Spotify Wrapped 2022: 10 Memes That Perfectly Sum Up The Internet’s Reaction

If it’s the start of December, that means it’s “Spotify Wrapped-Day” and the internet is abuzz with memes celebrating and poking fun at the yearly tradition of people posting their most listened-to genres, artist, and songs. Spotify greatly improved its brand and image in 2016 when it first released, Spotify Wrapped, a sort of annual review that shows a user’s top music listening habits, and it’s a fun look into the past year. Music is a good indicator of mood and experience, so Spotify Wrapped can show how someone’s year went overall.

It’s almost become a yearly tradition for Spotify users to post their Wrap-Round Ups for others to see. For some it can get a bit grating, with Instagram feeds constantly filled up with preferences but for others, it’s an exciting look into their friends’ and acquaintances’ year in review to see what they’ve been listening to. Whether people like or loathe the event, there can be no denying the memes surrounding it are hilarious.

Apple Music Vs. Spotify Music

Spotify Music is not the only streaming app available to music lovers. Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and more have significant portions of the streaming market share but when Spotify Wrapped comes around, everyone else seems to be inside looking out.

In this meme, everyone without Spotify music, particularly Apple Music users, have to look at all the Spotify Music users having a great time online and in real life, seeing their year in review. So if someone doesn’t have Spotify, this can be a painful week watching everyone happily sharing in an event they get no part in.

Eclectic Music Taste

While most people may think they primarily listen to one type of music genre, Spotify Wrapped usually proves that people’s musical tastes are much more varied when the whole year is taken into account. The lists of the 100 most listened-to songs have probably surprised many users with their variety.

Everyone checking out their top songs was probably surprised by what kinds of music they had been listening to. People’s moods change so sometimes one listens to dark grungy rock, some days it’s pink, bubbly pop, and sometimes it’s total trash that is a guilty pleasure.

Happy Spotify Wrapped-Day

The Spotify Wrapped release day is a slow build as people turn on their apps to figure out that today is the day, and it’s almost a holiday itself as social media and the internet fills up with colorful musical posts. And as a December release day, it falls right in between two favorites, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

So for some people, Christmas Day is not the favorite winter holiday, it’s Spotify Wrapped-Day that’s the best. While Christmas is great for many reasons, for some, it can’t compete with learning one’s listening habits and music mood.

Mental State

Music can be a very personal thing for people. Most listen to music through headphones or alone at home, and it’s one of the few things that can be just for one person. Happy music, sad music, and inspiring music can all show a person’s mental state at one time or another.

So when people show their top music on social media, it can often give a very personal insight into that person’s well-being over the past year. If their music reflects their mood, the Spotify Wrapped playlist can expose a lot of internal feelings someone had.

December Release Date

For whatever reason, Spotify releases Wrapped at the beginning of December rather than at the beginning of January, which would make sense for a campaign touted as “a year in review”. But every year, it comes out at the beginning of December much to everyone’s confusion and delight.

And because the app only includes data starting in January according to HITC and a tweet from the official Spotify account. One reason for the exclusion of the month of December could be to exclude the variable of “Christmas Music” which inevitably increases. And while people love Christmas music and the videos to come from them, they may not be a great indicator of personal taste.

You Might Not Get It

For those who use a different music app, Spotify Wrapped might be an annoying day that they don’t get to participate in the funny memes and tweets. But it’s even worse for those who don’t use a streaming app at all, maybe they stick to mp3s, CDs, records, or YouTube. For them, it’s a very confusing day.

“Wrapped” might only have one connotation for those who don’t particularly care about social media or Spotify so hearing “Spotify Wrapped” might conjure images like the one in this meme. It can be hard to participate when one has no idea of the context of an event.

Music Subreddits Are Braced

When Spotify Wrapped drops, everyone suddenly makes connections about the bands and songs they have been listening to and probably start to realize that there are specific genres they enjoy. Never mind the fact that the Wrapped even shows what someone’s favorite genres are.

There are hundreds of cool subreddits and communities and many of those are dedicated to nearly every musical genre, no matter how obscure. And each one will probably be receiving an influx of members now that people are discovering they actually have a particular affinity for a genre according to Wrapped.

YouTube Music

Spotify’s success with the Wrapped campaign is surely being noticed by other music streaming companies. It is a simple idea that seems to be almost universally appreciated by the user base and is not particularly hard to implement as the data is already collected.

In the next few years, it’s a safe bet that Apple, YouTube, and Tidal will all be adding similar year-end round-ups. But the YouTube music community seems to have a lot of patience for their favorite streaming app. Sure they don’t have a list of most played songs yet, but the users are happy to wait around until it’s ready, probably because of the other awesome features YouTube music offers.

Some Don’t Want To Share

While many do enjoy Spotify Wrapped and the communal aspect it creates with people sharing their favorite songs and artists, others could not care less. Whether it’s because they have no interest in their own Wrapped or because they don’t care to share it, seeing the posts are bothersome.

It’s not always simply a case of people being grouchy. Spotify Wrapped posts and memes do tend to take up every feed the week of the event so those looking for other things on the internet have to dredge through the posts to find something they actually want to see.

Spotify Genres

Musical genres can sometimes be hard to describe, there are so many with so many subgenres that songs and artists can be classified under a variety of names. Luckily, Spotify Wrapped includes top genres for each user.

Looking at the list of friends’ favorite genres can look a lot like this meme. People may have no clue what even their own musical genres are. If Spotify Wrapped has shown one thing, it’s that people listen to much stranger and unique music than they may admit to during the year.