Photo Credit: Spotify
When does Spotify start tracking for Wrapped 2024? Here’s everything you need to know.
Whether you spent all year listening to The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” or Taylor Swift’s entire discography, Spotify keeps track of it. By the end of the year, the streaming platform wraps it all up in a fun (and most importantly, shareable) package, the now-quintessential marketing move that is Spotify Wrapped.
Spotify’s individualized year-end analysis of its users’ behavior began in 2013, simply titled “Year in Review.” It featured fun graphics made for social media shareability that proved enough to garner user interest, even in their earliest iteration.
The first year it became known as Spotify Wrapped was 2016, with quirky graphics and gimmicky features that make each year’s presentation different enough to be continually engaging for its audience.
Spotify Wrapped has only become more popular each year. In 2017, Spotify Wrapped saw 30 million users engaging with it. In 2022, over 156 million users accessed their Spotify Wrapped.
Every year sees even more Spotify Wrapped engagement, while more platforms and industries have followed suit to release their own take on the sensation. Companies like Apple Music, YouTube, Nintendo, and even language learning platform Duolingo have offered their version of a year-end, social media-ready summary of your individual experience.
Before January comes to a close faster than you realize, here’s what to know about accessing your Spotify Wrapped from 2023, and how to be ready for the 2024 edition.
How Do I Access Spotify Wrapped?
If you’re subscribed to Spotify and have the latest version of the app on your device, chances are that you’ll be automatically directed to Spotify Wrapped once it’s released each year. But you can also access it here.
When Does Spotify Start Tracking for Wrapped?
Spotify collects data all year long; a spokesperson for the company reported that Wrapped contains content streamed from January until a non-specific date “a few weeks prior to launch.” In 2023, it released on November 29, giving users all of December to share and enjoy their Spotify Wrapped playlists like an early Christmas gift.
Notably, this means that songs or albums released earlier in the year would be at an advantage to accrue more listening time by year’s end. A song (or podcast) is considered “streamed” when a user listens to it for 30 seconds or more.
The Top Albums, Top Songs, and Top Artists statistics are based on aggregated stream counts. Top Podcasts are assessed by the number of unique listeners, rather than by stream count. Listens under “incognito mode” do not count toward these lists, “but data from them falls under total minutes listened.”
This year, Bad Bunny was de-throned by Taylor Swift as the most-streamed artist on Spotify worldwide — but his 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti still reigns supreme as the most-streamed album of 2023 for the second year running. Taylor’s got the number two spot in that category with her album “Midnights.”
It’s these overall stats combined with the kitschy graphics and user-specific listening data that keep Spotify Wrapped in the cultural zeitgeist each year. Alongside user fanfare, artists have started to record special messages for their listeners, with celebs like Lizzo, John Mayer, and Donne Warwick all talking about the annual campaign.
Spotify vice president and global executive creative director Alex Bodman says that while they’d “love to sit down and say it was a marketing stroke of genius,” Spotify Wrapped was initially built as a fun gimmick for user loyalty. “I don’t think we had any idea that people would want to share it so much.”
