Ho ho ho! The annual holiday gift for music listeners has dropped: everyone’s favorite Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay!
This year, Apple Replay was released on December 3 followed closely by Wrapped a day later.
For those new to this personalized compilation, Spotify Wrapped and Apple Replay are marketing campaigns that started in 2016 and 2019 respectively. The latter was directly inspired by the first to win back defected listeners feeling FOMO from the lack of personalized annual music data. Spotify ties the whole experience together with bright colors, whimsical graphics and quirky animations. In contrast, Apple prefers smoother transitions, sleek colors and a calmer vibe. Both apps allow viewers fretting over metrics to easily share across multiple social media platforms, continuing the buzz of conversation with their friends online.
Over the years, both Wrapped and Replay have slowly expanded the different categories of data collected. However, some are consistently more anticipated than others. Deena Shen, a junior at Wilcox and an avid Spotify user says her most anticipated is top artist: “I listen to so many different artists throughout the year and you kind of have a gauge on who it might be, but you never really truly know.” Spotify has historically also included how you stack, adding a percentage of listeners. It has become a contest for many to win that coveted badge of honor: top 0.01% of listeners. Alternatively, Replay includes how many minutes you have listened to all top five artists, instead of solely the first. Other highly anticipated categories include top songs, genres and total minutes listened to in the year.
However, the two competitors differ; Spotify always includes a creative, quirky metric that reflects users’ listening habits. For example, this year Spotify assigned three musical phases during different months of the year. Categories ranged from “Pink Pilates Princess Strut Pop” to “After Hours Football Rap.” However, in 2023, Spotify instead assigned users a personalized city, which they called “Your Sound Town.”
Staying true to Apple’s high-quality minimalism, Replay’s categories are less unique but provide substantially more comprehensive data than Wrapped’s statistics. Not only are top artists, songs, albums, and genres included, but Replay also breaks down those by month. Users can easily scroll through which song they cried to most during January and which album they were belting during that carefree August road trip.
Another key difference between the two competitors is how they collect users’ data. Spotify stops collecting a little past Halloween to ensure the utmost quality for Wrapped. Conversely, Replay updates users’ yearly playlists weekly, so people can track their music taste evolution before the beginning of December. This also means data is collected up until the day before Replay’s release.
In terms of internet culture, both Wrapped and Replay have become conversation starters. Users on both apps treat the annual data collection as a game: streaming obsessively, meticulously ensuring no “embarrassing statistics” will appear, and competing for fan supremacy. However, Wrapped has penetrated internet culture deeper given its more frequent discussion and memeification. People love using the Wrapped format to joke about other aspects of life, like the number of minutes spent crying, most played: you, the number of times you thought about your ex, etc.
No matter if you’re a Spotify or Apple user and whether your end-of-year results evoked deep disappointment or unfiltered pride, these music streaming platforms have successfully managed to hook you as an app user; a true testament to the power of marketing.
