“Wrapped” Up in a Bow: Illusions of Music Ownership Through Streaming
Streaming services have made music ownership obsolete. When one pays for a subscription model or uses a platform for free, they lack tangible ownership over the music consumed. For generations, we have owned our music, on vinyl, cassette, and CD, with streaming real ownership is lost. Though streaming expands musical options, it counteracts deep engagement with a chosen song/artist whereas ownership enables curation and cultivation of a collection over time. Thus it is important for users to feel a sense of ownership over music, even if illusionary. When disconnected from social contexts, passive listening causes music to lose resonance. This is especially important because the satisfaction of ownership lies within the experience to contextualize music. To reclaim agency one must move beyond access to an abundance of music and focus on intentional curation, which services like Spotify offer. So while not a solution to the issue of music’s dematerialization, Spotify’s personalization and record-keeping features obscure the loss of agency through personalization and illusionary ownership, which is better than not feeling any sense of ownership at all. As a result of Spotify's end-of-the-year campaign, we see its business soar and listeners stay engaged, possibly more than other DSPs. Spotify is a powerhouse in the streaming world for its algorithm, personalization tools, music discovery features, and user experience. This paper focuses on Spotify Wrapped and its affordances of quantization of listening habits allowing listeners to feel a sense of illusionary ownership and agency towards their music consumption. Starting in 2015, Spotify Wrapped aims to illustrate one’s year-long listening experience through top artists, songs, "audio auras" (Spotify, 2023), and more. Algorithmic curation pushes music discovery in
addition to listening to one's favorite artists to display dedicated fandom. This occurs through sharing - Spotify Wrapped is a phenomenon beyond the individual; it shows networks who you are as a listener, more so than any other streaming platform. An illusory sense of ownership is a good thing, at least better than no ownership at all. Other platforms like Apple Music lack the nuanced statistical displays that allow for a sense of claim over listening habits.
While streaming services do not provide true music ownership, Spotify's transparent listening statistics and personalization features, specifically Spotify Wrapped, give users a heightened illusion of ownership and connection to their listening habits compared to platforms like Apple Music that lack data transparency and customization; therefore, Spotify best facilitates a sense of musical belonging for users seeking streaming services, yet this perception of ownership remains artificial since revenue is not directly generated for artists.
Streaming services like Spotify differ greatly from traditional music ownership in ways that erode user agency yet also create illusions of ownership through personalized features. Nowadays, Streaming provides intangible access to millions of songs in contrast to the exclusivity of physical possession. As a result, personal connection and agency are reduced.
Due to the current Pro Rata model of streaming, subscribers cannot choose where/whom their money is dolled out and therefore lack holistic ownership over music (Nguyen, 2023). Streaming distributes royalties algorithmically and removes consumer choice, undermining their agency. Spotify Wrapped partially works to offset feelings of disconnection. Though one is not directly paying for a song, it is being displayed in approachable, fun data sets, people can now “take ownership of their identities digitally” (Nguyen, 2023). Songs and artists we listen to are essential to our self-concept concerning music habits which has become placed at risk under streaming. With the dematerialization of music and increased digitization, “there is a loss in
one’s perceived sense of ownership” (Sinclair & Tinson, 2017). However, the potential for a sense of ownership is not lost, argue that “we can cultivate strong feelings of ownership for both material and immaterial possessions and that ownership is not necessarily tantamount to legality.” Pierce et al. (2003) This is because ownership and access are not entirely binary opposites. Although access does not necessitate ownership, music streaming augments our illusionary possession of a song, album, or playlist. Personalized playlisting and in-depth listening statistics offer self-reflection over time, and lack purchases of individual content. Instead, an automatic payment is made monthly to continue engaging in subscribers' perks. As a paid user, customization is key, from playlisting and discovering music, one cultivates feelings of ownership by preserving their identity in musical form (Sinclair & Tinson, 2017). Furthermore, the sharing aspect of Spotify Wrapped enables music engagement to feel exclusionary and competitive. So, when playlists appear to belong to us, selected carefully by individuals, music is further integrated into one’s self-concept. Overall, streaming cannot provide absolute agency but its communal sharing and individuation uplift the powerful illusion of ownership of digital music.
Spotify Wrapped features that allow for a sense of ownership include but are not limited to the following: Top songs, top artists, top genres, music “mood”, audio aura, listening time, milestones, top listening stats, and share cards. Top songs displayed define who you are by your listening habits, showing one’s most played songs implies they are “yours' '; they define your musical taste, though Spotify's algorithm may be covertly responsible. Top songs/artists and the prevalence of sharing Wrapped share cards suggest that music is a reflection of one’s identity. Say your favorite indie artists is your top soundtrack of the year, you feel a sense of solidarity with that artist and exclusivity knowing you are one of few to have such stats. The feeling of
owning a signature song creates a comforting sense of individuality and belonging in the music community. Even though it's not entirely legitimate ownership; feeling like you own certain songs can improve relationships toward music, community, and self-worth. Additionally, listening time allows for competition between users to see who listens most. Total listening stats give the impression your time spent is unique to you. New Audio Auras, visualized based on listening habits (Spotify, 2023), provide a sense of personalization and ownership over lightning. Displaying most listened-to playlists maintains the sense that the listener is the curator of music when in reality, Spotify's algorithm has a lot to do with music discovery. Thus ownership and curation are partially falsified. All this information can be easily shared on online social networks with postable sharecards. Created in - 31 languages for global music sharing (Spotify, 2023), Wrapped is a social phenomenon. People are eager to share their stories and their music consumption. Spotify Wrapped enables its users to share a narrative that is solely about them on social media. Through such action, Spotify's features promote increased potential for emotional connection (Sinclair & Tinson, 2017) with artists and other listeners. This is especially important in the fast-paced world of streaming to ensure listeners and artists get the value they deserve. Though dedication to singular artists, bands, and genres may have dissipated due to music’s dematerialization, that doesn’t mean the communal aspect of music has to be completely erased.
Spotify Wrapped is powerful as it is a reflection of who we are as listeners and integral to our self-concepts. Spotify Wrapped is a “social conversation” - personalized and meant to be shared (Spotify, 2023). Gen Z craves interactivity and personalization to connect to artists and other fans - Wrapped offers just that. Conversations about the holiday-time data release occur months before the experience is released - it’s a cultural phenomenon of data that allows for a deeper connection to one’s library (Spotify, 2023). In fact, in 2020 Spotify downloads increased
by 21% in the first week of December for people to engage with the “best-in-class marketing campaign” (Fomina, Kerins, MacIntosh, & Somerville, 2021). Spotify Wrapped is so popular because it spotlights the user's experiences and allows for the illusion of ownership through the reflection of who we are as listeners. With new features and visuals added each year, Spotify Wrapped allows the company to "flex its creative muscles and use data in ways which excite the consumer" (Donlin, 2021). This campaign provides a deeply customer-centric experience, a reason many music listeners flock to Spotify over competitors. An essential component of Wrapped success in uplifting music agency is the gamification of music consumption. By distributing listening data as shareable, statistical content, Spotify gamifies platform use, letting users compare habits and generate "wholly unique" profiles (Donlin, 2021). This high customization coupled with interactivity engages users, though some dislike having listening habits documented.
Gamification drives further engagement with the platform. Still, most view Wrapped positively, and the data holds value, allowing artists to "see how their music is touching their fans' lives" (Stutz, 2017). Wrapped in a log of 365 days worth of personal listening experience. Often, fans want to show their dedication to artists, for example, by awarding “top 1%” status to the biggest listeners of a particular artist — Spotify creates a sense of exclusive status (Fomina, Kerins, MacIntosh, & Somerville, 2021). Consequently, Wrapped provides an excuse to publicly display important parts of one's music identity thus allowing us to feel a sense of ownership over our music, even if illusionary. People love to compete: Spotify has found a way to gamify their user’s listening with Wrapped.
By contrast, Apple Music lacks the curation, discoverability, and most importantly visual amalgamation of data making illusionary ownership more plausible in the streaming economy. In
comparison to Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music provides a brief overview of listening history through its recent Apple Replay campaign. Replay, launched in 2019 has significantly less robust features than wrapped (Whitmer, 2022). The data displayed includes top songs, artists, and listening time but lacks an overview summary, a component of what makes Wrapped such a personalized and shareable experience. The shareability of Spotify is one component that makes it both individualized and a social phenomenon. On Replay, for one to share their listening history they must use a screenshot through multiple slideshows and manually post each to their designated social media channels (Chin, 2022). The UX (User Experience) is discernibly lacking compared to the easily shareable social cards present on Spotify. It is clear, with this key component missing Replay’s UX is less focused on the listener and the music community. Unlike Wrapped, Apple Music fails to make seeing listening habits feel fun through similar gamified means. Apple subscribers still have the opportunity to see who they dedicated their eardrums to but in a much less effusive manner. With less exciting features and plain displays of broad music summaries, Apple has not garnered the same audience interest as Wrapped has. Without the hyper-personalization of the Wrapped experience (for artists, fans, and managers), Apple Replay users are not afforded the same sense of ownership over their music. Ultimately, through such comparison Wrapped versus Replay, it is clear Spotify provides the subscriber base with deeper, more engaging insights that allow users to feel a sense of solidarity toward the music listened to. Spotify wrapped allows for greater feelings of illusionary ownership over taste, habits, and songs that drive and shape the music economy. This is not to say Spotify is the ultimate DSP, it is however saying through its Wrapped campaign, Spotify elicits feelings of ownership among users which one hopes would lead to greater music expenditure down the line.
It is important to highlight that Spotify Wrapped is not exclusively beneficial to music fans - but to artists and managerial/business teams too. Analytics can help fans and artists get closer as artists adapt to fans' interests. By knowing what music, songs, playlists, and fans are engaging with, artists can cater to the demonstrated activities of their audiences. For the past six years, Spotify has offered Wrapped for Artists (Spotify, 2023). On the backend, musicians can learn about their top fans, their listening habits, and ways to improve engagement. Spotify for Artists users during the Artist Wrapped period increased by 670% through 2020 (Eggertsen, 2021). By providing concrete streaming data about a song, genre, playlist, or an artist overall, musicians and their teams can make important decisions going forward by looking at the past. Wrapped is more than just showing what songs best perform,it shows which songs and albums connected most with listeners, resonated emotionally, and were on repeat. Listening to habit data can provide business strategy insight for future engagement. Beyond visualized data, artists can share merchandise, and discounts, and share data on socials. This “response” from artists makes fans feel valued (Eggertsen, 2021). Streaming numbers, depending on the country of origin, show demand and potential revenue opportunities from honing in on a musical style to selecting and touring locations. Wrapped data can reveal new opportunities about untapped markets the artist can target and grow with.
From a business perspective, data provides leverage in negotiation for managers labels, and even artists themselves when settling deals based on measurable popularity and predictive measures. As a business model, Wrapped excels - It promotes music consumption as well as further spending. For example, last year, In 2022, Wrapped brought in the biggest week ever for merch sales on Spotify (Spotify, 2023). So not only are fans enjoying their data as a fun marketing engagement opportunity, but those in the music business can utilize Spotify Wrapped's
valuable tools to analyze trends, discover opportunities, route tours, connect to fans, and inform creative and business moves. The platform's accuracy and uniqueness make these insights especially important and useful.
All things considered, Wrapped’s capacity to reflect musical identities and foster fan connections serves basic human desires for belonging, community, and autonomy over entertainment. This drives both the campaign virality and business impact. Though streaming platforms like Spotify do not provide true music ownership due to the dematerialization of records, Wrapped offers the user the possibility of feeling a sense of crafted ownership over the music they consume. Ownership (even if illusionary) is important for the greatest amount of engagement - it is both important for fans' self-concepts and artists' careers.
Illusionary ownership is best accomplished on Spotify through robust displays of personalization, curation, and accessibility to data visualizations. Wrappeds positive impacts include improving customer satisfaction and user loyalty thus driving further platform engagement. Conversely, the algorithm detracts from the user’s holistic agency. Yet, users seem to put Wrapped and its accompanying features above the DSP’s more elusive and hidden traits. While Wrapped offers a new-age marketing strategy for today, what will tomorrow bring? Questions remain; how far can illusionary ownership go? Can a false sense of owning a song lead to long-term engagement? How much illusion is needed to sustain this model? As streaming continues to evolve from the pro rata model, will illusionary ownership suffice? Could Wrapped evolve to provide fans transparency into how their streaming money is distributed? To explore these questions, DSPs like Spotify need greater transparency and equitable payment structures without wholly moving past the facade of ownership. While questions remain unanswered, we
know Spotify Wrapped is greatly impactful on multiple fronts, working to deepen listeners' connection and illuminate the feeling of ownership.
Works Cited (APA)
Chin, M. (2022). Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/23486187/apple-music-replay-spotify-wrapped-bad
Donlin, V. (2020). The Usage of Personal Data as Content in Integrated Marketing Communications, an Exploratory Case Study. Business Undergraduate Research Theses and Honors Research Theses. Retrieved from https://kb.osu.edu/items/2168758f-1a37-45fb-8b1e-d6a1d92b4fea
Eggertsen, C. (2021). Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/business/business-news/spotify-for-artists-wrapped-2021-123500397 6/
Fomina, M., Kerins, T., MacIntosh, K., & Somerville , K. (2021). Retrieved from https://thedecisionlab.com/insights/consumer-insights/the-behavioral-science-behind-spotify-wra ppeds-viral-success
Nguyen, E. (2023). Retrieved from https://berkeleybside.com/listen-to-my-spotify-playlist-how-streaming-affects-music-consumptio n-and-culture/
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Sinclair, G., & Tinson, J. (2017). Psychological ownership and music streaming consumption. Journal of Business Research, 71, 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.10.002
Stutz, C. (2017, December 13). Spotify gifts artists with '2017 Wrapped' year-end data. Retrieved from
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8070349/spotify-artists-2017-wrappedyear-end-data
Spotify Newsroom. (2023). Retrieved from https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-18/spotifys-interactive-experiences-create-the-magic-of- wrapped-year-round/
Whitmer, A. (2022). Retrieved from https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2022/11/30/23486540/can-apple-music-replay-compete- with-spotify-wrapped
