How Spotify Wrapped Turned Personalisation Into Millions Of Free Ads

The beginning of the festive season during the early 2000s and 2010s was defined by the so-called “defrosting” of Michael Bublé and the re-emergence of Mariah Carey, ringing in the holiday period with their classic renditions of “All I Want For Christmas” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”.

But, recent years have seen the introduction of a new “universal” indicator that the year is coming to an end.

Spotify Wrapped

The annual data roundup nobody knew they needed, but now, can’t go without. The social media trend that floods your stories and, if you’re anything like me, leaves you with a cramp in your thumb from all the swiping you end up doing to find some “real” content.

Of course, it’s all in good fun, and there’s a reason people love it. You get to find out more about yourself (and let’s be honest, everyone wants to hear about themselves) and boast about your excellent (or quirky) taste in music to your friends and the world at large.

However, Spotify Wrapped is more than just a fun holiday feature. In fact, it’s the brand’s most genius marketing campaign yet, and best of all?

We (their consumers) are doing all the work for them.

Customer Feature Or Marketing Campaign? 

For anyone who’s not familiar with Spotify or Spotify Wrapped in particular, the feature pulls together each individual’s data for the year, and organises it in such a way that you’re able to see things like your most-listened-to songs, favourite artists, total listening time and more. And it doesn’t just give you raw data – it puts it together into a fun little feature (akin to an Instagram story) with cute graphics and playful animations. But best of all, it’s completely personalised.

Spotify encourages users to share their Spotify Wrapped to their own social media channels, and users don’t need much encouragement to do so, because they’ve made it an easy sell. So essentially, what they’re getting out of this “feature” is millions upon millions of users sharing – albeit indirectly – how much they love and use Spotify on their personal social media channels.

Now, getting your customers to market your product for you (never mind for free) is the ultimate goal. Not only are you getting free marketing, but the marketing you’re getting has a lot of authority – a lot more than many other types of campaigns.

That’s because it’s all based on testimonials from real customers. Real people are talking about their experiences of using the app, and they’re doing it in a way that’s genuine and not in the least contrived (well, not in terms of being inauthentic, at least). Everyone who shares their Spotify Wrapped is actively choosing to do so.

What these shares (essentially, testimonials) tell people is:

• Who their favourite songs and artists are
• How much time they’ve spent using Spotify throughout the year (total listening time)
• When they’ve done most of their listening

…and so much more.

Put simply, Spotify Wrapped allows the app to have millions of people hyping it up. And while we see influencers doing this all the time, the difference is that they’re paid to do that. Sure, they tend to push the whole “I wouldn’t promote it if I didn’t believe in it” bit, and that might be true, but the fact that it’s a paid promotion will always take a little bit of the sincerity out of the equation, so it’s just not quite the same.

It’s Not All Sunshine and Rainbows: Spotify Wrapped’s “Checkered Past”

“Checkered past” might be a bit dramatic, but Spotify Wrapped hasn’t always been well-received.

Last year, customers were not happy with what they received and how they received it. With the feature becoming a regular occurance and something users have been looking forward to since 2016, there was a great deal of disappointment in 2024 when the updated feature didn’t quite live up to expectations.

Users complained that the 2024 edition of Spotify Wrapped was:

• Too AI-centric
• Not personalised enough
• Inaccurate (supposedly prioritised big names over featuring smaller artists)

…and that it used some odd ways to display trends and things. Overall, it seemed like the complaint was that it was trying too hard to provide an extended experience, but missed the mark a bit on what users actually wanted.

Of course, as always, users expressed their sincere dismay, threatening to boycott the app and turn to competitors, which felt like a bit of a blow at the time, but it didn’t really materialise into much in the end.

Regardless, Spotify took this all into account, pledging to do better going forward and listen to users’ concerns, and I think it’s safe to say they followed through. And that’s evident in the community’s overwhelmingly positive response to Spotify Wrapped in 2025. Because it’s quite simple – if people like what they see, they’ll repost it. If they don’t, they won’t (and better believe they’ll tell you about it).

But they did.

A Comeback Story of Note

When we say the 2025 edition of Spotify Wrapped was a success, we mean it.

According to Spotify, within 24 hours of its release, the feature was shared over 200 million times. That’s about a third of their total users.

The responses were pretty positive all around, with people generally noting that it was way better than 2024 and other previous versions of the feature. It’s safe to say that Spotify has managed to redeem itself after last year’s debacle, and that means not only vindication for the brand, but a massively successful marketing campaign too.

In essence, they’ve had a good idea from the start – using their own data to get customers to market the application for them in the most authentic and honest way possible. It was built on the premise of using human nature – our intrinsic desire to learn more about ourselves and, as much as we may deny it, to talk about ourselves – to promote not only a specific feature but an entire app.

This year, they managed to get the most out of it, and it’ll be interesting to see where they go from here and if any other big names decide to use the campaign for inspiration.