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?
Agreed. 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.
Heck, 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.
I actually host this for myself and found out the same results as wrapped gave me between February and October this year.
Ooo this looks cool. If love to go deeper into my stats. Might do this at some point. Can you have multiple users at once by any chance?
STOP HAVING FUN! - The author
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.
You 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.
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.
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.
I 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.
Spotify 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.
Lmso, 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:
This article should actually be about hack journalism that uses hot button issues to make clicks out of pointless nonsense.
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.
Yeah, on its own this is a good feature and I don’t have to write my own version based on the GDPR data request.
The second part of the headline is misleading, while true, the author gives just a cursory glance to privacy.
Why 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?
My only issue with Spotify Wrapped is just how inaccurate it ALWAYS is, comparing it to my Last.fm account
i 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.
Thats interesting. My lastfm and Spotify wrapped are basically identical. Every top song and artist are in the same order.
Statements 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.
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.
Yeah I spent a lot of time with “daily mix” playlists playing. Half of the songs were ones they kept repeating in those.
GTFO, 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!
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.
I 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.
