2023 Spotify Wrapped, Memed

It’s that time of year again! You’ve finally eaten through your Thanksgiving leftovers, the psyop known as Black Friday has come and gone, and now it’s time to find out what your most online friends listened to all year. Spotify Wrapped brought all sorts of new insights this year, most strikingly the “Sound Town” innovation. Spotify is now sorting everyone into districts based on their listening habits, in what can only be the first step in making The Hunger Games happen irl. Spotify also introduced personal “thank you” messages from artists to their top streamers — something “Weird” Al Yankovic took advantage of to shame Spotify for underpaying the artists in its catalog. But more than the navel-gazing data, more than the pretty infographics, more than the “personal” thank yous artists sent to their top streamers, Spotify Wrapped was yet another excuse to post. Across social media, users made content out of the content Spotify made out of their data. Sort of like the water cycle, but jpgs.