Topline

Spotify on Wednesday teased the release of its highly anticipated 2024 Spotify Wrapped, reminding users to make sure their apps are up to date so they can access the playlists when they are released, although the company did not share the release date.

Key facts

When will Spotify be released in 2024?

No release date has been announced, but Spotify Wrapped typically drops in late November or early December. Spotify released its Wrapped packs on November 29 last year, a day earlier than the year before, when the packs were released on November 30. Users typically access Spotify Wrapped through an in-app pop-up, and the package is formatted as a slideshow with Instagram Story-ready images.

Will there be a new Spotify Wrapped feature?

It’s not clear. In recent years, Spotify has added new elements to its Wrapped package. Last year, it matched users to a “Sound Town” based on their “most streamed artists of the year, and how those artists are streamed in other cities.” And in 2019, Spotify gave users a look back at their trends from the past decade. In an Instagram post Wednesday, Spotify shared a video of its logo changing to reflect different albums released this year, saying: “This year there were tons. This also applies to your Wrapped. Available soon.”

Tangent

Social media users have often joked that they are waiting for Spotify to stop tracking their data so they can safely listen to music that they would be embarrassed to see if it ended up in their Spotify Wrapped. More than 200,000 users liked an holiday music and safely showcase tunes without fear of them appearing on Spotify Wrapped.

Important background

Spotify started its Wrapped marketing campaign in 2016 and began issuing Instagram Story shareable images to users in 2019 as part of their Wrapped packages. The Wrapped campaign was a huge marketing hit for the streaming platform: Spotify said more than 156 million users accessed its Wrapped package in 2022, up from 120 million the year before. Social media analytics firm SproutSocial found that 400 million posts were made on Spotify Wrapped on Spotify typically unveils new features for the Wrapped campaign every year. In last year’s edition, each user was assigned a “sound town,” a city that suits their music tastes, leading to viral jokes on social media that Burlington, Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts could be home to large communities of queer artists and LGBTQ listeners. In 2022, listeners were assigned listening personality types based on the Meyers-Briggs personality test.

Read more

Spotify is coming soon in 2023: this is how it became a viral and much copied marketing tactic (Forbes)

Spotify Packages ‘Sound Towns’: Social Media Has Theories About Why You Were Assigned Berkeley or Burlington (Forbes)