Sometime in the next few days, Spotify Wrapped will humble me mercilessly by putting my listening habits on blast for all of my followers to see (because of course I have to post it on my Instagram story). I already know that ‘Espresso’ is going to be one of my top tracks, and the rest will be from the same artist, never mind the same album. While I have friends who will turn their Spotify session to ‘private’ so it won’t affect their Wrapped, sadly the embarrassment is half the fun for me. Spotify Wrapped is such an amazing way to be able to reflect on your year in music, and as much as we hate to admit it, this has to include the songs we’re too ashamed to accept that we love.
But after comparing my Wrapped to my friends’ in the past few years and seeing other peoples’ while
scrolling online, it turns out that some are more eager to share this embarrassment than others. Users
generate hundreds of thousands of minutes listened, to the point where it becomes impossible for them to
have listened for so long. For example, I found one X (formerly Twitter) user who listened to their top song
for 9,709 times last year. I did the maths and figured out that they must’ve listened to this song (which only came out on 16 th February 2023) 30 times a day on average in 2023, which is equivalent to almost an hour and a half each day. Who has the time? Obviously these numbers are bizarre, and I find it hard to believe someone is truly listening to one song this often. Perhaps they stream it in the background without truly digesting each song, or maybe they stream it silently to rack up streams? Whatever the reason, it begs the question: why would someone go out of their way to distort their listening habits to such a severe degree?
It feels boastful and pretentious, as if they’re making a spectacle out of their ‘achievement’. Does it solidify their fan status if they appear to have streamed a song more than the average person, and even other hardcore fans? For example, if you listen to Ariana Grande for longer than I did this year, does that make you a bigger ‘Arianator’ than me? You may not be, but quite plainly the stats say otherwise. Ultimately, in a world where artists don’t have the time, resources or energy to interact with each and every fan, there has to be parameters for establishing a hierarchy within a fandom, and it seems like streaming numbers is the way to do it. Slowly, Spotify Wrapped has started to feel like a contest, the winner being whoever can truly say they are the biggest fan; the numbers don’t lie. But somehow being one of the higher ups on this hierarchy doesn’t feel like something to be proud of. It merely comes across as insincere, especially when the numbers are too good to be true.
Unfortunately, this is not an issue limited to just music-tracking features like Spotify Wrapped. In a similar
vein is the likes of Letterboxd, GoodReads, TV Time, and their respective equivalents. On the 15 th
December 2023, one X user tweeted a screenshot of their Letterboxd app, with the caption “I love you,
Oppenheimer”. In less than 5 months since the movie had released in cinemas, this user had accumulated
301 watches of the 3-hour-long epic. If being truthful, they had watched Oppenheimer at least twice a day
for 147 days. As another Twitter user stated in reply, “the state of media consumption is so fucked”.
The ability to track our media consumption habits has ultimately ruined the true nature of entertainment in the digital era. No longer is it for the art, but for the sense of pride you feel for having consumed a piece of media an abundance of times. I’m not saying that re-consuming is necessarily a bad thing – I, for one, rewatch TV shows constantly, listen to the same songs on repeat for months, reread books I find comfort in – but that there has to be a point where we ask ourselves if it is truly because we love a piece of media, or if we are doing it to be perceived as someone who loves that piece of media. While it is fun to track our habits, I’m not sure it is productive. As someone on all 3 of the apps I have mentioned above, I definitely have fallen prey to the pressures of wanting to be perceived well by a certain niche of media consumer. I admit I am a little bit pretentious about film – only about as pretentious one can be when their favourite genre is the romcom – so I won’t log a movie I’m ashamed of watching, or I refuse to let on just how many times I have rewatched a certain season of Friends out of shame.
Ultimately, I think it’s about being honest with yourself about your own media habits and whether using
media tracking apps is healthy for you. Do we really benefit from being disingenuous online? In the long
run, I would say no. I have instead come to the realisation that honesty is the best policy. In 10 years when I reflect on my reading habits in my early 20s, for example, I would rather face the honest truth than deal with the shame of having lied, covered up or held back the truth. Personally, that has come about in the form of a private GoodReads account. The stress of reaching my reading goal is non-existent because who cares if I don’t? Definitely none of my friends on the app because I don’t have any. I don’t need to cram books in at the end of the year, I don’t need to fake reading books I never finished, and I don’t need to change my goal midway through the year. No one will see it, so it stays enjoyable. At the end of the day, media consumption tracking should be for you to reflect on your year, not for others to do so. Of course, Spotify Wrapped is slightly different in that it’s designed to start conversation, but I still think we should ask ourselves the same questions. Perhaps 2025 is the year when we start to be candid with ourselves and our apps.