Spotify Packed, unpacked – Vox

When Spotify Wrapped came out in 2017, it hit my group chats like breaking news. A friend frantically sent me a screenshot showing that they are in the top 1% of Frank Ocean’s listeners with the message “CAN U BEIEVE THIS”, followed by a flood of texts from other friends emphasizing their confessions about streaming. It wasn’t long before people across the Internet shared their listening results. Instagram stories were full of streaming statistics that either mocked low taste or changed artistic inclinations. (I admit, I shared mine.)

Spotify originally released its first iteration of Wrapped in 2015 as “Year in Music”, a feature for users to look back over the past 365 days through the songs and artists they listened to the most. The tool includes statistics such as the listener’s most played songs and how many hours of music they have listened to in total. Although popular, the year in music did not go quite viral until it was upgraded two years later to the adaptive, jazz graphic edition that it is now.

Now Spotify Wrapped has become an annual tradition, celebrating the change of seasons in the same way that favorite cultural products such as Starbucks or Mariah Carey celebrations celebrate the holidays. But as the popularity of the Spotify feature grows, so does the growing discourse on algorithms, the use of which has become the standard procedure on social media and on which Wrapped relies.

The algorithm accepts a set of inputs and generates an output in the same way that the recipe turns the ingredients into a cake. For Spotify, relying on algorithms means using data from its users to generate music discovery delivered through playlists. Go to the Spotify homepage and find any number of selected playlists that retrieve user data collected from the app, from “Best Songs in the United States”, which summarizes collective data, to “Discover Weekly”, which draws on personalized data. To create these playlists, Spotify tracks the music you listen to, organizes it into specific categories, measures songs against other listeners, and uses that information to choose what music to show you.

Spotify’s algorithmic delivery was what initially set it apart from other music streaming platforms, often cited as an important factor in the app’s success, despite relying on tracking data. One user of the app, 22-year-old Kiana McBride, told me: “My Discover Weekly is often on fire. Spotify has such good data analysis that it can tell you what kind of music I’m likely to like. “

Although tracking music data may not seem too murky at first glance, the use of artificial intelligence has been shown to be discriminatory. Reports show how artificial intelligence can be coded with bias and sustain racism. When combined with video technology or security software, algorithms also play an integral role in strengthening surveillance capitalism. There are even reports showing how the platform’s feature is inaccurate and vile. However, Spotify Wrapped went viral. Our collective fascination with this summary reveals the extent to which algorithms have integrated into the way we present ourselves in the digital consumer culture: as brands that need to be refined.

According to P. David Marshall, a professor of new media and communications at Deakin University and a leading scholar of online identity, the concept of “dual strategic personalities” deeply informs people about how they approach what they share on social media. “Double strategic person [uses] the word in both ways, ”he told me. “Double as a duel and a duel, which means you’re actually starting to play in a space that understands algorithmic transformations.”

Users are increasingly realizing that the way they use the app affects the type of content they see, creating a digital dual consciousness where “we realize we are a digital construct” but we also realize that the digital construct is related to who we are – who we think we are, “Marshall said. In essence, our online self is still a continuation of ourselves; it is not no personality version. At the same time, this is a version that is inherently produced and executed.

And as is the nature of the performance, those on stage are called to act constantly. We strategically build a certain perception of ourselves through fragments, which with the help of Spotify Wrapped and other algorithms are becoming more sophisticated. For example, sharing a Wrapped roundup on social media can position a person in a niche: indie; punk; rock. If music genres are even more obscure, then this person can move into hyper-specific niches: folklore; cloud rap; Japanese city priest.

One user of the app, 22-year-old Alfonso Velazquez, told me that he likes to watch other people’s Spotify findings because, in comparison, “it makes him feel more indie.” He speaks with an instinct to curate a brand of his own – an instinct stemming from the dominant culture of influence.

“Influencers are in this dual personality structure, working between a corporate version of themselves and a highly individualized version of themselves,” Marshall said. Therefore, they “change our wider transnational culture in terms of what is normal.”

Another user, Isabel Edreva, 21, told me that they were reviewing other people’s Spotify findings to “make records”.

“If someone I really respect has a top song I’ve never heard of,” she explained, “I’m like, ‘OK, I have to listen to her.'”

Many people do not register the acceptance of Spotify Wrapped recommendations as affected. But this is the essence of the culture of influence.

“We’re starting to make variations on the things that influencers do,” Marshall said. “They are becoming our way of trying to understand online life and the way we start, as ordinary people, to reconstruct our idea of ​​a differentiated personality. When Internet celebrities such as Madison Beer singer, Musical.ly star and Lauren Gray singer or TikTok virus musician Laufi publish their streaming results, the practice becomes even faster. Spotify Wrapped is just one example of how influencers’ habits, from what they publish to how they publish it, are becoming a special guide for everyone on the Internet, no matter who you follow on social media.

Spotify makes participating in this culture even easier. With one touch, the content – already done in different coordinating colors – can be shared. The eye-catching graphics are pre-generated. Consumers can reveal little about themselves with low stakes and minimal participation, meaninglessly mimicking how influential people dig their likes and interests to become a brand.

Perhaps it is this seamless participation with instant brand-building rewards that makes the suspicion that your data is being tracked on the platform pale in comparison. “It’s just songs,” said 21-year-old Sofronia Barone, a user of the app. “I guess it’s not a big deal.”

But are they just songs? Analyzing the back end of the app, a team of five researchers behind the 2019 Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music study found that the algorithms did not exist in a vacuum. They wrote: “Scientists demonstrate how algorithmic content delivery has implications for the production of gender, race and other categorizations. Users are invited – or obliged – to turn their listening habits into “taste profiles”, which are measured using a set of parameters.

Spotify has not made public what these categories are, but researchers have found that gender is certainly one of them. They noted that Paul Lamer, director of the music intelligence and data platform Echo Nest (which was acquired by Spotify in 2014), provided data based on gender listening habits in a blog post from 2014. Researchers found that self-reporting of your gender is a mandatory part of the platform’s registration process and is also listed as one of the types of information that Spotify collects and shares under their privacy policy, “specify[ing] that gender is seen as vital to the functioning of Spotify, at least for marketing purposes. “

They also found that the company knows your IP address, which means location, nationality and through proxy social class. Another study by the Bank of England found that Spotify data could even reveal consumer sentiment. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that Spotify can bring out much of your socioeconomic demographic, narrowing ethnicity, age, and perhaps even sexuality if you listen to specific podcasts such as the popular Spotify Quirology. (And after the priest’s sexuality was recently revealed in a Catholic publication through his phone’s location data, it’s clear that this information has real-life implications.) Spotify then takes advantage of this information by selling it to companies on which demographic profiles are similar to gold.

Spotify, of course, isn’t the only company to succeed in marketing algorithms back to consumers: Everything from DigiScents, which promises to flavor your home based on your web browsing history, to TikTok, the most popular social media app. at the moment, it is about algorithm-based viewing and encourages us to buy an absurd amount of things. Get to know the culture of AI, the new era of digital capitalism, where the consumer is endlessly stuck in his own feedback loop. If you open an app, you’re essentially giving companies free labor in the form of web traffic, AdSense, and flavoring profiles, just for those apps to sell your account and user identity – what you’re essentially – to others and beyond. this eventually back to itself. These companies are pushing us to look at algorithms, and we are not only looking at what their data reveals about us, but we are also looking forward to sharing it for others to see.

We do this in the name of self-branding. Because in the end we get another quantifiable piece to add to our ultra-specific online persona. For a moment, we can all be influential, too. “I like that Spotify shares its statistics with you,” McBride said. It’s “like an MLB music star.”