On November 30, 2022, phones around the world dinged with the notification: Your Spotify Wrapped is Here!

A viral marketing strategy originating in 2016, Spotify Wrapped is intended to provide users a visual representation of their listening statistics while encouraging them to share with friends and provide Spotify with increased publicity.

The annual wrap-up includes a short animated slideshow with data about users’ top genres, artists, songs, and more. It even tells user’s the exact amount of time in minutes they spent listening to music throughout the year.

In addition to statistical information, Spotify Wrapped presents each user a pre-made playlist of their top 100 songs of the year, which can be easily added to a listener’s library with the click of a button. 

New this year, Wrapped included new, more personality based features such as users’ listening moods and their music personality.

Using words such as “sad boi vulnerable sorrow”, “angst happy confident”, and even “heartache pumpkin spice cottage core” Spotify described users’ common music moods in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

Following more statistics, at the end of their Wrapped, Spotify users were assigned a listening personality. With personalities titled the Replayer, the Specialist, the Adventurer, the Time Traveler, and more, users received a Myers-Briggs adjacent categorization. Each personality included a group of four letters, each representing an adjective to describe the user’s music taste. 

Similar to many online personality tests, Spotify’s music personalities were met with mixed reviews.

“To be honest, I thought it was pretty cute, I got the Adventurer. I like taking personality tests so I thought that was really fun,” senior Sara Omer said.

On the other hand, some Spotify users were skeptical of the personality based features, thinking they were generic and random.

“I don’t know where they got that from,” junior Moss Firth said. “They gave me Explorer but all I listen to is classic rock and depressing music.”

In addition to slight skepticism regarding the new features, some Spotify users are frustrated with the data Wrapped presents.

Although Wrapped is meant to be a comprehensive analysis of a listener’s full year in music, many Spotify users feel it is often skewed towards the beginning of the year.

“I feel like it was overwhelmingly focused on the beginning of the year,” senior Sara Omer said. “I didn’t like that it came out in November because my music taste becomes more curated over the last couple months, and once again, it is very much skewed towards what I was listening to in January.

Despite its flaws, Spotify Wrapped continues to be a hit among Spotify users. 

“I enjoyed Wrapped because it was fun to see what I listened to throughout the year, and the year playlist was fun to listen to,” sophomore Brycen Emslie said.