Tag: data stories

How Spotify Made Wrapped More Valuable Than Ever for Artists

November 29, 2023

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.

Marie Rönn, Global Group Creative Director, Works Across Spotify To Bring Wrapped 2022 to Life

November 30, 2022

When you open your 2022 Spotify Wrapped, you’ll notice multicolored and multilayered graphics that are as multidimensional as your listening habits. The team behind Wrapped is just as expansive, with data scientists and engineers, copywriters, designers, music and podcast editors, and more. Uniting it all is Marie Rönn, Global Group Creative Director at Spotify. Throughout the year, she and her team ideate on concepts and collaborates with other teams to bring the project to life. 

Ahead of 2022 Wrapped, For the Record chatted with Marie to learn all about her work on the creative campaign. 

Wrapped has become a bit of a cultural phenomenon, with people anticipating its launch all year. When do you start thinking about the campaign? 

We’ve all started thinking about next year’s Wrapped already—before this year’s Wrapped is even over. Officially, I would say I get involved in conversations in March or April. That’s when we start thinking about the brief and working with the creative strategists. This past year we managed to brief writers, art directors, and designers to have them start thinking about both the design and the platform and all of that fun stuff by the end of May. 

What were some of the considerations for Wrapped this year?

We wanted to open the door to more of a joyous every day. To make sure we captured this new energy that has come out of people emerging from their bubbles and being able to meet up again. And so that’s something we were excited to dig into—to be a little bit more playful and irreverent. To have a bit of fun and encourage people to have fun as well. For the campaign, we wanted to invite people not just to get Wrapped, but to play it.

For the data stories, we asked ourselves, “What are people craving?” They want to know about their audio listening for the year, and tap into what is interesting about it—on a more emotional level. And that’s what we explored as we were starting to ideate. We had a lot of ideas—not all of them were feasible—but we worked super closely with the product team and others before landing on a couple of new data stories for this year that really tap into the more emotional side of listening. 

How did that thinking translate into the new data stories for this year, your Listening Personalities and your Audio Day? 

For the Listening Personalities, we were toying with the idea of how we would be able to talk about what your year-in-listening says about your music tastes. And so our team had all sorts of fun ideas of what we could tell about musical taste in terms of how you listen. The beautiful thing was that when we brought our ideas to the product team, they had already been thinking about a very similar concept, and had done tons of research into it. Great minds and teams came together to collaborate closely. Making sure that the Listening Personalities weren’t just for fun, but that they were insightful for listeners. 

For the Audio Day, again, we had great synergy with the product team. We wanted to get more into moods and aesthetics and move away from genres. Genres don’t give you the nuance of what type of mood you’re in, so what we wanted to do there was to try to tell you a little bit about your musical mood throughout the year. What was your musical mood when you listened in the morning versus in the evening, or at night? The inspiration was to just give people a little bit more of a meaningful experience. Genres go deep, but they’re not the only factor in the way we listen. 

Something that’s also new this year is that we added the day that you streamed your most-listened-to song the most. Peppering in a bit of fun and just a little more specific data for you to look back and think, “What was I doing that day?” Hopefully, people enjoy reminiscing. 

What’s one thing you hope fans walk away with after seeing their 2022 Wrapped? 

Hopefully they discover something about their listening that perhaps was a surprise. And that it also inspires them to keep discovering new music. Like, sure, we give you your year in review, but we also want to inspire you to keep the discovery going. 

We did something new this year to this effect: On your Wrapped playlist are your 100 songs you listened to the most. But this year, we also included one song you didn’t listen to. A playful surprise to encourage you to keep exploring.

Head to our Wrapped story hub to learn more about the new data stories for 2022.

How Spotify’s Newest Personalized Experience, Blend, Creates a Playlist for You and Your Bestie

August 31, 2021

Bonding with a friend or loved one over your favorite shared music creates a relationship like no other. Starting today, Spotify’s latest personalized experience, Blend, is rolling out of beta to Spotify Free and Premium users globally to help sync your tastes even further—and put your music compatibility to the test.  

We launched Blend Playlists in beta in early June as a new way for two users to merge their musical tastes into one shared playlist made just for them, making it even easier for users to connect, discover, and bond over the music they love with one another. Now, the experience includes new cover art to easily identify each of your Blend playlists, taste match scores to see your listening preferences compared to your friends’, and shareable data stories that are unique to every listening pair and can be shared across social channels. 


Blend, which will be updated daily and adapts based on what listeners stream, combines the best of Spotify’s personalization capabilities and collaborative playlist functionality into a single shared playlist, making it easy for users to get into a social listening session that is made just for them. But creating this experience was no simple feat. There’s a massive team behind the experience, blending their own different skills and expertise to bring it to life.

We got to know four of the Spotify team members who contributed to create Blend, and asked them about their role. They each also shared a little on why they’re so excited to introduce it to the world, and how music has played a part in their own relationships.

Arjun Narayen, Product Manager

“There were dozens of people across the company who worked really hard to bring Blend to life,” he said. “I’m lucky to be a part of a team that’s similarly passionate about social listening and thinks music is something that can help bring people together. Part of my role in bringing Blend to life has been clearing a path for our talented engineering, design, and insights teams to bring ideas to the table, and then help narrow in on a simple product that’s fun to use and easy to understand.”