Spotify Wrapped is the year-in-review feature and viral marketing campaign that Spotify has run every year since 2016. Usually released in late November or early December, it shows each listener a summary of their year on the platform (most-played songs, artists and genres) as a run of story-style screens, ending with an invitation to share the results on social media. Every December the cards fill social feeds, which is the point: Wikipedia notes that the campaign “has led millions of people to promote Spotify on their social media accounts without being paid by the company.”
Origin
- 2015: “Year in Music.” According to Wikipedia, Wrapped was preceded in 2015 by a similar but less developed campaign called “Year in Music”. Spotify’s own 2025 announcement dates the concept to that year: “Spotify introduced the Wrapped concept as it’s known today in 2015.”
- December 2016: Wrapped launches. The campaign under the Wrapped name began in December 2016 and has been promoted every year since.
- 2017–2019: growth. In 2017 it was expanded to include artists and advertisers; in 2019 it was built into the Spotify app and began using a format modeled after social media stories.
- 2020: quizzes, badges and podcasts. TechCrunch reported that the 2020 edition added in-app quizzes, new badges for Premium users, a deeper look at podcast listening, and a web version for non-Spotify users “for the first time.” The same year the campaign won several Webby Awards, including Best Data Visualization.
How It Works
Wrapped is personal: each user gets their own sequence of data stories. Spotify says that for 2025, a personalized Wrapped required streaming “at least 30 songs for more than 30 seconds each” and listening to at least five different artists. It is available to both Free and Premium users in the mobile app, and each story has a share card that can be posted to social channels or sent through Spotify Messages.
The classic stories, per Wikipedia and Spotify, are a user’s top five songs, top artists and favorite genres, plus total minutes listened. Artists, podcast creators, authors and advertisers get their own versions with data about their audiences.
One detail surprises many users: Wrapped is not a full calendar year. Billboard and Newsweek reported that only activity from January 1 to October 31 is included, although in October 2023 Spotify posted on Twitter that “Wrapped is still counting past Oct. 31”.
Release Dates
| Year | Release date | Notable addition |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Tuesday, December 6 | First Wrapped |
| 2017 | Tuesday, December 5 | Expanded to artists and advertisers |
| 2018 | Thursday, December 6 | Astrological signs of top artists; oldest song played |
| 2019 | Thursday, December 5 | Built into the app; social-stories format |
| 2020 | Tuesday, December 1 | Quizzes, badges, podcast metrics |
| 2021 | Wednesday, December 1 | Internet-slang copy that spawned memes |
| 2022 | Wednesday, November 30 | — |
| 2023 | Wednesday, November 29 | — |
| 2024 | Wednesday, December 4 | — |
| 2025 | Wednesday, December 3 | Top Albums, Clubs, Wrapped Party |
Dates are from Wikipedia; the 2025 features are from Spotify’s newsroom.
Reception and Criticism
Wrapped is widely admired as marketing. Wikipedia records that in December 2019 more than 1,200,000 posts on Twitter were about it, and that in 2021 social media directors at McDonald’s and PepsiCo cited it as a best-in-class campaign.
It also draws steady criticism. A 2018 article in The Atlantic called it “a masterful coup of free advertising”, according to Wikipedia. In a 2021 opinion piece in The Guardian, Elle Hunt called it “an effective marketing scheme” but a “banal and depressing” experience, and “little more than free advertising” for Spotify, as summarized by Wikipedia. Other commentators have pointed to the personal data the feature exposes.
Rivals have followed. Apple Music released its “Replay” feature in 2019, Tidal launched “My Rewind” in 2020, and Google introduced “Recap” on YouTube Music the same year. See also #SpotifyWrappedFlex.
Recent Developments
For 2025, Spotify’s announcement added a Top Albums story “for the first time”, sorted listeners into one of six Clubs, introduced a group feature called Wrapped Party, and took the campaign offline with “around 50 pop-up experiences in key cities.” In November 2025 Spotify also introduced “Listening Stats”, a weekly and monthly review of top songs and artists, according to Wikipedia.