I see the flattening effect, that feedback loop, on display every year in Spotify Wrapped posts celebrating the same handful of artists and songs. It has never been easier to expand our musical horizons – yet many of us, conspicuously, don’t. Without denying our agency, I think we can routinely underestimate the influence of platform design on our decisions and behaviours. (Lately: a destabilising one-two punch of the new one from Mitski and Every 1’s a Winner by Hot Chocolate.) And at the end of the year, Spotify packages it up and gives it back to me, Wrapped – like a present so obvious you have to pretend you’ve not got four of them already. But more often I bang on my playlist – dating back to July 2017 – of 1,107 “liked songs” and listen to the most recent additions. If I’m feeling adventurous, I might try one that the algorithm has deemed to be similar. I don’t know whether it’s my own failure of initiative and imagination, or one of product design and the paradox of choice, but when I open up the app each morning I mostly go with Spotify’s flow: I listen to albums I’ve recently been listening to and artists I already know I like. Nevertheless, every year, I get the sense of my listening habits becoming increasingly tightly wound – into six daily mixes: my six modes – and increasingly like everyone else’s. After 10 years as a Spotify subscriber, it’s my longest-ever relationship, and I’ve never considered giving it up.

As someone who used to spend hours painstakingly tending to her iTunes music library, who felt a gap in her Last.fm history like an archival omission, I am exactly the sort of pedant who should be all for Spotify Wrapped – and yet I find it banal and depressing. This time last year it led to a 21% surge in downloads of Spotify’s mobile app as users rushed to share their numbers on social media. Either way, since it began in 2016, Wrapped has become as anticipated as Black Friday a new tradition in corporate Christmas.

Others parade their stats like a badge of honour (“hours spent listening to Post Malone”). Some users take it in that spirit, taking stock and finalising their pandemic playlist for posterity.

No spotify wrapped 2021