Andy's Newsletter ✌️ Spotify Wrapped(s)
YR WEEKEND STARTS NOW
Love it or hate it: Spotify Wrapped
is the next best thing we have to actually sharing music and mixtapes with the ones we love. Sure, it’s a numbers game and the books are cooked, but hell—everything’s cooked, y’all. We’re so fuckin’ cooked, might as well try to enjoy the funny little head petting from the streaming giant that (single handedly?) murdered the music industry.
(If you want to see my Wrapped, just skip to the end of all this wimpering and whining.)
Is this what it’s come to? And 5 other questions I’m asking myself today.
Are we no more than the minutes (hours, days, or in my case, months) we spend streaming music online?
Would we all use Bandcamp more if they gave us little summaries of our listenings?
Is there anything in this world that can do a better job of explaining who the hell we are as individuals than our Instagram screenshots of our Spotify history? Maybe tattoos, but not really?
Is there any price that Spotify could charge you tomorrow that you’d be like, oh hell no that’s way too much money to have unlimited access to every song imaginable?
Do we really care about any of this or is it just a fun thing to play with? Like, do you remember your Wrapped from last year? When we leave this world, can we take our Wrappeds with us?
Just some thoughts to ponder, perhaps? If you don’t like thinking about these things too much then I’ll spare you the suffering… the answer to each and all of these questions is “No.”
Who’s counting anyway?
These numbers feel like a lot, but if you break it down, I’m only listening to music for roughly 35% of my waking life in 2024. But that doesn’t count KEXP or Phish or The Grateful Dead because I listen to those bands on much weirder devices than Spotify. For next year, I wanna bump that number up to closer to 50%.
But none of that matters. I think we all know that we’re counting the wrong things. How many artists, how many songs, how many minutes… That’s not all that interesting. We have so much information, let’s go a little deeper, huh?
For next year’s Wrapped, I’d like Spotify to tell me, please:
This is the song you listen to when you want to feel happier, and then you feel happier!
Those cool kids you saw at that restaurant yesterday? This is what they’re listening to, check it out.
This is the song you listened to on your way home from the first date with the person you ended up marrying.
This is the song that you and your best friend should listen to next time you hang out because lemme tell ya, y’all gonna love this shit.
You got a big day tomorrow, here’s a chill lil’ playlist to help you wind down tonight so you can get a good night’s sleep. You’re doing great.
Until then… here’s a playlist of my 100 most-listened to songs in 2024
PS - No shade on Miley, I do really enjoy the song “Flowers,” but that ain’t why it’s in my Wrapped. You gotta ask my toddler daughter about that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I see you buying yourself those flowers.