Spotify Wrapped: When Customers Demand to Be Tracked
As the holiday season is approaching, it is synonymous with one thing for Spotify users; the Spotify Wrapped. I was eager to refresh the Spotify…
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As the holiday season is approaching, it is synonymous with one thing for Spotify users; the Spotify Wrapped. I was eager to refresh the Spotify…
As the holiday season is approaching, it is synonymous with one thing for Spotify users; the Spotify Wrapped. I was eager to refresh the Spotify app on December 1st, as I had been for the past few years, to discover my statistics for 2021. And trust me, I was far from the only one. If you are a Millennial or a Gen Z on social media during the first week of December, you might see your friends reposting their Spotify Wrapped all over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and, recently, Tiktok.
But what exactly is “Spotify Wrapped”?
“Spotify Wrapped” (previously known as “Year in Music”) is a marketing campaign created by Spotify in 2016. It lets its users see a year’s worth of statistics about their activity on the site. For example, the 5 artists a user has listened to the most, the 5 songs they’ve listened to the most, their favourite music genres… Spotify Wrapped also offers information about user activity on the platform as a whole, like the number of hours they spent listening to music.
After revealing all your data surrounded by beautiful graphics and (obviously) music, it has a clear call to action with a customized video format meant to be shared on social media. And it’s worked like a charm! To put this ad campaign into perspective, as of today (December 1st, 2021), “Spotify Wrapped 2021” is the most Googled search term of the day, with over 200k searches. Not bad for a simple user-data-driven marketing strategy!
Thanks to the power of data analytics and social media, this turned out to be their most successful advertising campaign ever, turning users into free Spotify influencers.
According to Forbes, 60 million users engaged with the in-app story experience and racked up nearly 3 billion streams from Wrapped playlists as of 2019. And those numbers translate into user acquisition!
In 2020, Spotify received its biggest increase in new subscribers of about 27%, by only changing one small thing. In comparison to previous years, they implemented a direct sharing function for Instagram and Snapchat stories. Little did we know, Spotify Wrapped’s fame was virtually unstoppable after this. That year, you could barely open your Instagram without seeing all your friends’ Spotify Wrapped.
With the debut of Apple Music and Youtube Music in 2015, competition in the music streaming industry began to heat up. By 2016, Spotify and Apple Music were neck and neck in terms of paid users, with only 16 million customers separating the two streaming services, with Spotify still at the top. In 2015, Spotify had amassed a large amount of user data and decided that they could utilize it to create fun ad displays that could help acquire new users. Those display ads end up being quite successful as well.
Nonetheless, they didn’t achieve their current level of popularity until they released their first “Year of Music,” now known as Spotify Wrapped, at the end of 2016. The purpose of this campaign is to obtain new users organically through free promotion. They managed to gain 23% of new users after just one year, and that number has continued to rise year after year. Fast forward to 2021, and it’s evident that this campaign helped them beat their competition to the top.
The virality of this Spotify Wrapped has created a wave of FOMO across non-Spotify users. Just like clockwork, around the same time every year, almost everyone on social media spends the whole day promoting their unique musical tastes, which leads non-Spotify users to feel left out really quickly.
TwitterSpotify Wrapped: When Customers Demand to Be Tracked
Apple Music, Spotify’s main competitor, finally released its first Apple Music Replay in 2019. Similar to Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay is a year-end summary function of the user’s listening behaviour, however, it is not designed to be shared on social media. After a large number of Apple Music users requested a Spotify Wrapped equivalency, they were only provided with the same but without the most significant feature — the ability to share it. Why did it take them so long to build basic infographics based on their consumer activity behaviour, and why, more significantly, did they overlook the sharable feature? To set itself apart from the competition, Apple is known for developing enhanced features that are solely available to Apple consumers. Just look at their iMessage blue bubbles, their “Find my Friends”, and their Airdrop function. All unique features are only available if you have an IOS device.
The music streaming market is already extremely competitive, and brands have to showcase more than their in-app features in order to be successful. Spotify found a very simple marketing tactic that allows users to do the marketing for them using their data, and all of this for free! Modern customers are perfectly aware that brands are acquiring data about them, so they might as well have fun with it!
The reason why Spotify Wrapped has been (and still is) popular to this day is because it is not seen as an ad, but more like a way to interact with others using a universal subject: music.
. . .
Reference
Bizzaco, M. (2021, May 19). Apple Music vs. Spotify. Digital Trends. https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/apple-music-vs-spotify/
Carman, A. (2019, December 5). Spotify beats Apple at its own game with its Wrapped year in review feature. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20997218/spotify-wrapped-year-end-decade-review-apple-music-streaming-audio-service
Deahl, D. (2019, November 13). Apple Music Replay compiles your most-played songs from each year into playlists. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963520/apple-music-replay-listening-history-view-share-albums-songs
Gartenberg, C. (2021, December 1). Apple Music’s terrible year in review is giving me serious Spotify Wrapped FOMO. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/1/22812079/apple-music-year-in-review-spotify-wrapped-social-media
Hicks, J. (2021, December 1). Spotify Wrapped 2021 is ready to share your music listening history with everyone. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/1/22811900/spotify-wrapped-2021-music-recap-iphone-android
Hunt, E. (2021, December 1). Spotify Wrapped is free advertising that says nothing about the joy of music. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/01/spotify-wrapped-is-free-advertising-that-says-nothing-about-the-joy-of-music
Kim, W. (2020, December 4). The Intern Who Created Spotify Wrapped’s Story Format Never Got Her Due. Refinery29. https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2020/12/10210316/jewel-ham-artist-spotify-wrapped-internship
Potter, M. (2020, October 26). Social Media Analyzation — Spotify Wrapped — Madeline Potter. Medium. https://madelinepotter.medium.com/social-media-analyzation-spotify-wrapped-d1c62f7d6459
Sentance, R. (2018, November 30). The genius of Spotify Wrapped, the only marketing campaign I add to my calendar. Econsultancy. https://econsultancy.com/spotify-2018-wrapped-personalised-data/
Spotify Revenue and Usage Statistics (2021). (2021, November 11). Business of Apps. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/
Swant, M. (2019, December 17). Spotify Rolls Out New ‘Wrapped’ Campaign To Help Users Remember Their Decade Of Music. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2019/12/17/spotify-rolls-out-new-wrapped-campaign-help-users-remember-their-decade-of-music/
Wikipedia contributors. (2021, December 2). Spotify Wrapped. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify_Wrapped#CITEREFHunt2021
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