Tag: audio aura

We’re Commemorating a Decade of Spotify Wrapped With Our Best and Boldest Wrapped Yet

December 4, 2024

Since its inception, Spotify Wrapped has continued to evolve, and every year it reaches more fans around the world. Over the past decade, we’ve learned that our users crave a unique, personalized way to reflect on their listening habits each year—and artists and creators want to learn more about how their fans streamed. 

Whether it’s building a seamless experience that makes it easier than ever to engage with Wrapped, delivering global data stories through the lens of local culture, creating real-life experiences that surprise and delight, or introducing fresh and unique ways for users to engage with their year in listening, we’ve continually innovated and iterated Wrapped so that we can keep offering a unique perspective on emerging trends—catching the beat before it goes mainstream.

“Our annual thank-you to fans around the world, Spotify Wrapped has become deeply ingrained in the lives of music fans worldwide,” said Marc Hazan, Vice President, Partnerships and Marketing at Spotify. “What started as a look back at the music and audio that defined the year has become a global cultural phenomenon in its own right, a moment driven by the passion of hundreds of millions of fans. We’re thrilled to debut 2024 Spotify Wrapped to more fans than ever before this year, celebrating the hundreds of millions of ways that they’ve streamed.”

Here’s what we’ve accomplished in that time:

2015

We launched a first iteration of Wrapped, bringing together the best of our previous end-of-year retrospectives in a three-tiered global campaign: Spotify’s year in review (top lists), fans’ year in review, and artists’ year in review. This set the tone for the Wrapped experience fans have come to know and love, attracting more than 5 million unique users to called Spotify Year in Music.

2016

We rebranded the “Year in Music” as “Wrapped” and launched the fast-growing “Your Top Songs” playlist. As a result, we differentiated our moment from other brand retrospectives.

2019

We built Wrapped directly into the Spotify app, maximizing self-discovery.

2021

We debuted Audio Aura, Wrapped Blend, and videos from fans’ top artists, enhancing self-expression and product awareness. 

2023

With new features like Sound Town and Me in 2023, Wrapped engaged a record 227 million monthly active users.

This year’s Wrapped campaign is all about celebrating the ways artists and creators have shaped fans’ lives one note, one voice, one idea at a time. 

How 2024 Wrapped came to life

As we mark a tenth year of Wrapped, we’re enhancing the experience with features like Your Music Evolution and Your Spotify Wrapped AI Podcast and introducing a bold and vibrant design to every element of the campaign.

We’re always striving to elevate how Spotify Wrapped comes to life visually, exploring fresh and exciting ways to serve up our biggest campaign of the year. This year, Spotify Wrapped will reach fans in 184 markets around the world, and its design has something for everyone, everywhere. 

“The 2024 Wrapped design is the result of a tremendous collaborative effort, and we’re incredibly proud of the final outcome,” said Rebecca Lim, Global Brand Design Director at Spotify. “While we say this every year, this year’s design truly stands apart from anything we’ve done bef

ore. It’s bold, vibrant, and full of elements that are guaranteed to catch the eye.”

This year’s Spotify Wrapped design is inspired by the ways pop culture thrives in a beautiful cycle of reinvention, constantly evolving and surprising us. Unexpected genres emerge and merge, timeless influences meet fresh ideas, and what once was niche now shapes pop culture. This insight inspired an art direction that loops, transforms, and celebrates the energy of this unique moment in time. Vibrant color combinations, playful layouts, and lively animations bring the design to life.

2024 Wrapped exemplifies the culmination of Spotify’s evolved brand identity, reflecting a more expressive and open Spotify at the center of culture. Earlier this year we introduced a new typeface—Spotify Mix—and to tease the campaign, Spotify positioned its logo with unique imagery on social media and in other marketing inspired by 2024’s biggest musical moments. 

“The final design direction evolves in a dynamic, high-energy color palette that celebrates the year’s momentum,” said Rebecca. “Layers blend and shift, creating something entirely new that scales exponentially. The bold, attention-grabbing ‘hyperloops’ of 2 and 4 propel us forward in vivid technicolor, symbolizing our journey toward the future. This motif, combined with a striking logo lockup, establishes Wrapped as the definitive stamp of what’s to come.”

Fans, artists, and creators will see the 2024 Wrapped design reflected across the in-app experience, across social, and on billboards around the world.

Learn More About the Audio Aura in Your Spotify 2021 Wrapped With Aura Reader Mystic Michaela

December 1, 2021

The songs we listen to and the playlists we create are reflections of us. They make us dance like nobody’s watching, or sing at the top of our lungs. You may not even realize it, but the music you stream matches your individual “Audio Aura”—something you may have seen in your 2021 Wrapped experience. 

What is an aura? According to aura reader and host of the Know Your Aura with Mystic Michaela podcast, Mystic Michaela, it’s your personal energy signature. Everyone has one, and aura readers see them as a combination of colors, each representative of the traits that make you, you. 

Every year, Spotify gives listeners a personal summary of their listening habits through Wrapped. And this year, for eligible users, Wrapped includes something new: your Audio Aura. 

Like you, audio has energy, so Spotify data curators worked with Mystic Michaela to connect your listening habits in 2021 to the aura spectrum by assigning a color to each of six mood descriptor categories (including “happy,” “calm,” and “hopeful,”) and matching them with tracks on Spotify. 

After we created your personalized 2021 Wrapped experience, we assigned a weight percentage to the two audio “moods” that best represent your listening, and the final product is a swirling gradient of color. Below are the six moods and corresponding hues that could come up in your 2021 Wrapped Audio Aura.

  • Purple: This aura color pairs well with passionate music listeners. Purple auras tune in to get amped up, entertained, and moving while they navigate the twists and turns of their day. 
  • Green: Calm, analytical, and introspective are the traits that describe a green aura. These listeners gravitate toward complex music to tame their fast-moving minds. 
  • Pink: Often described as the hopeless romantics of the aura spectrum, pinks view the world with a sense of optimistic, childlike wonder. 
  • Orange: Oranges are the rebellious and bold type. They share a need for high-energy, confidence-boosting sounds.
  • Yellow: Yellows like their music to align them to the goals of their day, fueling their need for focus, motivation, and self improvement all while reducing any nerves that could get in the way.
  • Blue: Blues are wistful or emotional, and this hue reflects listeners who seek out music to feel their feelings out loud. 

We spoke with Mystic Michaela to learn more about auras, their relationship to music, and how knowing your aura can help you find your authentic self. 

How did you realize you could see and read auras? 

I’ve seen colors around people my entire life. It’s a sense to me, just like smelling. But I didn’t have a formal way of thinking about it until I was a Spanish teacher. I realized that I was differentiating instruction [to my middle school students] based on their aura colors. I saw that children with red auras thrived in competition. I saw that children with yellow auras really needed to focus on grammar. I saw that children with purple auras got the language a lot better when they could create art with it. 

And so through that, I realized, this is much bigger than just colors around people. This is about people understanding themselves and understanding that “I work this way, and you work that way.” Both are OK, but you have to use this information to dive into who you are, not who you think you should be.

How do the Audio Auras provide additional insights to a person’s Wrapped?

When listeners go into their Audio Auras, I really feel like they are going to be able to see more of themselves and have an inward conversation. You know, “Who am I and why do I listen to what I’m listening to? What am I seeking? What is my inner self actually saying?” And I think that’s going to be a really creative and spiritual conversation people can have with themselves, however they want to define that.

One of your primary goals is to help people live their lives authentically. How might a person’s Audio Aura help them do that?

Let’s say I get yellow as one of my colors, because the Audio Aura yellow is very much about self-improvement and motivation and calming one’s nerves. Then I would ask myself, “Is this me, or is this something that I strive toward? What am I calming my nerves about? What parts of my life are requiring that type of energy to come in and help me?”

I think it’s helpful to ask yourself some of those questions, because your Audio Aura reveals the energy you feel comfortable in and also the vibes you want to borrow. 

Throughout our lives, we’re constantly pretending to be somebody [else]. You might wear a different energy color to fit in. But when you put in your earbuds, when you put your playlist together—that’s you. And when you press next, or if you say, “I like that, I’m going to listen to it 10 times,” that’s you. And that’s why I feel so connected to Audio Auras, because whatever that reflects, it’s an extension of yourself. 

Ready for your reading? Head to Spotify.com/Wrapped for your personalized Audio Aura and the full 2021 Wrapped experience.