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Dayna Christison
Dayna Christison

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Thoughts on Spotify's #2020wrapped

Spotify's year wrapped configuration really grabbed my attention this year. It has in previous years as well, but I felt that this year they took the analytics further. What Spotify's year review does is measure all of your streaming data and portrays it in a short video of your years most listened to music for the year. What I love about this is that not only does it give a person a summation of what their year in music looked like, it gives them their own personal video of their choices in an interesting, quippy and poignant way. I loved that they show how many genres the user listened to and what percentile they were in within the artists total number fans or particular song streams. The data analytics team on Spotify definitely gets an award this year for most unique analysis.

I'm curious who else will pick up traits like this. Netflix? Do we really want to see who streamed the most hours of Great British Bake Show though? Maybe...not.

In a similar vein, look at how Spotify is using the users personal data and decorating it with a bow to show them how their data can be portrayed in a fun and poppy way back to a millennials main focus - themselves. Who doesn't love to hear about themselves though? More so, how many people don't really understand what data is being taken from them and what that data is being used for? Let's normalize this data grabbing so that it paints a picture that says - "your data is used in this way so now that you see it in fun colors, don't be so afraid of us taking it from you." -- A slippery slope, friends.

On a high note, this really was something that was a bright spot in my day seeing as I've mentally accepted that my data is being stored everywhere a while ago. I love seeing the history of my listening in a compact fun way and I love being embarrassed that I listen to mostly pop music every year. But! I listened to 304 new genres this year also so - back to it.

What are your thoughts? Drop a comment below :)

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