In 2023, Spotify added a new element to its annual “Wrapped” release. In addition to the breakdown of a listener’s music taste, listening habits and where they fell within their top artist’s “top listeners,” Spotify Wrapped now included “Sound Towns” for some users.
According to TIME magazine in a statement from Spotify, the Sound Town “selected for each eligible user has the most similar taste profile to their own, based on their most streamed artists of the year and how much those artists are streamed in other cities.”
Wrapped made its usual rounds on the internet on Nov. 29 and conversation about the towns circulated for some time after. Several people in my life made a point to share with me a TikTok parody of the Burlington, Vermont Sound Town, in which the creator jokes that “we’re all named Sam here in Burlington, Vermont.” That, along with some quips about the so-called town population — like how we’re all queer and we listen to Noah Kahan which yeah, you got me there — was so specific to my personality that of course I was sent the video and was shown it on my Instagram feed several times.
The point is: We love Wrapped, and Towns was designed to feed us more of ourselves. In the days and weeks after Spotify released their version, other “Wraps” started popping up online. YouTube now partakes, and even went so far as to generate an album cover for its users’ year in music. Others used the Wrapped format in an approach similar to journaling; a TikToker’s “Cry Wrapped” — of all the times and reasons behind why they cried that year — was one unique example of this.
I think the Wrap-ification of our lives deserves its own analysis. Our desperate need to make order of the world and our place within it, especially during uncertain times, has led to Wrapped and an endless number of aesthetics, usually tagged online under something “-core.” We love quantifying and organizing the human experience, analyzing ourselves from the outside and learning about ourselves as if we are a third party.
For this reason, the popularity of Wrapped makes sense. But I think another significant element of this is the diversification of music, and the recognition that the systems that crown “good” music aren’t always correct. At least from our unique and highly niche perspective, of course.
Look at the Grammys, for example. Sunday night’s award ceremony drew in 16.9 million viewers, according to Variety. That viewership is the greatest the Grammys has seen since 2020, but overall viewership is still down significantly from what it has been in the past.
I can’t help but think that a major reason for that decline is the recognition that award shows are rigged. We know that the artists that end up winning aren’t necessarily who we want to see win, or who deserve to win.
Even at this year’s Grammys, Jay-Z called out the awards show, pointing out how Beyonce, his wife, has earned the most Grammys ever but has never won album of the year.
He concluded his acceptance speech by saying “It’s music and it’s opinion based.”
So if we know the shows are rigged to privilege certain artists over others and that music is subjective, why do we still watch? And, if we can get our music taste along with a description of our personality simply handed to us, why would we continue to value the opinions of a rigged system?
Admittedly, there’s still a joy in seeing your favorite artists nominated and possibly awarded for the art that they make. I didn’t watch the show myself, but I did make it a point to check on the winners the next day and was happy for Boygenius, a band that I think deserves recognition.
But your favorite artist may not have won. Or been nominated. Or have the kind of following that gets recognized in any way, Grammys or otherwise. This is a majority of the viewer experience, to the point that I think the respect for winning a Grammy has come to mean very little for listeners.
It’s not a simple either/or of which measurement of music is more relevant; Spotify and the Grammys are very different entities. But I think that maybe feeding into people’s need for individuality has made Spotify a more relevant way to talk about music that matters to us. Even if their appeal is perhaps too specific, at least we get to see our number one artist as number one.
So it’s goodbye, Grammys for me. See you in Burlington, Vermont.