Spotify Wrapped 2023

After eight years of annual releases, it's safe to say that most of us are pretty familiar with the concept of Spotify Wrapped. Powered by AI, Spotify Wrapped deep dives into listeners' listening data to discover and explore each user's habits and wrap them into an interactive slide show. Typically, every listener's Spotify Wrapped centers around the top five musicians and songs they streamed the most throughout the year, their favorite music genre(s), and the amount of time (in minutes) they spent listening to music in the app.

You can also see your top music genres, how many genres you explored throughout the year, how many songs you played in total, how many artists you listened to, and what your top podcasts were.

Additionally, as it is a new tradition, Spotify comes up with new categories every year to make the campaign even more thrilling. Last year, as we mentioned in the beginning, users noticed a new feature called 'Your Listening Personality.' Made up of four metrics, from the variety of music you listen to to your exploration habits, the category was supposed to show what the music you stream says about you and your music taste.

Perhaps' Your Listening Personality' was met with little popularity as the platform slightly amended the category this year. Instead of 16 listening personalities, Spotify revealed 12 characters reflecting one's streaming habits. Are you a 'Vampire?' Then you supposedly 'listen to emotional, atmospheric music more than most.' If you're a 'Cyclop,' this means 'you like to focus on one genre.' You can discover the whole set of characters for streaming habits on Spotify's website.

In addition to the streaming characters, Spotify introduced a feature called 'Sound Town,' which aims to match you to a city based on your listening and artist affinity. Don't worry; it is not like one of the Buzzfeed quizzes that assign you a city based on your personality, favorite season, or style. Instead, it simply shows you a city where people, based on their listening data, listened to similar artists as you did.

This year, Spotify Wrapped also has a designated feed tab on the Spotify Home page in the mobile app, creating a one-stop spot for all things related to Wrapped. Here, you can check your artist messages ('thank you' messages from your top artists), access merch from your top musicians, create a Blend playlist with up to 10 friends, or explore live events near you.

In Spotify's words, musically, 2023 was 'defined by the return of major female pop stars, sonic diversity that topped the charts, and a global music atmosphere that gave rise to powerful genres.' While female artists never really left, this year's most streamed artist is the first woman ever to top that category on the platform! The 2023's top artist in the world is none other than Taylor Swift, with more than 26.1 billion global streams since January 1st.

To celebrate this accomplishment — and one might say all accomplishments Swift has made this year — Spotify revealed 21 puzzle pieces with Taylor Swift-themed eggs in billboards from Sao Paulo to Jakarta during the 48 hours leading up to this crowning moment. These clues were then used to create a spotlight video that featured not-so-subtle references to her universe. Have a look for yourself!

Taking second place was the reggaeton musician Bad Bunny, who, just like last year, achieved tremendous commercial success with his music – this time with his 2023 album 'nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana.' The Weeknd, Drake, and the Mexican singer Peso Pluma were in third, fourth, and fifth place, respectively.

The most streamed song of 2023 was the record-breaking 'Flowers' by Miley Cyrus, which registered 1.6 billion streams globally. Following 'Flowers' are 'Kill Bill' by SZA, 'As It Was' by Harry Styles, 'Seven (feat. Latto)' by Jung Kook, and 'Ella Baila Sola' by Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma.

The most streamed album of the year for the second year was Bad Bunny's album 'Un Verano Sin Ti,' which had more than 4.5 billion streams globally. The second and third spots come from Taylor Swift with her album 'Midnights' and SZA with 'SOS.' Rounding up to the top five albums are 'Starboy 'by The Weeknd and 'MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO' by KAROL G.

Additionally, while last year, Spotify Wrapped looked at the most-streamed throwback music, this year, it paid more attention to global listening trends shaping music and the streaming worlds. For example, Afrobeats became one of the fastest-growing genres on Spotify, growing 550% since 2017, with new significant audiences emerging in Mexico and India. The popularity of Mondpopo has also been rising, with an almost 45% increase in streams in the last year (reaching over 500 million monthly streams globally). Similarly, the popularity of Indian classical instrumental music has been rising both in India and globally, with a growth of nearly 500% on the platform. What's more, over 45% of Indian classical instrumental music listeners on Spotify were under the age of 25.

Below, you can see some more trends on Spotify this year:

Last but not least, the most popular podcast globally on Spotify in 2023 for the fourth time in a row was 'The Joe Rogan Experience.' In the second spot, for the second time in a row, is 'Call Her Daddy,' followed by 'Huberman Lab,' 'Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain,' and 'On Purpose with Jay Shetty.'

On top of that, Spotify decided to make the Wrapped experience this year even more fun and exciting, bringing out the current trends and artists' achievements to real life. For example, Lil Yachty's 'Lil Yacht' will sail from downtown Atlanta to celebrate the success of his latest album. Furthermore, in celebration of the song 'Sial' (translated as 'bad luck' by Mahalini, users in Indonesia will be given new haircuts, which are believed among locals to repel bad luck. On December 6th, the platform will also reveal a unique slate of Spotify Singles from artists worldwide.

Fans are also given opportunities to enjoy the Spotify Wrapped mania on their own. Users can find Wrapped stickers on WhatsApp and anywhere GIPHY is integrated, purchase limited-edition merchandise inspired by Spotify's personalized user experience, and more.

Traditionally, like fans, artists enjoy their Wrapped as well. Artist Wrapped was first launched in 2017, and, reportedly, the platform aims to make it as big every year as the listener’ version. Like the last couple of years, this year, artists can once again check the total number of listeners, total number of streams, and total time streamed. However, they can also see how many listeners newly discovered them in 2023 for the first time ever. This is intended to help musicians better understand their listeners and thus determine opportunities for themselves to expand their target audience.

Additionally, musicians are provided with more insights into their top fans. This year, not only do they see the number of fans who had them as a top 10, top five, or number one top artist, but they can also check the average amount of time each of their top 0.001% fans spent listening to them.

Finally, Spotify artists can see the top three locations where they sold the most concert tickets and their three bestselling items in 2023. Spotify has been putting a lot of effort lately into making artists’ products — whether merchandise or concert tickets — more visible and accessible to their fans to empower artist merch stores. This is also why the platform has put a particular emphasis on these items in this year’s Wrapped experience, providing fans with personalized offers from their top artists and promoting these offers via app messaging, emails, and beyond after the hype around Wrapped 2023 is over.

On top of that, in the U.S. and Canada, artists can, for the first time, set up Wrapped-specific merch discounts for their top listeners of the year.

That’s right! It seems that this year, Spotify is doing everything possible to champion all music creators, songwriters included. While last year, songwriters (who have Written By playlists or Songwriter Pages on Spotify) received personalized share cards, in 2023, they have their own Wrapped experience with a dedicated microsite.

To celebrate all music makers even more — regardless of whether they have a Written By playlist on Spotify yet — Spotify has also launched a Songwriter Wrapped social campaign. Artists, fans, and music lovers, in general, can make shout-outs to their favorite songwriters, producers, mixing engineers, and lyrics and beats by filling out customizable social forms and sharing them across their social media accounts. You can also check out Spotify’s @SpotifySongwriter Instagram account if you want to participate!

Last but not least, for this year’s Wrapped, Spotify is testing so-called Wrapped Listening Parties that include a handful of artists who will host invite-only live audio rooms for their top fans where everyone can interact and listen to music together. This should be yet another way for artists to show their gratitude towards their fans and further connect with them on a personal level.

With incredible new features and insight categories, this is officially a wrap to Spotify Wrapped 2023! To conclude, we want to congratulate all artists out there for what we sincerely hope was a year full of success, inspiration, learning, and, most importantly, the joy that comes from creating and releasing music. We also want to urge all of you to celebrate your success and accomplishments with the world across your social media, whether with your Spotify Wrapped or any other relevant data. This can include stats from other streaming platforms or digital stores, like Bandcamp or Deezer, sales of your vinyl, CDs, and tapes, the views on your music videos, or the number of shows you played this year. Always remember that every achievement is worth celebrating!

For those just starting with their Spotify for Artists and would like to know more about sharing your Artist Wrapped for the next year, check out our Spotify Wrapped article from last year! Also, if you want to distribute your music to the platform, read our article about Spotify for Artists and check out our product page!