When is Spotify Wrapped coming out? Unpacking Spotify’s Festive Tradition
As supermarkets start stocking their shelves with Christmas items and everyone on the radio lines up to complain about it, we’re approaching the time of year when Spotify Wrapped makes its appearance. But when exactly?
Despite stiff competition from Apple Music, Tidal, and other services, Spotify continues to lead the pack as the world’s most popular music streaming platform.
This should come as no surprise, however, given that the service in question is one of the oldest examples of its type and offers users a wide range of tools and features that continually improve the quality of their overall experience.
One such service is called Spotify Wrapped and provides statistics on a user’s listening behavior over the previous year. These stats cover the top songs, artists and genres, as well as overall listening time and much more.
Music fans anticipate the release of Spotify Wrapped every winter in the run-up to Christmas – but when exactly is the feature released?
When is Spotify Wrapped coming out?
So far, Spotify Wrapped has always released on December 1st and we have no reason to believe it will be any different this year.
So, starting in December, you’ll be able to share your Spotify stats – unless you don’t want your friends to know that you were in the top 1% of Spice Girls listeners this year.
It also remains to be seen whether the functionality is exactly the same as before or not. If anything, they could add more stats than before, which is an exciting prospect for those who pride themselves on their support of their favorite artists.
What exactly does Spotify envelop?
The Spotify Wrapped playlist and slideshow provide users with a variety of data points taken from their listening habits over the past year.
It contains statistics such as how many minutes of music individuals listen to, their favorite artists and songs, and how close a person might be to becoming a superfan.
In addition to this, Spotify Wrapped provides artists with an overview of the total number of streams, listening hours, number of listeners, as well as the number of countries the listeners were in during the given period.
How does Spotify Wrapped work?
Over the past few years, Spotify Wrapped has focused on the top 5 albums, singles and artists. To obtain these statistics, their program looks at user flows between January 1 and mid-November.
The program then uses this information to produce the top 5 lists. These lists do not include podcasts or anything listened to during a “Private Session” (located in your settings). However, they are taken into account in your “total minutes listened” statistics in Wrapped.
When it comes to how it creates the stats and numbers for the rest of the Wrapped year, Spotify has been very quiet. Fortunately, some tech-savvy people decided to do some independent research.
They found that a song must be played for more than 30 seconds to be considered a play. Additionally, Spotify does not include total minutes played in the individual top 5; it simply considers the total games.
Can Spotify stats be checked all year round?
If you just can’t wait for December and want to know your Spotify stats now, some can be checked all year round.
You can view basic statistics at any time using the Spotify desktop program. Unless you wish to share them, these statistics are personal, private and visible only from your profile.
So how do you really know which songs and artists you listened to the most throughout the year? Just perform these actions.
- Start by opening the Spotify app on your computer (Windows, Mac or Linux) or online. Even though we will use the Windows application, the interface will be the same on all platforms.
- Next, choose “Profile” from the account menu that appears in the upper right corner of the screen.
- At the very top of the website is a section called “This Month’s Top Artists.” Click the “See All” button to see the full list of top 10 artists.
- The “Best Songs of This Month” section follows. Again, by choosing “See All,” you can see the full list of 50 tracks.
This data may not be as comprehensive as what you’ll find in your Spotify Wrapped in December, but it could give you a good idea of what your annual balance sheet will include when it finally becomes available.
What is Stats.fm (SpotiStats)?
By logging into SpotiStats, also known as Stats.fm, you can learn more about your music listening habits than your most frequently listened to songs and the artists behind them. You can also see how many songs and minutes you’ve streamed, your most popular albums and genres, and the most popular time of day.
Mobile devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Android, can use Stats.fm. The app connects to your Spotify account and provides access to a range of data not accessible through Spotify’s official mobile apps.
It’s still not as comprehensive and exciting as Spotify Wrapped, but you can definitely get a lot of interesting stats about your Spotify history and habits.
How to listen to music without it counting in packaged (or weekly) playlists
When people pair us with music to listen to, or we feel like listening to something we wouldn’t usually listen to, we may not want those songs or artists to appear in our Spotify Wrapped.
This could also be the case if we listen to a few guilty pleasures that we don’t want our friends to know about when we discuss Wrapped in December.
The easiest way to keep particular tracks out of our stats and playlists is to use Spotify’s “Private Session” feature, which works a lot like Incognito mode.
Private sessions can be enabled simply by clicking on your account icon and then selecting “Private Session” from the drop-down menu.
Jake McEvoy
Jake is a professional writer, journalist, and lifelong tech fan. It covers KnowYourMobile news and user guides.
