Unveiling Spotify Wrapped, music of your year
Want to find out your favorite music of the year? Spotify Wrapped has you covered.
If social media has hacked the boundary between creator and consumer, allowing celebrities and influencers alike to speak directly to fans, then Spotify continues to prove itself an exception. With Spotify Wrapped − a year-end report on user listening habits − the streamer has elevated the art of the middle-man.
Offering a unique user experience each year, the highly-anticipated drop comes as an annual surprise, with Spotify keeping the release date secret. Wrapped was revealed Wednesday, but USA TODAY got a sneak preview of the report the day before, along with insights from one of its long-time creators.
Their signature yearly event, the green-logoed streaming giant spared no expense. There were lattes with the Spotify icon etched in foam, perfumers available to craft a scent to match your music taste and personalized manicures.
Wrapped is always big, but to Sulinna Ong, the Global Head of Editorial at Spotify who has worked on the project for a decade, something this year is markedly different.
Women rule the charts on Spotify Wrapped Global
This year, eight of the top 10 most-streamed albums globally were by women. From Karol G to Sabrina Carpenter, music listeners flocked to female singers.
“Women in music, 2024 has been such a great year,” Ong said. It’s not just the big names like Carpenter or Billie Eilish that embody the trend, though. Ong points to Doechii in the hip-hop space, as well as theatrical, fantasy-driven indie groups like “The Last Dinner Party” and “Lovecat.”
A strong sense of concept runs throughout the top artists, Ong says. Though the music certainly stands on its own, larger motifs spring out that keep fans coming back.
Sabrina Carpenter, for example, draws upon a classic ’60s pinup glam and soaks her tracks in infectious sensuality. Charli XCX and her summer-defining album “Brat” dipped into 2000s grunge and manic clubbing culture in both aesthetics and production.
“What I see of the artists who are really connecting and who are having success, is the world-building that people are attracted to,” Ong says.
“Music is always a bellwether for what’s happening in the outer world,” she adds, so as society becomes noisier and more demanding than ever, there is a palpable hunger for escapism.
“Escaping into a world whether that’s Charli’s world, whether that’s Chappell’s, I think that is an important part of the experience and why people are connecting to it,” Ong explains.
Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan are a ‘trifecta’
Ong points to the “trifecta” of Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan as architects of the female-led trend after all three released new albums this year. Their “personality-led female pop” allowed listeners to slot themselves into familiar or aspirational narratives all while connecting with the artists themselves.
“These three women, what they have in common is that they have been writing and producing and making music for years … this success might seem overnight but actually it is the result of many years of work and building their audience,” she says.
A strong Venn diagram may exist among their fandoms, but each member of the “trifecta” has a singular style. Charli in particular unearthed a real desire for an artist to speak to the messiness of life, Ong says.
“Brat” communicated, “the fact that it’s okay to be messy, to want to just have fun, to kind of let go, there’s no perfection in that,” she said.
Taylor Swift: Now, always and forever
Even as newcomers (and old-comers made new) burst onto the scene, one thing remained the same: Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force.
Swift was the most-streamed artist globally and in the U.S. and her latest album “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY” also topped both the global and U.S. list for most-streamed albums.
“She is a juggernaut of her own,” Ong says. “The eras tour is a phenom.” To be in your early 30s, doing a 3-hour concert that spans distinct eras and strings together hit-after-hit is incredible, she adds.
That she has been “unapologetically herself” and unashamed of a largely female audience, has aided her in her rise, Ong says. An artist who speaks to heartbreak, embarrassment and the unending balancing act of American womanhood is an indispensable thing, it turns out.
Swift was also the most-listened-to artist last year and No. 2 two years before, behind Bad Bunny.