Have you ever seen your Spotify Wrapped come December and it’s just filled with songs you haven’t listened to since February? Many experience exactly this, and so to try to combat it, they will purposefully listen to music they know they’ll love year-round to give them better, more “accurate” results. However, they aren’t accurate in context. There’s a wide range of opinions on this manipulation, some of which will be broken down further.
One opinion that is quite popular and on the extreme side of the spectrum is that manipulating spotify results is pointless and takes the fun out of the whole event. It is seen as “fake” because it’s not a true representation of what your music listening habits were through the year, only a small portion of it. Also, it takes the fun out of the entire feature, as you already know what to expect. There is a general opinion that the whole point of Spotify providing this wrapped feature is to have a visual of your personality through music. If you are a crazy big classical music fan, having a bunch of R&B on your wrapped isn’t a representation of you, rather who you want people to think you are. It also takes all the excitement out of it because you’ll already have accurate knowledge of what your stats will entail.
Another view that people tend to have is that manipulation is completely valid because since Spotify monitors your listening habits throughout the entire year, it leaves room for songs/artists that don’t represent you anymore to make their way in. The wrapped you receive should be as up to date on you as possible. Moving on from certain songs or artists is normal and can cause a skewed view of what you listen to. An example of this would be if an artist you have previously listened to gets canceled, having that on your wrap could leave a bad taste in others mouths even if you dropped them after the incident. So, by ensuring they won’t show up at the end of year it could save you from judgeful eyes. Another reason some see no issue with this is we all have those days where we just can’t help but listen to one song one hundred times on repeat, but are on average just one-day events. Letting one day dictate what your entire wrap is as inaccurate as manipulating it.
Personally, I have found that a little manipulation is good every now and then. For me, I only somewhat participate because some artists I listen to just have an insane amount of songs, which makes it easy for them to take over. Now, I love Taylor but the only reason she’s able to keep a streak is because I have songs from each of her ten studio albums on my playlist. However, I really do like my wrapped to be accurate to what I listened to (evident by the amount of times Glee versions of songs have made the the final roundup), so I tend to keep the manipulation to a minimum. What I normally will do is listen to the albums by artists I feel I haven’t heard much of. For example, I haven’t heard much of Harry Styles in the past couple of months who, my friends will testify, is my all time favorite artist. So, I’ll listen to his albums just so I can actually hear his music. That’s pretty much all the manipulation I will perform however.
Overall, no matter what stance you take on wrapped manipulation, the feature's existence at all is something that most people will agree is something to be grateful for. And at the end of the day, it’s all for fun, which is the most important thing to remember.
Image courtesy of Buke Icon https://iconscout.com/free-logo/spotify-4408577
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