Spotify Wrapped 2022 brings new features like your ‘listening personality’, 40K+ artist notifications • TechCrunch

by James · November 30, 2022

Spotify Wrapped 2022 has officially arrived. Although other music services, including Apple Music and YouTube Music, are now putting together their own year-end retrospectives, Spotify’s personalized and interactive Wrapped experience for users, creators and podcasters remains the one to beat. The secret to its ongoing success is how it goes beyond simply offering a summary of top songs or artists to also include fun, shareable elements for music and audio fans to explore, post on social media and compare with their friends.

The Wrapped experience has grown in popularity over the years. In 2017, around 30 million Spotify users accessed Wrapped; last year this figure had grown to more than 120 million. In addition, there were nearly 60 million shares of Wrapped stories and cards across social platforms in 2021.

Consumers’ interest in Wrapped is not only about the data itself, but also the way Spotify personalizes the data for users and presents it in smart ways. Last year, for example, Wrapped included an “Audio Aura,” which showed listeners their top two “moods” based on their listening behavior.

This year, the new notes are something Spotify calls your “listening personality”.

Created with obvious inspiration from the classic Myers-Brigg personality test and its four-letter codes, the “Listening Personality” feature also introduces a four-letter combination to the user that can be translated into one of the 16 personality types Spotify has created. For example, fans who quickly stream new releases and are often ahead of trends may find themselves called an ENPC, or an early adopter, while fans who love to stream music from other parts of the world may be labeled an ENLC, or a voyager .

Image credit: Spotify

“The way we listen to music says a lot about us and your listening personality tells you not only about the music you listen to, but what it says about your taste in music,” explains Spotify VP of Product Development Babar Zafar, who leads the team creating the Wrapped experience .

People’s personality type will be based on a combination of the music they stream and a selection of specific characteristics – such as their tendency to discover new music, the average age of the songs they listen to, the range of artists they listen to and how their listening is similar or different to others . Each of the 16 possible listener personalities gets its own colorful card designed for further sharing on social media or for messaging friends.

Image credit: Spotify

This new feature will also be integrated with Snapchat, allowing fans to unlock a personalized Snapchat lens that reflects their ‘listening personality’. Snapchat users can also take advantage of wrapped-themed clothing for Bitmojis. And with a new GIPHY partnership, users can access custom Wrapped-themed GIFs.

Another Wrapped 2022 feature is something called “Audio Day,” which is an interactive story that details a person’s listening trends from morning to night.

Image credit: Spotify

Meanwhile, Wrapped’s popular “Top Song” feature is expanding this year to provide a few more insights, like how many times users listened to their top song and what day of the year they listened to it the most.

Image credit: Spotify

Additionally, users will receive their usual year-end updates on their top artists, songs, genres, podcasts and minutes listened to, as well as their Top Songs 2022 playlist.

Image credit: Spotify

Image credit: Spotify

Despite the many ways to share and interact with Wrapped, Spotify admits it can’t track the full reach of Wrapped, noting that younger users will often take a picture of their phone screen for private sharing, rather than — or in addition to – posting their Wrapped to social media.

To help address this, Spotify is now integrating more deeply with various messaging platforms this year as part of efforts to get Wrapped shared — and tracked — in as many places as possible. While users can always share Wrapped on social media, Wrapped 2022 adds direct integrations with WhatsApp, Instagram Direct Messages, Facebook Messenger and Line, to better accommodate those users who prefer to share Wrapped more privately.

Spotify is also leveraging its newer Roblox integration, Spotify Island, as part of this year’s Wrapped.

In its virtual world, Roblox users can go on Wrapped-inspired quests, play games, shop for virtual goods, and use a photo booth feature featuring 12 different artists, including Bizarrap, Black Sherif, CRO, Doechii, Eslabon Armado, Miranda Lambert, NIKI, Stray Kids , SUNMI and Tove Lo.

Image credit: Spotify

The company is also doubling down on another feature introduced last year: artist video messaging.

Building on celebrity social apps like Cameo and the popularity of short-form videos, like on TikTok, last year Spotify worked with 170+ artists to create short video messages thanking fans for including them in their listening over the year. This year, the company expanded its “Your Artist Messages” video messaging feature to more than 40,000 music creators, including household names such as Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, J Balvin, Moonlight, Shania Twain, Pusha T and others.

Users can scroll through the video messages in a vertical, full-screen interface, similar to TikTok.

Spotify says users will see these videos if they have at least two artists with “thank you” videos in their top artists. In other words, the function is limited to those fans who are most engaged with the artists. While the feature is sure to increase fan engagement, it’s a shame that artists can’t also post their videos elsewhere on Spotify – such as a Stories section on their own artist profile. Spotify says users can see up to 10 artists’ “thanks” in Wrapped.

Wrapped will also get its own hub on Spotify’s mobile app, where streamers can browse merch and concert tickets from their top artists.

As in previous years, creators and podcasters will have their own Wrapped experiences, available directly from Spotify for Artists, Spotify for Podcasters and Anchor. Artists will gain insight into their streams, their most shared lyrics, how many fans had them in their top artists, their fans’ listening personalities and more. Podcasters will gain insight into listeners and followers, how many fans had their podcast in the top 5 or 10, their top episode overall, chart position and more.

Of course, as part of Spotify’s year-end, the company also highlighted the best artists and creators on its platform, both globally and country-wise.

This year, the most streamed artist globally was Bad Bunny, followed by Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd and BTS. The most streamed songs globally were “As It Was” by Harry Styles, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, “STAY (with Justin Bieber)” by The Kid LAROI, “Me Porto Bonito” by Bad Bunny featuring Chencho Corleone, and ” Tití Me Preguntó” by Bad Bunny. And the most streamed albums globally were “Un Verano Sin Ti” (Bad Bunny), “Harry’s House” (Harry Styles), “SOUR” (Olivia Rodrigo), “=” (Ed Sheeran) and “Planet Her” (Doja) Cat).

Image credit: Spotify

With reference to Bad Bunny’s chart dominance – the artist is now the most streamed globally for the third year in a row – Spotify points out that an average of 50% of users globally stream at least one Latin song per month on the service, which equates to around 215 million users worldwide. To celebrate, Spotify will turn its green heart into Bad Bunny’s red heart when users “like” a Bad Bunny track over the next week.

“You can tell it’s much more than a genre. The average monthly stream of Latin music in 2022, so far, is over 24 billion streams,” says Spotify’s global head of public affairs, Dustee Jenkins. “A huge number – and only in The US is 1 in 10 streaming Latin music,” she noted.

In the US, the most streamed artists were led by Drake in first place, followed by Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Kanye West and The Weeknd. The top songs were “As It Was” by Harry Styles, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy, “Me Porto Bonito” by Bad Bunny featuring Chencho Corleone and “First Class” by Jack Harlow.

Top albums were “Un Verano Sin Ti” (Bad Bunny), “Harry’s House” (Harry Styles), “Dangerous: The Double Album” (Morgan Wallen), “Midnights” (Taylor Swift) and “SOUR” (Olivia Rodrigo).

Image credit: Spotify

Swift’s “Midnights” album, in particular, only arrived last month and has already broken a number of records, including becoming the most streamed album in a single day. Unsurprisingly, Swift became 2022’s “most viral” artist globally, ahead of The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, BTS and Lana Del Rey, based on shares from Spotify to social platforms.

Spotify also highlighted its most popular podcasts of the year, led globally by “The Joe Rogan Experience” (again!), followed by “Call Her Daddy”, “Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain”, “Caso 63” (All Languages) and “Crime Junkie.” The US chart also saw Rogan and “Call Her Daddy” in the top two spots, followed by “Crime Junkie”, “The Daily” and “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard”.

Image credit: Spotify

Image credit: Spotify

And even though it was a fairly new addition in the US, Spotify showcased its best audiobooks in a list that didn’t seem to include just current releases. Instead, users’ top books were “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by JK Rowling, “It Ends with Us” by Colleen Hoover, “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and ” The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson.

The company said it will also promote Wrapped through out-of-home campaigns, including things like a word search displayed on billboards in LA and Brooklyn, and more. Spotify is also partnering with FC Barcelona, which will result in 2022 wrapped videos from players including Robert Lewandowski, Alexia Putellas, Pedri and Ansu Fati shared to social media.