It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Spotify Wrapped season.
For all those who observe the annual tradition, it’s time to delve into your 2023 listening habits. Did Beyoncé or Taylor Swift dominate? How many times did you hit play on “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus? Were you the only person who made an unhinged playlist titled Pretending I’m in a Movie (probably not)?
Now in its ninth year, Wrapped delivers a personalized year-in-review for Spotify users, but it’s also one of the streaming giant’s biggest marketing moments. And in 2023 the company is going bigger than ever with both an experience and a campaign to promote it.
Acknowledging that 2023 has been an era in which it’s been tough to decipher what’s fake and what’s real, the “Wrapped Or It Didn’t Happen” global push is zooming in on the real data generated by its 574 million listeners.
Reflecting on what the past 11 months have actually felt and looked like from an audience perspective, a series of billboards, social posts, in-app executions—developed in-house by Spotify—will embrace the reality of 2023.
“Everywhere we show up we’re going to double down on what is real. Wrapped is a moment of truth, it reflects the year you had, backed by data,” said Marie Roenn, global group creative director at Spotify, during a news briefing.
She noted that people can’t fake a feeling, and the brand has the receipts to prove it. “It embraces the realest moments and invites the world to learn more about themselves and moments in culture that defined the year for all of us.”
Billboard executions featuring tongue-in-cheek copy highlight artists including Selena Gomez and Bad Bunny, whose songs were among the top-streamed this year.
Elsewhere, social posts blend real and digital elements to bring the creative concept to life.
A series of interactive billboards are due to spring up in cities across the world in the coming week, too.
These include a “lie detector” billboard, playing on the popularity of PinkPantheress’s viral hit “The Boy’s a Liar,” where people can “bring their boy to find out if he is.” Spotify also created an OOH execution featuring a Lil Yachty poster sailing on a little yacht.
Pop, personalization and partnerships
Building on that Eras tour hype, Spotify’s 2023 most-played artist is Taylor Swift, who has clocked in more than 26.1 billion global streams since January. Bad Bunny and The Weeknd completed the top three.
Fun Easter eggs have been dotted throughout Spotify’s launch work to celebrate Swift’s achievement, sharing clues that lead fans on a trail to a celebratory video showcasing all of the artist’s favorite things, including cats and red lipstick.
When playing a Swift song on Spotify, fans will experience the progress bar changing to match the song’s Era color and the progress button will turn into a sparkle, too.
The most-streamed song was “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus, and the top global podcast was The Joe Rogan Experience, followed by Call Her Daddy and Huberman Lab.
A series of partnerships will further embed Wrapped into pop culture, including a tie-up with Roblox via Spotify’s existing metaverse game Spotify Island. Beginning Nov. 30, WonderWrapped on Roblox will give fans access to limited edition merch inspired by their top musicians.
Unwrapping deeper insights
In 2023, Spotify vp and global executive creative director Alex Bodman told Adweek that the brand will be guided by the North Star of “believing in a world more playful.”
“We’ve always been that type of platform. It comes through in everything we do, and we’re only going to get more [interactive],” he said at the time.
Wrapped is a living and breathing example of Spotify’s drive toward this, bringing together product, marketing and gamification, and this year it’s added some new personalized features into the mix beyond letting fans access their top artists, songs, podcasts and genres.
An in-app Wrapped Feed will be users’ one-stop shop for all things Wrapped, including the best of editorial playlists, merch from their favorite artists, concerts near them and more.
Additional feature Me in 2023 will assign listeners one of 12 listening characters based on their habits, allowing them to paint a better picture of what kind of fan they are. For example, Shapeshifters quickly jump from one song to another, while Alchemists are more likely to create their own playlists.
Elsewhere, Spotify’s AI-powered DJ will guide listeners through their personalized Wrapped—serving up the music people loved this year and sharing commentary about some of their favorite artists and songs. This feature will be available for the first week after Wrapped launches.
