Spotify Wrapped: When will it launch, and other questions answered

BBC

Anticipation for this year's Spotify Wrapped is growing, after the company launched a loading page for the service on Wednesday.

The annual event gives listeners a summary of their listening habits over the last year - from their favourite artists to top podcasts.

Rival streaming services YouTube and Apple Music have already released their own recaps, with fans sharing their statistics all over social media. (Full disclosure: Haim were my most played artist, and my top album was Kendrick Lamar's GNX).

Here's everything you need to know about Wrapped, and how to find your own personalised summary.

Wrapped usually appears in the week after Thanksgiving, so the launch could literally be any minute now.

Spotify posted a landing page on Wednesday, telling users they'd "get in touch when it's ready".

Last year, the gates opened on 4 December. But, in 2023 and 2022, fans could get access in late November.

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Anyone with a Spotify account - even a free one - can access their stats directly from the Spotify app.

On the landing page, the company advises users to update their app to the most recent version to ensure the best experience.

Once you're in, Spotify will present a carousel of slides, with insights into your favourite songs, top genres and most-played podcasts.

It might be a magical time of year for many, but sadly there's no wizardry involved in Wrapped. Just spreadsheets.

Last year, for example, Spotify calculated your Wrapped statistics by logging all of your listening data from 1 January to 15 November.

Any song you played for 30 seconds or more was counted towards your "favourite song" rankings.

Offline listening, which happens when you download a song to your device, is counted toward your listening data only if you reconnect to the internet.

Spotify then generates a playlist of your Top 100 songs. The chart is calculated by play count, rather than total time listened.

Similarly, your "top artist" will be decided by the total number of songs you played, rather than the time you spent listening to them.

Spotify also releases charts of the most-played artists overall. Last year, the winner was Taylor Swift. Expect the same in 2025.

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At the most basic level, that's how musicians get paid. Every song that's played on Spotify is logged, and royalties are paid out to musicians on a pro rata basis - although there's a long-running argument that streaming doesn't pay enough to anyone but the biggest pop stars.

Spotify also has a vested interest in making you stay on their app as long as possible - especially for free accounts that attract advertising revenue. So they study the songs that people like, and the ones that people skip, to encourage longer listening sessions.

In a blog post last year, Spotify's senior director of personalisation, Molly Holder, added that tracking people's listening habits also helped Spotify introduce them to new music.

(Warning: Chilling corporate speak incoming)

"Our personalisation technology takes into account a number of signals that you, as users, provide. For example, as you add songs to a playlist, listen to an entire song, skip a song, or engage with an artist, it sends us clear signals that help us tailor our programming to your taste."

To quote Carly Simon, we're so vain, we probably think these songs are about us.

For a more considered insight, here's Kelvin Wong, a senior lecturer in psychology at the Swinburne University of Technology.

"We as human beings have this really fundamental drive towards self-reflection and understanding who we are," he told ABC News.

"And music is often a really good reflection on that. It reflects past experiences that we've had, the emotions that we've experienced during those events, and all those things really inform who we are we have been during this year."

That's also why people are so keen to share their Spotify stats on social media.

If you are in the top 1% of Olivia Dean fans globally, you might be able to connect to other super-fans around the world.

"That really sparks that sense of belonging, which is a really fundamental human drive," said Wong.

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Absolutely! In previous years, musicians have posted their own results on social media, and celebrated their biggest fans.

In 2022, the pop star Marina (formerly Marina and the Diamonds) even revealed she'd been named her own most-played artist of the year.

"That embarrassing moment when you are your own top artist but you can't figure out why and then you realise that you used Marina Spotify playlists to do vocal warm ups to every night on tour," she wrote.

Last year, Miley Cyrus shared that Britney Spears had been her top artist - a fact that lined up neatly with her 2009 hit single, Party In The USA.

"A Britney song was literally on all year," she posted.

Frankie Grande announced that he'd listened to more than 7,600 minutes of his sister's music in 2024, putting him in the top 0.05% of her listeners.

"Forever and always," he captioned the post.

Meanwhile, soul legend Dionne Warwick expressed concern at fans who'd obsessed over her music in 2022.

"If I am on your Spotify Wrapped let me know," she posted on social media.

"Most of my songs are sad and I am hoping you're okay. We can talk about it."

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Practically every streaming service now offers their own version of Spotify Wrapped.

Apple Music's is arguably the best. Instead of waiting til December, it updates weekly throughout the year, and creates a running playlist of your favourite songs and artists.

A bit like their fitness app, it also rewards you with "badges" when you hit certain milestones, such as 10,000 minutes of listening, or 500 artists played.

To access it, sign in at replay.applemusic.com.

YouTube Recap doesn't just appraise your music tastes, but all those weird cat videos you watched in the middle of the night instead of sleeping.

According to a press release, the services "uniquely highlights interests, deep dives, and moments you explored this year, based on your watch history". Based on those stats it will also categorise you into one of 11 "personality types".

If you're prepared to face that horror, the link is youtube.com/recap (limited availability in some countries).

Other streaming services who'll cast an eye over your habits include Deezer, Soundcloud (launching on 3 December) and Amazon Music.