With the end of 2023 approaching, many are preparing for the holiday season and scanning for the last remaining Black Friday bargains—but music fans have been looking ahead to an increasingly popular annual tradition: the release of theirSpotify Wrapped 2023 playlist.
It’s been a tumultuous year for people across the U.S. and beyond, with inflated prices, debts building and widespread layoffs—and Spotify’s annual release of curated playlists promises to provide a snapshot of how its users soundtracked the chaos.
The music streaming giant dropped its latest iteration of the list on Wednesday, which is the result of a massive analysis of what 574 million people across the globe listened to in 2023.
Who came out on top?
For American Spotify users, Spotify Wrapped appeared on their apps Wednesday morning—giving them insight into which artists, songs, albums, and podcasts they’ve been whiling away hours with since January.
Following the tradition of previous Wrapped releases, Spotify also unveiled which musicians and content creators won the greatest proportion of listeners’ time this year in the U.S. and beyond.
Some of the results are arguably unsurprising: Taylor Swift—who has had a blockbuster year that saw her launch the landmark Eras tour, release two albums, and receive multiple Grammy nominations—was named this year’s top artist both in America and worldwide.
Drake, Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd, and Bad Bunny rounded out Spotify’s five most-streamed artists in the United States this year.
When it came to individual songs, country star and former The Voice contestant Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” came out on top, while SZA’s “Kill Bill” and “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus were the second and third most streamed tracks among American Spotify users in 2023.
The most listened to album in the U.S. was Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, and America’s favorite podcast was the The Joe Rogan Experience in a continuation from last year.
Swift’s album Midnights, SZA’s SOS, and the podcasts Call Her Daddy and Crime Junkie were all also among the most popular Spotify content in America this year.
Americans’ tastes varied slightly from their overseas counterparts, although there was some of crossover between the U.S. and global rankings of Spotify’s most-streamed artists and songs, with Swift, Bad Bunny, and The Weeknd topping the global artist list.
But different markets favored different content. For example, while British Spotify users also showed they were huge Swifties, locally grown talent like Arctic Monkeys, Ed Sheeran, PinkPantheress, and rapper Dave took prominent positions in their most listened-to artists and songs.
Spotify Wrapped 2023
Users can view their personalized Spotify Wrapped 2023 roundup on the latest version of the Spotify app or by heading to Spotify.com/Wrapped.
Like with past releases, this year’s Wrapped comes with a personalized user experience that will include new interactive features like “Me in 2023,” which will categorize users into one of 12 “listening characters.” The characters describe the way individuals listened to content on Spotify this year—for example, so-called Luminaries favor light, upbeat music, while Shapeshifters are quick to move from one artist to another.
Other new features include Sound Town, which matches users to a city around the world that shares their listening preferences, as well as an AI-powered “DJ” that will play users’ favorite music of 2023 and provide comment on their most-loved genres, artists, and songs.
Content creators, meanwhile, have been gifted their own Wrapped experience, with Spotify giving them access to their own individualized microsite that includes data on how their fans listened to them in 2023.
What is Spotify Wrapped?
Since 2016, the Swedish streaming giant has been presenting its users with an end-of-year retrospective of their annual listening habits, using their individual data to compile bespoke lists of users’ most-streamed tracks, podcasts, and musicians.
The company describes Wrapped to its users as “your year in audio,” and “a recap made just for you.”
Spotify Wrapped also gives users details like how many minutes they spent listening to content on the platform, with past iterations including features like a personalized movie, personality analysis, and interactive games based on their data.
Musicians from Taylor Swift to Billie Eilish and K-pop megastars Blackpink have taken note of Spotify Wrapped’s popularity, recording messages for their fans to coincide with the release in past years.
It's become a highly anticipated release at the end of every year—and 2023 was no exception, with Spotify users speculating for weeks in advance about what their personalized Wrapped experience would look like this year.
Cant wait to get diagnosed (spotify wrapped)
— Yvonne (@T1ttyBiter_) November 17, 2023
spotify wrapped will be so messy and almost unpredictable bc i went through all sort of phases and emotions this year
— nour (@arabesqxe) November 18, 2023
patiently waiting for spotify wrapped like I don't already know exactly how it's going to look pic.twitter.com/kT88b7ZCtu
— 🍒🇵🇸 (@Finnuyasha) November 23, 2023
