This week saw Spotify return with the latest installment of their Spotify Wrapped campaign, a celebration of listening and streaming moments throughout 2023. Collating artist, track, album (and podcast!) listening data, Spotify Wrapped provides users with a bundle of shareable stats that break down over 574 million users’ listening habits throughout the year. Reminding them of the tracks they couldn’t get enough of, their guilty genre-pleasures, and even a city, or ‘Sound Town’ that most aligns with their own listening habits.
Originally launched in 2016, Spotify Wrapped has quickly ballooned in popularity since its launch. The #SpotifyWrapped hashtag trends annually on X, 2021 saw over 60 million Wrapped graphics shared on social media and the #SpotifyWrapped hashtag currently has over 70 billion usages on TikTok. The success and reach of Wrapped has also seen many other companies adopt the idea: platforms such as Apple Music and YouTube have rolled out an offering for their users, and a variety of other brands like Nintendo, Reddit, and Twitch have all followed suit.
2023 has seen Spotify go all-in with their marketing of Wrapped, with numerous OOH activations worldwide: from Ice Spice and her famous adlib “Grah” featuring on numerous billboards, Lil Yachty’s recent album floating on mini yacht boats and deepening their collaboration with FC Barcelona with videos from players guessing each other’s Wrapped stats.
Spotify has included numerous new Wrapped features for 2023, some standouts include:
- Sound Town: Spotify aligns your listening habits and artist affinity with a city whose residents are most likely to share their musical tastes.
- Artist Video Messages: Following on from their short-form content focus this year via Clips and their new homepage), artists were asked to pre-record a short thank you video that is serviced to their top fans.
- Me in 2023: Spotify aligns users’ listening habits that defined their year with one of 12 characters, like “Vampire” (fans of dark, atmospheric music), “Time Traveller” (listeners that regularly listen to top tracks from the past) or “Shapeshifter” (users with the most eclectic of tastes). Check out the 12 characters here.
Spotify Wrapped has become a staple in the industry calendar, providing artists, labels, and managers a chance to reflect and celebrate the growth and success of their campaigns and catalogue each year. It’s common to see social feeds inundated with artists boasting their Wrapped stats graphic, and we want to share some ideas you can implement to maximize your potential social reach this year and deepen your connection with your listeners. Let’s face it, without them, there would be no stats to boast!
- Competitions: Ask fans to share their Wrapped graphic and tag your @ if you or your track appear in their top 5 artists or tracks for 2023. In exchange for a tag, all fans will be entered into a competition to win a piece of merch, vinyl, or gig ticket. This will not only help deepen your engagement with your fans (and boost the algorithm in your favour for future posts) but increase your potential reach with new users and fans.
- Artist Playlists: If you personally use Spotify to listen to music, you will have your own user Wrapped. Give fans a deeper context behind the music you’ve been listening to, and the artists and tracks that have inspired you in 2023. Create an artist playlist on Spotify and fill it with tracks using any angle you want i.e. 2023 inspirations, 2023 guilty pleasure etc. Bonus point – post a Spotify Clip telling fans about the playlist!
- Fan Wrapped Reactions: Ask fans to share their top 5 artists and tracks in the comments of a post. Record a video (or livestream!) of you listening and reacting to the fan submissions. This could be a good way for you to put the spotlight on upcoming artists, or even your meme-worthy takes on the latest sped-up version of a Pop classic – there are no rules, make it fun and engaging, and show off your personality. After you’ve posted the video, why not also create a Spotify playlist of all your fans’ submissions to really tap into your fandom.
- Meme It Up: Take a different angle – there are going to be thousands of pre-built Wrapped graphics on social media. Why not design your own and parody the current trend. Are you in a band? Then how about instead of ‘minutes listened’, design your own graphic and include ‘8,050 minutes waiting for your singer to help with the load in’?! The possibilities are endless – make it fun, make it personal to you and try to drive engagement.
- Wrapped Retrospective: Time to get soppy and show your appreciation to the fans that have been with you on your journey. Run a carousel post on Instagram including all your previous Wrapped graphics all the way until the latest 2023 graphic. This will show the growth your project has had over the years – and gives you a chance to thank your fans for being a part of it all through the years. This will also be a nice perception exercise to show followers and potential industry you project is growing and give them the self-validation that they are engaged with a project that is building. People love to be early adopters and tastemakers!
Spotify Wrapped 2023 is out now – access you user Wrapped via the Spotify app, and your artist Wrapped through Spotify for Artists.
