How Spotify Created Its Own Holiday

As the holiday season rolls along, music lovers have one extra holiday to look forward to. The now well-renowned “Spotify Wrapped Day,” where you and all your friends get to see just what you’ve been listening to for the past year. 

If you aren’t familiar with this day, Wrapped is a marketing campaign by Spotify that gives each individual user a personalized summary of their year in music. It initially started off called “Year in Music,” until it rebranded to “Wrapped” in 2016. Spotify was the first of its peers to implement this idea. However, non-Spotify users are probably more familiar with Apple Music’s “Replay” or Soundcloud’s “Your Playback.” 

Wrapped as a concept is so influential because people love sharing what music they listen to while connecting with other people who listen to the same music. Being able to recap and share the music you’ve listened to all year also gives you more of an incentive to listen to music. People like to shape their Wrapped and compare it to others. Features inside the wrapped, like the “top listener” feature, give users greater incentive to listen to their favorite artists. The feature displays how much you listen to your favorite artist in comparison to the rest of that artist’s listeners. This gives the user a sense of pride in how they rank amongst other fans. 

The latest Spotify Wrapped, released on December 4th, 2025, introduced three new features: Wrapped Party, Listening Age, and Clubs. Wrapped Party lets the user engage with their friends and fellow Spotify users in a live interactive event, being the first live interactive Spotify Wrapped feature. The Listening Age feature estimates your music taste’s age based on when your favorite music was released. Lastly, the Clubs feature places you in one of six clubs based on which club your music taste most closely identifies with. The Clubs you can be assigned to are: Club Serotonin, Cloud State, Cosmic Stereo, Full Charge, Grit Collective, and Soft Hearts. Each club has its own category of music listeners. 

Constant new features, great marketing, and a loyal user base are why Spotify Wrapped has become the great success that it is. Judging by how much it has changed in the past few years, we can only imagine what the next few will look like.