Spotify Wrapped 2021: Is It accurate?

The first week of December is behind us, along with the day that Spotify users either dread or look forward to every year.

“Spotify Wrapped” is a service that Spotify provides for every listener. They track everyone’s music statistics and trends over the course of the year, then create an extensive, personalized summary of their music taste from that past year. 

It’s a really brilliant business move on Spotify’s part that entices people to use their services instead of their competitors like Apple Music who only give listeners a playlist. Everyone posts their summary online, shares it with their friends, and has a laugh about how embarrassing their music taste is. It’s always worse than you think it is.

This year, there were a lot of familiar artists in listeners’ Top 5. Artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, Kanye West, and Ariana Grande have been many people’s top artists for years, all four of whom have released at least one new album in the past year. 

There were however, a couple of newer names this year. Olivia Rodrigo had people wrapped around her finger this year after her debut album, Sour was released in early May. Doja Cat is also a newer big name in music. Despite debuting as early as 2014, Doja Cat didn’t become a mega hit until around 2019, when she released her sophomore album, Hot Pink. Since then, she’s been absolutely dominating TikTok with her songs. From “Say So” to “Need To Know”, Doja Cat is inescapable for TikTok users. She, too, has been a very common top artist in this year’s Wrapped.

For Ramiyah Jackson, sophomore, alternative R&B artist, Tyler, The Creator, took home the crown for being Jackson’s number one artist on her Spotify Wrapped this year. 

Tyler, The Creator, who also happened to be the artist behind her top song, “BEST INTEREST”, also took home another award with his feature on Brent Faiyaz’s “Gravity”, placing fifth on her top songs list.

“I was shocked by my top artists and my top genre,” Jackson said. 

With her top artist being Tyler, The Creator, and her top genre being k-pop, the two didn’t necessarily align. With spending a total of 34,772 minutes listening to music, Jackson spent 4,747 of those minutes listening to Tyler, The Creator. 

Since coming out in 2016, Wrapped has become one of Spotify’s most popular personalization features, leaving many listeners such as Jackson looking forward to it in the upcoming years. 

“This was the first time I’ve looked forward to it, since it’s the first time I’ve used Spotify for most of the year,” Jackson said.

Hannan Olow, junior, had a completely different style of music. 

Red Velvet, one of the top k-pop girl groups in South Korea, ranks number 10 on top Kpop Artists Globally this year, and is ranked number one in her top artists. 

With 5.2 million monthly listeners, Olow’s most-streamed song was “Be Natural” by Red Velvet for 70 minutes.

Although Olow’s number one artist was a K-pop group, the remaining were American and Latin artists such as Doja Cat and Shakira. 

“I was shocked that I actually didn’t have a lot of K-pop in there.” Olow says. 

It seems that even though people have differing opinions on how accurate or not, many can agree that there are definitely some flaws in either Spotify’s tracking measures or what it reports to its listeners. Regardless of whether you think about the dispute, don’t forget that Spotify starts to track your listening on January 1st and stops tracking on October 31st. If you care at all about your results for 2022, remind yourself of that the next time you have the urge to listen to the same song on repeat for hours on end.