Hey! What’s up! Happy December! I hope you’re doing well, and you’ve had a good week so far.
Welcome to Music Is Good, now with a new subdomain! We can now be found at musicisgood.substack.com, which is fitting, because it’s the name of the newsletter. You knew that already, though. It used to be my Twitter handle, which is why I changed it. It’s not about me, it’s about the music, man.
It wouldn’t hurt for you to subscribe to the newsletter, it is the holiday season after all. It’s free, all you need is to click this convenient link that I’ve laid out for you, and put in an email. Preferably your email, but I guess you could prank your friends, family, and pets by signing them up without their knowledge. That would be funny, I think.
Alright, now to the matter at hand: today’s date is December 2nd, which means Spotify Wrapped came out yesterday. Here is mine.
Yes, I know Weezer is on there. I’m convinced it’s a conspiracy, because the Weezer song I ALLEGEDLY listened to the most is THIRTY-THIRD on my Top 100 songs playlist.
There’s no way I listened to Weezer more than Talking Heads, Injury Reserve, or Mitski. Spotify just wanted to embarrass me, I know it.
Also, can we all collectively agree that the slides in between the actual Wrapped information were awful? I did not “always understand the assignment,” Spotify, I was in the top 2% of Strokes listeners.
Anyway, I like Spotify Wrapped. Ignoring the pittance that Spotify pays its artists per-stream, and the fact that the story-based interactive Spotify Wrapped was allegedly stolen from an intern without credit/compensation, it’s a good way to track how much music listening you’ve done in the past 10 months.
I’m a cynic when it comes to corporate activities, but I love music enough to let it go once a year, for this.
It’s also a great way to track your progress as a music listener. Spotify Wrapped has been a thing since 2016, meaning I can track my top songs and artists starting with my junior year of high school. But I won’t, because that would be embarrassing.
The release of everyone’s Wrapped is a collective musical moment, where we can all share in the joy of the time we spent listening to music this year (unless you have Apple Music, I guess. Sorry, if you do). The daily time I spend listening is incredibly important to me, so I revel in the opportunity to share that joy with others.
I’m lucky enough to have a bunch of invested music enjoyers in my life, so I haven’t seen the alleged slew of tweets from people who “don’t care about Spotify Wrapped.”
I honestly don’t get how you DON’T care about other people’s listening habits.
Maybe I’m just nosy, or maybe others online lack the basic empathy to care whether their mutuals listened to Phoebe Bridgers’ “Funeral” 139 times, but going on record to say you don’t care about Spotify Wrapped for the sake of being contrarian is weird.
I get that people enjoy hating popular things, like The Beatles, or Marvel movies, but music gives us a sense of universal community that other things just don’t.
Some people don’t care for sports, some don’t care for movies or TV, but music is as universal as it gets, and streaming, specifically Spotify, is ingrained in our modern listening culture.
Most of the time, our true listening habits are oddly private, and Spotify Wrapped is the one time of year where people will openly admit that they listened to the Glee Cast for an unholy amount of time.
We like to think that our music taste isn’t a secret, but the usual social media posturing undeniably extends to music taste.
You’re not posting yourself listening to the same song you’ve listened to all year, you’re posting interesting stuff to make yourself seem cooler. I’m guilty of this. We all are, sometimes. It’s just what social media does to us.
When you share your music taste with others, like when you’ve got aux in the car with your friends, you’re sharing the most interesting pieces of it, not the run-of-the-mill stuff.
Spotify Wrapped is cool because it drops all the “cool music listener” pretense, and shows what we actually spend our time enjoying.
Even if you’re not as avid a music listener as those around you, you can still experience the schadenfreude of posts like this:
If you’re reading this, you’re more than likely a mutual follower of mine on social media. Be assured that I STUDIED your post, even if I didn’t say anything about it. I took every ounce of information that I could from it and am judging you from afar.
But not really, though. I just think it’s cool that you’re listening to music like I am.
I guess that’s it for this week. I’m gonna go listen to my Top 100 songs playlist so that my 2022 Wrapped looks exactly the same.
Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing your Spotify Wrapped on social media so that I could look through it, and thanks for sharing the joy of listening to music with me. Appreciate you, and talk to you Monday.
I love Spotify Wrapped! Every year I just cannot wait for it ✨. I'm always turbo-excited if my predictions will become true. This year's mix hit the spot 🎯. If you would like to take a look at my Wrapped, it's pinned in my stories on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stygi_stajgar/