6th November 2023
Listen
Listen
If you’re as chronically online as me and others in my generation, then you probably know that yesterday Spotify released its annual feature of Spotify Wrapped. This intends to offer a chance to “dive into your year in listening”, providing an array of content such as Your Artist Clips – an opportunity for listeners to receive a short clip of music artists expressing their gratitude – Editors’ Picks: UK & Ireland, Wrapped Party and an exclusive playlist of Your Top Songs.
This Wrapped concept has been present since 2015, with each year a new iteration of tailoring to fan consumption. For some people, they may not have received a personalised Wrapped; to become eligible, listeners needed to have streamed at least 30 songs for over 30 seconds each, which must be from at least 5 different artists. However, this feature is available for both Free and Premium users, so be sure to double check your Spotify app is updated to the latest version. Once done, you will find a button at the top of the screen titled “Wrapped”, which will contain a new hub for you to engage with.
2025’s Wrapped promises to be innovative, with Spotify themselves stating they have added “nearly a dozen new and updated ways to dig deeper into the voices and stories that shaped your year”; additionally, they have also implemented “new controls that let you adjust the speed of your experience and revisit specific moments without starting from the beginning”. In my experience, I did dislike how prior versions of Wrapped would force you to sit through a long slideshow of your statistics. If you missed something or wanted to go back, then you would have to reset the video. This year feels far more freeing in its interactivity.
Also, this year is clearly capitalising on cross-media promotion through the ‘Your Stories‘ option, which allows users to share their results onto other platforms; I will admit this was very useful in allowing me to repost my results onto my Instagram story, where I enjoyed seeing other people’s Wrapped outcomes.
You may be wondering how Spotify captures your data accurately; well, they proclaim that they record data from January until mid-November, offering them a few weeks to sort out the Wrapped for its eventual release. While they accommodate for listening in Private Mode and attempts to exclude music from Taste Profile as counting towards your total time spent, they respect this privacy through carefully constructed stories.
Your total minutes reflects your actual listening time rather than the content’s length (e.g – listening at x2 speed means Spotify only counts the actual minutes listened). For genres, each track is categorised with a genre tag and a score is calculated for every listened genre. For more information on this, check out their breakdown.
Before I discuss how my Spotify Wrapped turned out this year, these are the new features that 2025 has brought:
To start off, my total minutes listened came to 41,968, rounding out to around 28 days. For comparison, in 2024 I had a total of 33,325; in 2023, I had 4,741. While definitely an increase, it was not as big of a jump as my listening of 2023-2024. I think this was probably due to not having mobile data, which meant I couldn’t slap on my headphones. Now, when I leave my house, I will put in my Air Pods and listen to whatever I started on my Xbox.
I listened to 339 genres. This honestly doesn’t surprise me, as I have always been open to listening to pretty much any music genre; however, I don’t really like heavy metal or classical music. Besides that, I will listen to whatever.
Yeah, so like I said before, pop has and always will be my favourite music genre. I have recently been getting back into K-Pop again, after an initial enjoyment a few years back with Blackpink and now I’m listening to groups such as Red Velvet, NCT 127 and Aespa. Again, I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest fanatic but I do dabble. These were my top genres in 2023:
I don’t know what to make of this, honestly. Spotify reassured me with the age old saying of “Age is just a number” and to not take it personally. I got told my taste was “trending”, but I think that is more because I like to constantly develop my music tastes. Often, I check out the Top UK 2025 songs or play a random song on the search toggle so that the Spotify algorithm will bless me with a new song similar to my interests. This is what has led me to artists such as Almost Monday, Remi Wolf, Balu Brigada, etc.
In 2024, I played 3,659 songs; I think I have played more songs this year because of allowing the Spotify algorithm to find me new music.
I’m not surprised at all that this is my top song. If you’ve read my article reviewing Khalid’s new album after the sun goes down, you will know that I defined this song as what would’ve been my song of the summer. The melody is just so catchy and Khalid’s vocals once again just leave me hooked, with his riffing at the end a highlight. I just wish this album – or even just this song as a single – released back in June.
In 2024, my top song was So American by Olivia Rodrigo, where I had streamed it 68 times (this ranked me in the top 0.05% of worldwide listeners). I think I listened to this more because of her song Vampire being on Fortnite Festival and because I wanted to actually learn the lyrics to a song (I have a habit of just listening to songs and not really paying attention to the lyricism). In 2023, my top song was Heaven Over our Heads by TV Girl, which I played 8 times. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, it was because I don’t really like listening to the same song repeatedly, or else I grow tired of it.
Ok, now I know what you’re thinking. One of these songs stand out amongst the rest. I promise I am NOT an avid listener of Brainy’s music. However. Their playlist was incredibly useful for me during A-Level exam season by allowing me to focus better, especially during the 6th and 18th June. This was the 2 week period where I had to revise A-Level Computer Science, with the music encouraging me to do active recall by both verbally recalling and writing down my answers on a whiteboard. The music helped me drown out any sort of background noise that may have detracted me from working (I needed all the motivation I could get during that time, as most of my friends had finished or were finishing their final exams). I would recommend if you need music in order to lock in.
Moreover, I also had gotten back into Post Malone, only briefly listening to him when Rockstar blew up back in the day and sometimes listening to Enemies. Now, I have listened to a lot more of him and really appreciate his music. I have also gotten properly into The 1975 – with some encouragement from my friend Lizzy – and really do love their hybrid pop-rock vibe. Oh! I also looped The Weeknd’s Dark Secret way too many times (thank you American Dad for a song that slaps).
In 2024, my top songs were:
In 2023, my top songs were:
Perhaps a controversial take but I actually don’t listen to albums in their entirety. Instead, I prefer to mix and match songs from different albums, as often you will get a better diverse range of music from an artist (for me, if it is all in the same album then since there is a consistent theme or mood present, it can become a little boring after a while for me).
However, I do sometimes listen to albums fully. For instance, I had to when reviewing Khalid’s newest album and did enjoy it. But, it also forced me to listen to songs I knew I didn’t like as much as other entries. So I think it depends but most of the time I will just quickly go through songs on an album and then quickly move on. I’m definitely not one of those people who can recall where specific songs comes from their respective albums. Unless it’s after the sun goes down or one of Katy Perry’s albums. Sorry.
This doesn’t surprise me one bit, to be honest. While a lot of this time was spent on research for my album review and evaluating my opinions on the songs, I found myself replaying the songs I liked a lot and dabbling in some of the weaker entries. This album would’ve been so perfect if he had released it in the summer. Regardless, I will be listening to this all the way to next summer and it will be the perfect vibe.
Like I said beforehand, I am not really an album guy. I think it’s because I never really dedicate myself to one artist enough to go through their music history. Like, I didn’t know Post Malone’s album in 5th place was called Twelve Carat Toothache? While Khalid and Katy Perry are perhaps the closest I’ve gotten, I wouldn’t say I’ve invested enough time and dedication to say I like or dislike a certain album of theirs. Although, I will say that for Khalid, I keep on going back to his albums of Sincere from 2024 and of course his new album after the sun goes down. But I’m not a true albums critic, per se.
After Spotify Wrapped played through its custom sprint between my top 5 artists – Post Malone, Khalid, Brainy, The 1975 and Eyedress – it resulted in Brainy absolutely demolishing the others. This is all because of A-Levels by the way. I promise I’m not a big Brainy fan. In June, the sprint says I had 961 streams. Absolutely crazy stuff. It is honestly hilarious this has happened but I’m not surprised, I was struggling a lot to keep on pushing with revision, especially in my weakest subject.
In 2024, Khalid was my top artist (and he basically is this year if we ignore Brainy), with 1,150 minutes listened, which put me in the top 0.5% worldwide. In 2023, Mareux was my top artist, with 146 minutes and putting me in the top 4%.
Out of the 6 clubs available (Cloud State Society, Grit Collective, Club Serotonin, Cosmic Stereo Club, Full Charge Crew, Soft Hearts Club), I think it made perfect sense that I was in Cloud State Society. According to Wrapped, my club (which is apparently 16% of global listeners) finds peace through music and often hoard music to build a large club collection. I am not like other people with music, who create multiple playlists for multiple occasions. While I do have a Christmas playlist, I mainly stick to 1 custom playlist called Songs that I like, containing over 197 hours of music which I have gathered over the years.
If you want true variety, then you should check that out honestly. I don’t know if it’s laziness or being switched off from the idea but making so many different playlists would just stress me out. This is because I am someone who likes structure and I would know that I would need it to be consistent each time without fault. So if I saw even one non-Christmas song in my Christmas playlist, I would be so annoyed.
Now, these are some more 2025 Wrapped highlights. To start, my Biggest Music Listening Day was June 17th, the day before my last A-Level exam. Do you wanna know why? Because of Brainy. Again. 661 minutes. To be fair, it did help me stay focused but seriously. This is wild.
Next, my Most Energetic Day was September 23rd, where I listened to 106 artists in 1 day. The morning started with girl in red and Sasha Alex Sloan, to Paramore, Katy Perry, Dua Lipa and Sigrid. The night then concluded with K-Pop and synthpop “ke[eping] the energy high”.
After, my Most Diverse Day was October 15th, where I opened the morning with Braxton Knight and Jay Newton (I don’t know who these are off the top of my head). Next, I went through the genres of dance pop, indie, K-Pop and classic rock. I managed to cover 47 genres in 415 minutes.
Then, my Biggest Indie Pop Day was October 20th, starting with Becky Hill (is she indie??) and The Killers and then let the rest of the day be indie pop central. I listened to The 1975, Tame Impala, Sigrid and Foster The People.
Finally, my Most Nostalgic Day was October 22nd. I kicked it off with Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, listening to songs like Firework and Dark Horse. To mellow out the day, I listened to The 1975 and The Japanese House (fun fact: I thought she and Phoebe Bridgers were the same person-). 329 minutes, 98 tracks, 59 artists. Not too shabby.
So, that was my 2025 Spotify Wrapped. Definitely a weird one for sure but funny regardless. Hopefully, next year I don’t end up with Brainy climbing up the ranks in my Top Songs.
Any questions? How did your Spotify Wrapped go this year? Feel free to contact me via johnjoyce4535@gmail.com!
Check out my last piece: Narratives, Media and Algorithms – The Interdisciplinary Approach
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