How Spotify Made Wrapped More Valuable Than Ever for Artists

When 2023 Spotify Wrapped rolls around each year, it’s as much of an event for artists as it is for fans. With Artist Wrapped, musicians can check out a personalized recap of their Spotify stats showing when, where, and how listeners engaged with them on Spotify. 

Since launching Artist Wrapped in 2017, we’ve worked to make this moment bigger and better with each go around, adding data stories with deeper insights, integrations that provide more ways to connect with fans, and delightful moments that extend beyond the core Wrapped experience. 2023 is no exception, and we’re excited for artists to dig into this year’s edition.

“I’m most excited about our efforts to make Artist Wrapped, and Wrapped in general, even more valuable and impactful to artists’ careers this year,” says Rob Fink, Associate Director, Spotify for Artists Brand Marketing. “We’ve built upon many of the foundations established over the past few years so that Wrapped is truly a global platform for artists to effectively connect with their fans.”

Curious what artists can expect from Wrapped this year? For the Record sat down with Rob to get all the details. 

Just like fans, artists love their Wrapped data stories. What can they expect this year?

As usual, we’ll have all the tried-and-true stories artists have come to expect, like total listeners, total number of streams, and total time streamed. But this year, artists can now find out how many listeners discovered them for the first time in 2023. The idea is they can use this data to better understand their listeners and pick out opportunities to expand their audience.

We’re also giving artists more insight into their top fans. Previously we’ve shown artists the number of fans who had them as a top 10, top five, or number one top artist. But this year, we’re also showing artists the average amount of time that each of their top 0.001% fans spent listening to them. This is the first time we’ve ever shown artists a story about the listening time of their very biggest fans, and some of the numbers are quite eye-opening.

Finally, we’re expanding our merch data story to share an artist’s three bestselling items since empowering artist merch stores on Spotify has continued to be a priority for us. We’ve also added a story that reveals the three locations where an artist sold the most concert tickets in 2023. 

Spotify for Artists Associate Brand Marketing Director Rob Fink

Last year’s Wrapped resulted in Spotify’s biggest merch sales week to date. How did Spotify incorporate those learnings into 2023 Wrapped?

Beyond connecting with their top fans, we want Wrapped to be a moment for artists to earn additional revenue as well. And one big thing we’ve learned is that when artists create unique merch offers on Spotify, those tend to outperform the rest.

That’s why this year, for the first time ever, we enabled artists [in the U.S. and Canada] to set up Wrapped-specific merch discounts for their top listeners of the year. We want artists to be able to offer fans something special, and in turn, fans will know they’re receiving a discount for being a top listener.

We’ve also made artists’ merch and ticket offers even more visible by adding them to more places within fans’ Wrapped experience. Listeners will receive personalized offers from their top artists when they open Wrapped, and we’ll also continue to promote those offers via in-app messaging, emails, and beyond after Wrapped launches to make sure fans don’t miss out. 

We also can’t forget about the songwriters and producers out there. What can they expect from their Wrapped this year?

Last year, we sent personalized share cards to all songwriters and producers who have active Written By playlists or Songwriter Pages on Spotify. This group has grown substantially since, and this year we’re introducing a dedicated Songwriter Wrapped microsite experience. We’re excited to continue making Wrapped even exciting for this extremely important audience.

We’re also testing out a new idea and launching a Songwriter Wrapped social campaign to show love to the music makers—regardless of whether they have a Written By playlist on Spotify yet. Artists and music fans alike can fill in the blanks on their favorite songwriters, producers, lyrics, and beats from 2023 to acknowledge and celebrate the creativity and work from their top creators.

Is there anything else you’ve been keeping under wraps?

We’re testing something this year that we’re calling Wrapped Listening Parties. We’ve teamed up with a small handful of artists who will host invite-only live audio rooms for top fans where everyone can interact and listen to music together. Artists will also be able to promote their merch offers there as well. The idea is to put our listening data to good use and offer unique ways for artists and fans to connect on a personal level.

Ready to check out your Artist Wrapped? Head over to Spotify for Artists to get started.