Social Signalling and the Need for Recognition – Wrapped 

As another year closes and a new one beckons its arrival, we wait patiently for the dawn of Spotify Wrapped. One of the most anticipated music features of the year, Spotify Wrapped has revelled in cult fame from cataloguing our listening habits. Tracking our favourite genres, tracks and artists over the year, Wrapped has become the perfect capsule of taste. Initially starting in 2016 to simply provide users insight into their app usage, it has evolved into so much more.  

Over the years, we have seen an increasing individualisation of Wrapped, a feature which has become akin to a zodiac chart or a Myers Briggs personality test. Last year brought a hyper-individualised music catalogue, introducing features like ‘Sound Town’, which mapped our listening patterns into genre-specific areas. Furthered by a categorisation of our year into ‘eras’, Spotify playfully capitalised on trending internet micro aesthetics. Did you have a ‘Sweater Weather Softcore Indie era’, or a ‘Pink Pilates Princess Strut Pop era’?  Whilst I never believed those phrases could be strung together, Spotify took genius advantage of up-to-date trends. 

Yet our palpable excitement for the upcoming 2025 Wrapped is much more than a simple interest in our listening habits. It has become our yearly signifier to out- niche one another. Estimated to arrive in the first week of December, we eagerly await to share our top artists on Instagram, hoping it will encompass our perfectly curated social media aesthetics. With an increasing hyper-individualisation, Wrapped has become the perfect way to solidify how our social media personas are perceived. Our wrapped must be the perfect signifier of our niche category of social identity. It must tell our followers exactly who we are, whilst simultaneously remaining cool and aloof. By playing into our constant need for recognition, Spotify has successfully capitalised on social medias failings of sincerity. However, the impact of Wrapped is not conditional to its yearly release date. Has it, as a by-product, changed our listening habits throughout the year? With the knowledge of Wrapped looming close, have we subconsciously altered our tastes out of embarrassment? 

The increasing ability to share and track your music is not exclusive to Spotify. With other streaming platforms releasing their own versions, apps like Instagram utilising music features on stories and posts, and the internet sensation of Airbuds, our music taste has become a constant choice of curation. Airbuds, for those who haven’t succumbed yet, is a social media app which tracks and shares your daily streaming to your followers. Actively exposing the best (and worst) of your listening habits, every single track streamed is documented and shared. Whilst it creates the ability to constantly connect and share new music with friends, it also becomes yet another platform to present the ‘perfect’ version of ourselves. Consciously choosing songs to conform to the restrictive personas we have curated on social media, Airbuds becomes a music watchdog, bringing the reality of a Big brother dystopia closer than ever within social media. Airbuds connects us through the music we love but also intimately intertwines our taste with ideas of personhood.  

With an impending 2025 Wrapped on its way (scratch that it’s out NOW), it is important to remember it is simply a catalogue of yearly data collection wrapped up neatly with a bow of trending shareability. Reflect on your passing year through the music dearest to you, the music that soundtracked your summer, the music that got you through deadline season.  Not the music boxed into a hyper-curated persona for social recognition.  

Words by Evie McCann