Spotify Wrapped is creepy, meaningless – and shows just how much data big tech has on you
Spotify Wrapped is creepy, meaningless – and shows just how much data big tech has on you
The annual summary of your listening habits has become a phenomenon – but aside from being a marketing wheeze, Wrapped doesn’t always reflect what we truly love
I don't really understand what the author is complaining about. Spotify Wrapped is just a fun thing that shows you your music listening stats. The data is all very obvious and not invasive at all. Is the author arguing that it should be discontinued? Or is he saying it should change in some way?
142Agreed. The author seems like a bummer of a person to me.
Collecting data on users is not inherently bad, there are lots of ways that data collection can be used to the user's benefit.
If course in this day in age that is typically not the case and companies are normally collecting data at the detriment of the user but I really don't see that with what Wrapped shows.
Plus it's fun to see little metrics like how many times I listened to a song this year, or see how my listening habits changed as the year went by.
It's just a fun and cute thing imo.
48Heck, there's a self hosted app out there on GitHub (https://github.com/Yooooomi/your_spotify) that allows people to do this in house and I'd guess more real-time, so there's a demand for it out there. Spotify knows these things anyhow, they have to in order to calculate payments, so why not make it available.
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STOP HAVING FUN! - The author
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The music streaming service, that I stream music from, knows which music I streamed. I’m shocked.
84Permanently Deleted
20If the article had been about that, that would have been an interesting article.
3
I am normally really protective with my data but I don't get the outrage here. If the data is all about how you use the app and the report relates to things relevant to usage that are interesting and is sent just to you,I don't see the harm. It's not broadcast to the world and isn't sharing a bunch of sensitive information (as far as I know). It just seems like a fun way to reflect on the year.
I use Pandora and I wish they did something like this. As much as pandora is all about data I would love to see a report on my music listening with some of their insights about music attributes included.
44You may want to look into last.fm, I see It supports Pandora too.
It does a better job than Spotify imo
It also shows you users with similar music tastes. There's this one guy I found in 2015/2016. Every time I look for new music, I just peruse his recently played and always leave happy. Never messaged him. I don't even think he (or she) speaks English.
7
There are plenty of ways to convince people to take privacy and security more seriously, but this isn't it. This is more likely to make people not take it seriously. Spotify Wrapped is a fun little gimmick that a lot of folks appreciate. Heck even I did, and I only rarely use Spotify.
33Heck!
-8
Spotify has to collect data on what you listen to to recommend music that’s similar. I’d argue that’s Spotify’s best feature.
28I like spotify wrapped. I could easily pirate music, but I have premium for music discovery and it's cool to see what I've been listening to this year and compare with previous years.
28Spotify is the only service I pay for. Quite happy with it.
And apparently I listen to FAR more John Denver than I ever would have guessed. My teenage punker self would smack me.
11Lmso, spotify is nice becouse 99% of artists are there but the artists dont get psid well apparently, personaløy I use it cuz its easy and convenient.
Also my wrapped just cuz principle:
4
My friends and I enjoy sharing our results with each other every year. IMO the problem arises when results are shared with advertisers or without my knowledge.
23Yeah, on its own this is a good feature and I don’t have to write my own version based on the GDPR data request.
3
This article should actually be about hack journalism that uses hot button issues to make clicks out of pointless nonsense.
20The second part of the headline is misleading, while true, the author gives just a cursory glance to privacy.
14Why wouldn't they keep track of what you listen to even without wrapped? It's just standard telemetry. They need to keep track of plays to pay artists accordingly, and they keep track of what you listen to specifically so they can give you recommendations. How would you think recommendations would work without some kind of tracking?
Also what's scary about knowing what you listened to? Heck me and my significant other guess each others top song and artist and we're always close even though we don't hear everything each of us listen to. And what nefarious purposes is Spotify usage going to be used for that makes it so scary?
13Statements like this make people take privacy less seriously. I don't see how a music streaming site could possibly function without at least indirectly collecting the information displayed in the wrap up.
12GTFO, wrapped is the best. I get to learn I'm like top 0.5% listeners of my favourite bands. I'm the biggest fan! I win!
11My only issue with Spotify Wrapped is just how inaccurate it ALWAYS is, comparing it to my Last.fm account
11Thats interesting. My lastfm and Spotify wrapped are basically identical. Every top song and artist are in the same order.
4i checked my stats.fm top 2023 artists vs wrapped, and i'm seeing the same inaccuracies that you mention. my wrapped artists were:
- Artist A
- Artist B
- Artist C
- Artist D
- Artist E (not on top 5 on stats.fm)
while on stats.fm, it shows:
- Artist A
- Artist D
- Artist B
- Artist F (not on top 5 for wrapped)
- Artist C
- Artist E
i think that spotify is definitely strategic with placing certain artists in certain positions. for example, "Artist F" probably was in top 5 last year as well (and is a successful but less-well-known artist), but went unlisted on wrapped this year and was replaced by Artist C, a global top 200 artist. and it worked - i had not listened to Artist C in a while, and when i saw my wrapped results, i started listening to them again.
3
This year I noticed that it didn't really reflect my tastes. A couple of the most played songs were songs I don't actually like, that Spotify keeps playing me in the car. I can't tell it I don't like the song while I'm driving, and even if I skip it, the song just reappears the next day.
So my New Year's music resolution is to rely on generated streaming playlists less and be more deliberate about what I listen to. Evidently I'm spending a lot of time tolerating music I don't particularly enjoy.
10Yeah I spent a lot of time with "daily mix" playlists playing. Half of the songs were ones they kept repeating in those.
3
I enjoy it. I like seeing what new bands or songs got my attention, the throwback to favorite songs from earlier in the year, and seeing how my tastes change over time. It's fun.
Between all of the other big tech firms eating as much of my data as they can, I'm not too worried about Spotify sharing that I like Adele.
8I guess if you feed it with your personal taste. My wrapped was all over the place. I only use Spotify in parties and ask everyone what do they want to enjoy.
3Yeah.. Takes note of everything you listen to, and when..... But only when you're using spotify lol
I stopped using Spotify because it doesn't integrate well with home automation platforms (only with sonos) and because they wasted 100 mil on Joe Rogan (which made it clear I'm not their target market). I hate apple, but even they pay their artists
I want a service which is a bit more targeted, and its not really worth much. Its not exactly valuable information what I listened to lol (except to other music services)
2On the one hand, better you know what they collect about you than not. And as long as you use a streaming service they're collecting data on you.
On the other hand, streaming services are inherently wasteful and lead to pointless and excessive power usage which contributes to climate change, not to mention the privacy concerns, all of which could have been avoided by reasonably priced buy-once-own-forever media.
0I'm not sure I agree with the power usage argument. Even for streaming services, all the ones I'm familiar with will cache songs you listen to frequently on your device (which they're financially incentivized to do to reduce bandwidth) and isn't consuming any more power than buy-once-own-forever. And if you're comparing to physical media I'd assume it is far better, since you're saving all the energy to acquire materials to create the media, write to it, package it, and ship it.
3
What if google made a Google Wrapped? With your Gmail, Youtube videos, locations, etc. That would be scary... That's why they don't do it
0they do just that if you have location history turned on though
4Just for locations, but is already scary enough
0