opinion
Music preferences
“Spotify Wrapped”: Show me your favorite songs, baby, because they don’t annoy me
A young woman listens to music via a streaming service
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Every year the music streaming service Spotify offers its users a personalized annual review. People are very happy to share this on social networks – often to the chagrin of other, more annoyed people.
For many of us, it belongs to December like a Santa Claus boot or mulled wine with a shot: The annual review of the year that the music streaming service Spotify makes available to each of its users with some care. The fun is called “Spotify Wrapped” and it reveals: Which artists have you heard most often? Which songs, genres, podcasts? And what does that say about you?
The Swedish company serves this up in pretty graphics that are great for sharing on social media. And every year we have great fun posting our own annual charts everywhere – and getting upset that everyone else is posting their own “wraps” everywhere. Typical human. But … something is different this time. Yes, of course there are the usual annoyed comments in the vastness of the Internet, but again and again you stumble upon something completely unexpected: friendliness and appreciation! In case of doubt, at least patient gentleness. What’s going on there?
Everyone loves it, everyone hates it: “Spotify Wrapped”
Taste in music is something that certain parts of humanity place great value on. So, everyone who doesn’t listen to “actually everything”, “charts” or “Well, just go to the radio” (and have fun with it). There is an unbridgeable gap between these people and those who know very well what they think is good music. Within the latter group, on the other hand, it doesn’t really matter whether someone listens to Black Metal or Luxembourgish street rap: Anyone who puts their heart and soul into looking for personal favorite artists and top songs deserves respect. Even from someone who has completely different tastes.
Why is that? Because your taste in music reveals something about you that you may not even be able to express with words. Or want to. You may be telling silly flat jokes all the time, but your “Spotify Wrapped” is full of heartbreaking Depri songs. Maybe you’re always nice to everyone, but at home you listen to Rammstein on volume eleven. You might be the tough alpha all the time, but like Taylor Swift. Everything is possible, everything is cool. And sharing your own annual review on Instagram & Co. allows your extended circle of friends a brief insight into your emotional world, which you otherwise deny 364 days a year.
Music says a hell of a lot about you
And that’s exactly why we love to share the whole thing. To show: That’s me, that’s what I stand for, you may not have known that about me. Yes, and of course also: I HAVE AN EXCELLENT TASTE OF MUSIC. (But that’s also something to be proud of! “Everything, actually,” pah!) The problem with that: Most of us tend to find ourselves more interesting than the others. And when really everyone in the circle of friends and almost everyone in the entire Internet posts their “Wrapped” at almost the same time, with friendly interest it is quickly over and collective rejection sets in.
“No pig cares about your wrapped”, “Just stay away from me with it” – these are the usual comments that pile up a few hours after everyone’s delight at the annual launch of the Spotify feature on Twitter, for example. We would now like to speculate that something like this comes mostly from “Charts” listeners, or people whose offspring has messed up the annual list with children’s radio plays, but it is like this: Even the greatest music lover is annoyed by the never-ending list after two days at the latest Posted.
We’re nice to each other this year
But why are mockery, annoyance and mobbing so limited this year? Why do people on Twitter suddenly even ask that others should share their “wraps” because, contrary to all expectations, one is interested in them? The answer is probably as simple as it is bitter: We’ve all had two tough years. Years in which few things were beautiful – and music was part of it. Years in which there were arguments about a lot of things, even friends and relatives broke up – but the taste in music was never the reason. We had to do without a lot of things – but luckily not music. It made the pandemic months a little more bearable.
And maybe our sudden mildness with regard to the omnipresent “Spotify Wrapped” postings is simply the realization that we can make life a little nicer for ourselves if life itself makes so little effort. Crazy idea: Be nice, show interest, put your high horse aside for a moment and be happy that someone is in as good a mood thanks to Anton from Tyrol as you are thanks to James Blake. We can be malicious to each other again next year if things (hopefully) go better again. But until then let’s stick together and support us with and through music.
PS: Oh, you’ve heard a lot from Billie Eilish, yes? You were definitely the only one, right? Very original, I can hardly yawn … oops.
Sorry