I don't care that it's bad,
I love spotify wrapped
I am a spotify user. I know, I know. I have dabbled in bandcamp, even had a three-month free subscription to apple music. Even had a fourth month because I forgot to cancel it. youtube live sets have burned into the shades of my computer screen. But, faithfully, I return to spotify.
I return to spotify because, last week, Spotify suggested I revisit last year’s wrapped, and the year before, and the year before. And I thought of each one, could almost tell you where I was when it came out. Which means that yes, November is over. Christmas is around the corner, but before the holidays it must be Wrapped season, holiest of days.
There is no lying on spotify wrapped. There is no hiding. This is raw data, hard facts. Fooling the wrapped algorithm would be a 365-day endeavour. If you’re that dedicated to the craft, it may simply be your personality.
I had a friend whose top artist was something like “whale sounds to fall asleep to.” Now that’s the music stat I want to see. Not the 15-second clip from your instagram story. Not the vinyl on your shelf, or the CDs in your car. This is your breakfast music. Shitty day music. Celebration music. This is the music that soundtracks your most intimate moments. And yes, sometimes it is whale sounds. But sometimes it is an album from high school that you listen to on autopilot. Sometimes it is something as constant and unremarkable as rain.
The metrics are simple: who you listen to the most, how you fit into that demographic, how much new music you find, and why, and how, and for how long, and when during the day do you listen to sleazebag indie over bush doof house, and what you will listen to next, and also who you will discover and who you will not and who the algorithm feeds you and the algorithm feeds you it feeds you.
Still, it takes some dedication to return, time again, to the same artist. To willingly search for a song name and to listen in full. To make a playlist. To know what songs should be on that playlist.
So the day comes. You woke up this morning, you watched your spotify wrapped.
Okay – maybe your listening habits are less consumptive. Maybe this isn’t a stat holiday for you. That’s okay, I understand. Now let’s see your total minutes. Let’s see your new artists. Mhm. Thought so. Have you seen mine? Didn’t even think the year had that many minutes. Ha. Haha.
See – I know the urge to immediately post it. I probably will, or have. But resist it. Resist it all you can.
Say it’s just for you. Just for a little while, a half a day. That all the music you listened to was only for you. Alone in the car, or in your room, or slipping away into crowd. Even when there were others, the music was yours. Look at those numbers, the time you dedicated to yourself. Look at the people you loved enough to listen longer.
Think as if every song was deliberate. Had its moment, its trace. You spent a year listening to music. What else have you dedicated years to? What else has been as constant, as overwhelming?
Now, today only, you know that this music isn’t just for you. That spotify keeps a neat little file tucked away and every song you play hits it like stars sinking into the night sky, blinking out one by one. And in these moments you remember you have a little box on your bookshelf of CDs and mixtapes. That every time you get in the car, before the bluetooth kicks in, you listen to fifteen seconds of an old college radio mix. After ten rides in the car, this’ll be two and a half minutes of listening that aren’t recorded on your Wrapped. And you’ll think of all the gigs, the ones you loved and the ones that weren’t really for you but the crowd needed a fiftieth body so you showed up.
As much as I’m tempted to say there is nothing truer than spotify wrapped, there is. Because our music doesn’t come from a corporation, or a label, or a cleverly constructed history. Our music comes from anything that makes noise. From a couple bummy amps. From a half-snapped string and a raspy voice. From a desire to say what you need to say. Sound what you need to sound like.
It’s so hip these days to say something is punk, and then to say something isn’t punk. And then to jump in and deliberate over the whole punk thing. And its even more punk to write about it in a newsletter as if you’re not really writing about it.
But what they mean when they say punk is something like real. Authentic. Raw. Angry. Political. Radical.
But what they really mean is that it has something to do with real people, as in real people made this music. As in real people who practiced in shitty apartments they pay too much for, when they should be doing other things like growing up and getting a job and shutting up and listening. As in real people with something to say. Who love people, and lose people, and meet others and fall in love.
Music is about community. About making community and maintaining community and loving your community back when it needs love.
Look – I know it’s all marketing. I know spotify got us all to share the stupid little daylists with words like afrohippy and clearmetal and saddepressedlittlegirlie and we did share them because we thought they were funny. I know that today will be a kaleidoscope of ads across everyone’s phones as we all scramble to be cooler and hipper and more in touch with all the other screens.
And I am not bitter about this. I will do the same. I will rejoice in our collective glee. I think its sweet and fun and organic. Like the controversial top-100 lists that come out every couple years, and the boasting that you knew them all, and debating which Wu-Tang album should be there, and why there isn’t any metal.
I love spotify wrapped because it does what it does on such an easy level. Music is not all introspection and life changing and beauty and half the shit I write about. Sometimes music is just what happens to be on, and it doesn’t have to mean much at all. Music is fun.
So tomorrow I will watch the little animated sequence and gasp when I am told to. And I will maybe screenshot the numbers instead of sharing the thing because it feels disruptive somehow. Maybe it just feels cool.
But don’t give spotify the satisfaction. Find your music in other ways too. Ways that are for you alone, or those closest to you, or a community that needs love. Buy tickets to your friend’s show. Show up. Buy the t-shirt or a burned CD. Tell your friends about the bands. Tell strangers. Play your own music. Play your parents music. Tune into a local college radio station. Go to the pub on a Thursday night to watch a band play covers.
I should amend the title. I like spotify wrapped. It is fun and silly and asks for nothing in return.
But the greatest thing about music is that it loves you precisely the way you need it to.
Love the music back.
postscript
That feels like such a big word for such a little something to say. But postscript meaning that there’s more to say that didn’t quite fit into the essay.
I just moved to Vancouver, and one of the first things I did was try to find the music scene. I did, slowly. Unpeeled it bit by bit. Found the most incredible group of people, who cared more than most. At the first show I ever went to they told us about something called DIY for DULF. I had never heard of it.
Something that happens when you first move to Vancouver is that people try very hard to not not tell you about the lower eastside. They say there are bad parts of downtown, or they turn a small frown when you say something is on Hastings. They fall excessively quiet in the car when you drive past large groups of people on the street.
Something that happens when you first move to Vancouver and try to find the music scene is that you take the bus down Hastings and people are living difficult lives and the state isn’t making it any easier. But at the gig they ask you to buy an album in support of a legal fund for the Drug Users Liberation Fund.
And you think about what it means to love a scene. To be loved by a scene. It means that people who care enough are saving lives. That they can’t save everyone, and the community grieves, but they will try their hardest. This is what love looks like.
We’re all buying enough these days. So buy DIY for DULF. Buy tickets to a fundraiser show.
Don’t fall excessively quiet. Be excessively loud.