At the end of the year, all Spotify users can look forward to Spotify Wrapped, which is an overview of the music they have listened to most throughout the year. Spotify users also receive a generated playlist based on their top songs of the year. 

On Dec. 1st, Spotify Wrapped 2021 was released to all users of the audio and media streaming service. This year’s wrapped shows users’ infographics revealing how many minutes they listened to music, as well as how many different genres and artists they listened to throughout the year.

“[According to Spotify Wrapped] my top artist was Taylor Swift and I listened to a total of 22, 756 minutes of music this year,” sophomore Madalyn Propst said.

This year’s Wrapped was a lot more interactive and creative compared to the ones in the past. There was a 2021 movie feature that showed which songs would be used in a soundtrack for a movie about the user. This feature was definitely exciting to watch because it gave prompts as to what each song would be used for in a movie such as opening credits, “facing off your rival dance crew”, and “proclaiming your love in the rain.” There was also another feature that would show the “audio aura”, which gave a colorful visual of a user’s general moods in their music. Another fun feature was a mini-game of two truths and a lie, which showed three options with information on the user’s tendencies through the year, one of them being false. 

There were also a lot of pop-culture references made this year in the Wrapped. It had mentions of NFTs (which everyone is trying to figure out what they are), being the “main character,” “understanding the assignment,” vibe checks, quoting the viral song from the kid’s show The Backyardigans: “Into The Thick Of It!” and more. This was a nice touch that the developers put into the overview, showing how the internet connected everyone through these rough times. 

Despite the added touches, the tone that is being used and the constant use of very mainstream references was somewhat boring and irritating when going through the whole overview. Besides that, what was really confusing was weird genres being included into the slide on top genres, such as “weirdcore” and “spookycore”, instead of using common ones like pop, rock, or hip-hop..  “I think the Spotify genres were definitely made up,” freshman Nyla Black said. “Music shouldn’t be put into those categories.”

Overall this year’s “Spotify Wrapped” was not all that bad with its interactive features and trying to connect with the user.