators called “YouTubers” when I was younger, and a very similar year-end campaign that I always looked forward to was the YouTube Rewind. Maybe you recall how big of a deal this used to be. All of your idols on the video-streaming platform would potentially be in one 8-10 minute music video passing around YouTube’s icon, the “play button”. The only goal of this happening at the end of every year was to remind viewers from different spheres of the platform (Gaming, Beauty, Vlogging, Comedy, etc.) how many viral trends, new creators, and significant events had occurred on-platform throughout the year. It built up a platform-wide community and buzz from what would otherwise continue to be smaller cells within the platform. The only major difference here is that Youtube Rewind isn’t a personalized product. Spotify, however, brings that edge to the year-end review: something personal you can share with others.
I think Spotify Wrapped achieves the same effect for the app’s listeners. Spotify is saying that they are resourceful in recycling data they already have to themselves by making it an irresistible and fun media campaign for people to play around with. The user data itself requires no additional cost for the platform, and with what they already have they just build a beautiful design to make a shareable piece of media for people to communicate to other users with. The shareable nature of this personalized design is what makes this a community-driving campaign.
Spotify is forcing conversation and buzz around social media about what they know people are interested in.