It’s that time of year where we find out what music we’ve been obsessed with on Spotify with the ‘Wrapped 2021’ feature.
Spotify Wrapped features the user's top artists, genres, songs, podcasts and minutes listened and generates shareable graphics.
It’s safe to say that the feature is exposing some of us, with plenty of guilty pleasures sneaking onto the list.
And there’s an algorithm to work out how our Spotify Wrapped is put together.
According to the FAQs, Spotify will gather data from qualified users (to be ‘qualified’ you need to have created a Spotify account by November 15th.)
The algorithm will then narrow it down to this specific criteria:
- You’ve listened to at least five different artists
- You’ve listened to at least 30 different songs
- Streams are counted if you listen for at least 30 seconds
The rankings are then based on a combination of the number of plays, and the unique number of days you’ve listened.
For the top five artists and top five songs, it’s all based on playcount, but the ranking of the top 100 songs on your playlist is different.
At first, it’s initially sorted by playcount, but after track 10, Spotify will apply ‘artist separation’ so it’s not a direct reflection of playcount.
For those who enjoy a podcast whilst doing their washing up, your podcast time will count towards your general Spotify listening time.
So, total minutes = music + podcasts
If you listen to at least 60 seconds of a podcast, you’ll be eligible for at least one podcast story.
Topping the artists globally this year was rapper Bad Bunny who had over 9.1 billion streams - and that was without an album release.
Then we had Taylor Swift, BTS, Drake and Justin Bieber ranking as favourites all over the world.
It’s hats off to Olivia Rodrigo though, who had two of her songs ‘Driver’s License’ and ‘Good 4 U’ in the top five songs all over the world.
They were also the two top songs streamed in the UK, as well as Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran and Montero (Call Me By Your Name) by Lil Nas X.
Now you know that there are specific calculations behind your Spotify Wrapped, you can’t really deny the fact you may have been listening to musical soundtracks all year.
