Social Media Analyzation — Spotify Wrapped

The audio streaming service, Spotify, unofficially introduced its Wrapped campaign back in 2015. It initially started as a microsite that showed top songs and genres. In 2016, an official campaign was initiated and was named “Wrapped” — this year included personalized year-end playlists for Spotify users. 2017 Wrapped gave artists and advertisers metrics and 2018 expanded the campaign to 18 markets. (Swant, 2019) The campaign compiles users’ data from the past year and presents it in the first week of December.

Included in this annual reflection is a “Top 100 Songs” playlist that features a user’s most played tracks, top genres and artists, as well as the total listening time that the user put in that year. The wrap-up also displays data regarding the new artists and songs discovered over the course of the year and geographic distribution of where their music originated from. The data is displayed on a personal “microsite” for each user to explore upon the release of the campaign each year. The site is colorful, attractively designed and well suited for sharing on social media. (Ladstatter, 2019)

Most recently, in 2019, Wrapped expanded to 21 markets and was integrated into the Spotify mobile app. (Swant, 2019) This app feature made it easier for users to quickly share their 2019 Wrapped snapshots to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Additionally, 2019 Wrapped showcased users’ past decade of music, to honor the end of the 2010s. Streaming statistics for podcasts were also new to the 2019 Wrapped campaign, in order to further promote the podcast feature via the streaming service. “According to Alex Bodman, Spotify’s vice president and global executive creative director, the goal was to make the setting feel like it could be anywhere and relatable to everyone — regardless of their music tastes.” (Swant, 2019)

Campaign

Channels Used and the Content Shared

Spotify Wrapped is a full advertising campaign, with social media as only part of the picture. However, social media has turned out to be a huge part of the yearly Spotify Wrapped campaigns. The official Spotify Instagram account only published one official 2019 Spotify Wrapped post on December 5, 2019 — the video is simple and only shows the text “Wrapped is here. All of your top songs, artists, and genres of 2019.” Followed by the screen filled with lines of “2019 WRAPPED” and ends with “Get your Wrapped.”

Figure 1

Screenshot of the official Spotify 2019 Wrapped Instagram post

All remaining promotion via social media came from Spotify users themselves. In 2019, users were able to share their Wrapped graphic directly to their personal social media accounts — the graphics would size perfectly to the platform it was to be shared on. “The campaign has been a viral hit that’s turned millions of people into unpaid Spotify influencers by sharing their own favorites on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.” (Swant, 2019)

Figure 2

Screenshot of 2019 Wrapped Instagram story via @madelinepotter_

Target Audience of Posts

It seems the obvious target audience of the single, official Spotify Wrapped post is current Spotify users — since the campaign is already well established and known. It is simply just encouraging its users to head to their app to view their 2019 Wrapped. From there, the goal is that users will then share their personalized graphics to their own social media accounts. The target audience for Wrapped shares is non-Spotify users — the goal is conversion, it has “…made Apple Music listeners jealous that their musical history hasn’t been collected in the same way.” (Swant, 2019)

The Success of the Campaign and Posts

Reach and Engagement

According to the 2019 Q4 Spotify Shareholder Letter, Spotify Wrapped reported high numbers associated with their 2019 campaign. Additionally, the company credited the annual campaign with driving usage to the streaming service in general:

Results in Q4 were bolstered by our promotional activity. On December 5, 2019, we launched the 5th annual year-end Spotify Wrapped campaign. The campaign ran through the end of the month and was enhanced in several key ways this year. Importantly, we delivered the consumer experience via the native mobile app (in addition to a website hosted on Spotify.com) for the first time, expanded the reach of the campaign to 21 markets globally, highlighted insights from the past decade (in addition to the year), and provided a personalized Wrapped experience to all Spotify creators (inclusive of podcasters). More than 60 million users engaged with Wrapped content this year, spurring more than 40 million shares of Wrapped stories and cards and more than 6.5 billion streams from Year/Decade Top Songs playlists. (“Spotify Shareholder Letter”, 2020)

Table 1

2019 Wrapped Statistics

In just the first week the 2019 campaign went live, Year/Decade Top Songs playlists had nearly 3 billion streams and 2019 Wrapped was mentioned in at least 1.2 million posts on Twitter. (Swant, 2019) There is no official Instagram 2019 Wrapped hashtag since the campaign reuses #SpotifyWrapped — as of October 2020, the hashtag has 60.7K posts. While the 2019 Q4 Spotify Shareholder Letter did not specify if the 2019 Wrapped campaign brought in new subscribers, the 2018 Q4 Spotify Shareholder Letter stated, “…almost 7 million subscribers were added through this campaign, including a single day record of almost 500,000.” Thus, proving the success of conversion through the annual campaign.

Results

The Success of the Campaign

Over the years, Spotify Wrapped became an established and highly anticipated campaign — which can be argued to be a major success in itself, especially in a modern world where people are highly skeptical of advertisements/campaigns. Kate Ladstatter writes, “[Spotify Wrapped] has garnished significant attention to the platform, not only increasing levels of brand recognition but attracting multitudes of new subscribers to the service and its various offerings.”

What makes Spotify Wrapped so highly anticipated year after year, is the ability to view and share personalized data. People love things like personalized BuzzFeed quizzes — and a huge reason people use social media is to share facts/things about their lives, whether they realize it or not. When the two of these things are combined with music, something humans typically bond over, you see strong results, hence the more than 40 million shares of Wrapped stories and cards on social media. These shares basically give Spotify a huge amount of free advertising and millions of users become unofficial influencers, “With every share of a person’s Spotify “Wrapped,” Spotify is exposed to a pool of potential consumers, creating new impressions and very possibly attracting patrons to their service.” (Ladstatter, 2019) Something new in 2019 Wrapped that contributes to the success of the campaign is the implementation of data from the past decade, “Spotify’s indication of the songs the users listened to over the past decade helped bring memories back, as users recollected the emotions that prompted them to listen to those tunes initially. The success lies in Spotify’s approach in humanizing the whole experience.” (“Success Of Spotify’s Wrapped Campaign”, n.d.)

The millions of shares of Wrapped stories and cards on social media also instilled jealousy in non-Spotify users:

Another part of Wrapped’s organic marketing appeal is the FOMO effect, or better known as the fear of missing out. This will be experienced particularly by non-users, as their social media feeds are filled with Wrapped statistics shared by Spotify users. Hence, this prompts non-users to download the app in hopes of being able to post similar experiences — if not in this year, then in years to come. (“Success Of Spotify’s Wrapped Campaign”, n.d.)

Figure 3 shows a screenshot of a real user comment that comments on Apple’s slowness to adapt over the past five years. Robert Williams points out that Spotify allowing users to see their past decade of data in 2019 Wrapped, “showcases its longer background” compared to other streaming services, like Apple Music.

Figure 3

Screenshots of comments on the official Spotify 2019 Wrapped Instagram post, summarizing what people enjoy about the campaign

Another contributing factor to the Spotify Wrapped campaign was the implementation of the mobile app version in 2019. In the past, users were required to visit the microsite on a computer to view their Wrapped. The mobile app version presents Wrapped “…in a Stories format that auto-plays a series of animated cards.” (Williams, 2019) But users having their Wrapped so easily accessible in the palms of their hands may have contributed to the millions of engagement with and shares of 2019 Wrapped content.

Lastly, musicians are also given their own version of Wrapped, “…revealing just how many listeners they had across how many different countries, and how many total hours those fans had spent streaming their music — along with some fun facts.” (Sentence, 2018) This allowed musicians and fans to be able to interact with and celebrate each other.

The Failure of the Campaign

While the annual Spotify Wrapped campaigns remain successful overall, there were a couple of issues that surfaced due to the campaign. First was the concern for user privacy. Kate Ladstatter points out how personal the entire campaign is, considering it records and releases a whole decade of user data, and the rising concerns over “…the brands’ access to consumer data…” Ladstatter questions if this concern will change the future of the campaign in any way.

The second and final concern that arose due to the campaign is a concern about Spotify in general: the streaming service has continually received criticism from musicians and labels claiming Spotify does not pay enough. (Iqbal, 2020) “…The sharing of one’s Spotify Wrapped…[is] just another example of free marketing from artists for a platform that is criticized for low pay-per-stream rates.” (Brinkworth, 2019) Many artists have encouraged fans and other artists to not share their Spotify Wrapped stories and cards due to this.

Discussion

Measuring Success

Ultimately, I believe the Spotify Wrapped campaign has become a huge success over the years. As mentioned before, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to have effective advertising campaigns due to the lack of the public’s trust. The mere fact that Spotify Wrapped is an anticipated event year after year boasts a huge amount of success.

The main reasons, I believe, for Spotify’s success with the Wrapped campaign is its ability to convert users to unpaid influencers and the fear-of-missing-out effect it has. Personally, every December my social media feeds are filled up with people’s Spotify Wrapped snapshots. I can even remember the first time I shared mine — it was because I had seen someone else post theirs on social media and I thought it was cool. Influencer marketing is such an essential tool on social media nowadays, but can also get pretty pricey. Spotify was able to have this same affect with this campaign, but for free.

Additionally, the fear-of-missing-out effect Spotify users create via social media really helps drive success for the campaign. There always seems to be this Spotify vs. Apple Music rivalry going on, and Spotify Wrapped tends to always convert a few Apple Music users every year, in my own experience. The millions of organic shares of Spotify Wrapped content each December is essentially doing all of the hard work for Spotify. While most companies have to spend a lot of money on social media campaigns with large amounts of content, Spotify gets it all for free with their Spotify user “influencers” and fear-of-missing-out effect. The company is also able to see increasing numbers in engagement, shares, and streams year after year through the Spotify Wrapped campaign.

Conclusion

The annual Spotify Wrapped campaign can teach a lot for successful social media campaigns. As previously discussed, the campaign is reused every year, but evolves throughout the years. Additional compelling content and features are added to Wrapped campaigns and has proven to keep users invested and intrigued. I learned that reusing a social media campaign is possible if the content is updated to stay relevant and fresh, which in turn keeps retention high.

I also learned that in order to have a successful social media campaign, content should be engaging, personable, and shareable. Content is key — this is the main reason Spotify users look forward to this campaign every year. While all brand’s social media goal is to connect with consumers on a more personal level, Spotify taught the ability to get users to share content across major social media platforms is a huge part in a successful campaign.

Overall, Spotify Wrapped has proved successful for many years. Their ability to create an anticipated and enviable campaign through engaging, shareable, and personalized content should be an example for social media marketers everywhere.

References

Brinkworth, M. (2019, December 18). Spotify end of year stats…there’s a lot to unwrap. Music Business Worldwide. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-end-of-year-stats-theres-a-lot-to-unwrap/.

Instagram. (2019, December 5). https://www.instagram.com/p/B5sPMf9Hv3P/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.

Iqbal, M. (2020, October 2). Spotify Usage and Revenue Statistics (2020). Business of Apps. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/.

Ladstatter, K. (2019, December 9). Spotify “Wrapped”: an anticipated tradition and brilliant marketing campaign. The Maine Campus. https://mainecampus.com/2019/12/spotify-wrapped-an-anticipated-tradition-and-brilliant-marketing-campaign/.

Sentance, R. (2018, November 30). The genius of Spotify Wrapped, the only marketing campaign I add to my calendar. Econsultancy. https://econsultancy.com/spotify-2018-wrapped-personalised-data/.

Spotify. (2019, February 6). Spotify Shareholder Letter. Spotify Investors. https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2018/q4/Shareholder-Letter-Q4-2018.pdf.

Spotify. (2020, February 5). Spotify Shareholder Letter. Spotify Investors. https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2019/q4/Shareholder-Letter-Q4-2019.pdf.

Success Of Spotify’s Wrapped Campaign. vizpresso.com. (2019, December 20). https://vizpresso.com/success-of-spotify-wrapped-campaign/.

Swant, M. (2019, December 17). Spotify Rolls Out New ‘Wrapped’ Campaign To Help Users Remember Their Decade Of Music. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2019/12/17/spotify-rolls-out-new-wrapped-campaign-help-users-remember-their-decade-of-music/.

Williams, R. (2019, December 6). Spotify extends annual Wrapped campaign to entire decade, podcast content. Mobile Marketer. https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/spotify-extends-annual-wrapped-campaign-to-entire-decade-podcast-content/568594/.