UW-Madison professor explains why people care about year-end music unveiling on streaming platforms

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – Music listeners reflected on the past year while streaming services shared what their subscribers’ top songs, albums and artists were in 2024.

Spotify started sharing “Spotify Wrapped” years ago with people who subscribe to the platform, which lists the music they listened to the most throughout the year, and on December 4th they continued the tradition . Apple Music also posted its year-end highs in subscribers on Tuesday.

Jeremy Morris teaches media and culture at UW-Madison and explained that people care about the music they listen to most because it tells the story of a year in their lives.

“It’s part of your identity, it helps you express who you are and it helps you understand yourself, right?” he said. “It is very personal and an intimate form of media. If you’re someone who loves listening to music, you spend a lot of time a year, it means a lot to you.”

He said the data didn’t always produce results that users thought were perfect, although he said it was mostly accurate and had become a cultural tradition.

“We’ve had year-end lists for a long time,” he said. “Spotify didn’t invent the year-end list. Spotify didn’t invent the tradition of sharing our music and talking about what we love this year. What they’ve done is wrapped this up so that this is now Spotify Wrapped Day.”

Some people agree and say that the day the data is released on their phones is a big deal.

“Today I was late for my class because I looked at my packed Spotify and skipped down State Street listening to my playlist! It’s great!” Montana Moon said. “I personally listen to a lot of music and it’s really just the soundtrack of my life and it’s fun to look back and see the trends that you heard that are meaningful and stick with you.”

Whether the top titles came out in 2024 or not didn’t matter to Mihika Shivakumar. “Sometimes music transcends time,” she said. “I’ve got Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel there, I love those guys and Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso!”

Many Spotify and Apple Music subscribers shared their results on social media.

“If the music is really good, you want to share it with other people,” Morris said. “You want them to hear it.”

“That’s who I am and I’ll judge everyone by that,” Moon said. “Your Spotify closure shows who you are.”

Morris also said it’s an interesting phenomenon because people typically don’t like companies tracking their data. However, when it comes to music, he said it’s personal, but not too personal.

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