Once upon each year in December, social media users from all corners of the globe frantically race to post the results of their “Spotify Wrapped.”
All the cool kids are doing it… from music fans to musicians. But Spotify Wrapped missed my favorite album, EP, and single of the year. Sure, the stats don’t lie, but art is about what’s good, not analytics. I came to set the record straight…
Part 1: Spotify Wrapped, as a listener.
I listened to 64,243 minutes of music this year, just on my account.
There is even more, considering this year I started falling asleep to ambient…
According to Spotify, my top artists were:
- Virtual Riot
- REAPER
- Above & Beyond
- Porter Robinson
- Seven Lions
This is a very accurate top 5, but all their music hits very different when compared together.
When my sound arrives, these will be most of the artists who inspired it.
According to Spotify, my top Genres were:
- Dubstep
- Trance
- Drum and Bass
- Progressive House
- Future Bass
Didn’t get any weird ones like “vapor twitch this year.” Darn.
Wrapped isn’t picking it up but I listened to way more non-edm this year, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some new names on this list.
According to Spotify: My Top Songs
- Deathpact – CATALYST (REAPER Remix)
- REAPER – BARRICADE
- Abraxis (AKA Seven Lions & Dimibo) – Old Gods
- Metrik – We Are The Energy
- Virtual Riot, Modestep, FRANK ZUMMO – This Could Be Us
According to Spotify data, 3 of my top 5 songs were Drum and Bass. One Psytrance. Once Dubstep. Can’t lie, every top song and artist in my wrap is phenomenal, but some of my favorite music from the year slipped through the cracks.
Part 2: My Favorite Releases of 2021 that Spotify Wrapped missed:
Best Album Ignored by Spotify: Porter Robinson – Nurture
Best EP Ignored by Spotify: lil aaron – YEAR OF THE DOG
By Me: Jonas Loeb – Waiting For
I only released one song this year, and it was honestly one I’ve been sitting on for a while. There’s more in the pipeline of a similar vein, and I can’t wait for you to hear what comes next in 2022.
Comments:
As a public company, Spotify is as much a data/tech company as it is a music and podcast distribution company. At this point it’s well known Spotify uses data to predict listeners’ moods and activities, including when you sleep, workout, hang with friends, etc. Spotify Wrapped is an annual reminder of how much data they collect, and can collect, simply based on when and what you listen to.
It’s fun to empirically know what I spent my time listening to, but I can’t help but feel like the entire premise reduces the consumption of art to a transaction. Art should be measured subjectively, for the quality of the piece in terms of its message, its composition, and the feelings it evokes.
Perhaps this is the never-ending debate that Art and Entertainment are two distinct, but sometimes overlapping categories. But at the end of the day, the painting I spent the most time looking at may not necessarily be my favorite one, and we should remember that for music.
