December is a big month for social connection—holidays, family gatherings, and for music lovers (basically everyone), Spotify Wrapped. Every year, Spotify releases Spotify Wrapped in early December; this year, Spotify Wrapped came out on Dec. 3, 2025. Social media timelines quickly flood with users sharing their results, jumpstarting a viral conversation around the relationship music has with identity.
Spotify Wrapped is a personalized, year-in-review summary that shows users their top statistics in their listening behaviors. Users can see:
- What they listened to the most,
- What artists and genres they favored
- How their listening trends evolved over the year
Why is Spotify Wrapped so engaging?
It’s fun, it’s personal—artists can film videos to their top listeners and thank them “personally” for supporting them—and its sharable. Wrapped doesn’t dump a bunch of overwhelming charts on the user; it turns the data into a narrative and allows users to see their personalities inside their music habits.
This case study explores how Spotify employs data visualization as a strategic communication tool, and why this approach of data visualization is creating trends in PR in entertainment, and beyond.
Data Collection
Spotify Wrapped can’t happen without data, so it relies on user listening data to build personalized insights.
According to Spotify, it collects data like:
- Total minutes listened in a year
- Top artists
- Top songs
- Favored genres
- Month-to-month user listening trends
to curate each user’s Wrapped.
Spotify transforms the data it has collected and repurposes it to create an insightful and nostalgic story for its users. By curating the most relevant insights, Wrapped creates an engaging collection of data without letting it become overwhelming. For entertainment PR, it shows that data collection can be used to strengthen loyalty and encourage participation
It’s important to mention how Spotify incentivizes allowing the company access to your listening data with a personalized collection of how the user evolved musically over the year (and let them have bragging rights). This transforms standard data collection practices (citation) into a positive user experience and not a privacy risk.
Visualization
Spotify changes Wrapped visual design each year to keep it fresh, cohesive and interesting, which makes it an excellent marketing tool.
Typically, though, Spotify Wrapped features:
- Bold, high-contrast colors
- Clear and trendy font choice and simple charts
- Icons and graphics instead of traditional tables
Each year tells the narrative through a different theme: 2025’s Wrapped was “visual mixtape”, 2024’s Wrapped was “your music evolution,” and 2023’s Wrapped was “the real, the realer, and the realest.”
These different visual identities create brand loyalty as well; users don’t get the same thing every year. It’s important to present information in a strategic way that attracts incoming users. A thoughtful, well-designed
Emotional Connection
Spotify creates an emotional and personal connection to listeners through Wrapped.
They do this by designing Wrapped to:
- Apply listening personality labels, like music Age in 2025
- Highlight “unusual” listening habits conversationally
- Showcase narratives to depict a year-in-review
Spotify Wrapped allows users to visualize themselves in the data this way, which is a strategy for increasing brand loyalty. Emotional engagement with listening patterns makes the user want more, which also increases interaction, advocacy to use Spotify as a music service and social media sharing.
Social Sharing
Spotify sets up Wrapped as the perfect way to garner earned media, which is the attention a brand receives from third parties like reporters and customers.
It does this by:
- Optimizing the ability to share on all major platforms
- Presenting a slide format encourages sharing
- Pushing hashtags like #SPOTIFYWRAPPED for further reach
Spotify effectively turns users into brand ambassadors and easily generates earned media and further amplifies Spotify’s reach, separate from traditional advertising.
Even as an Apple Music user, despite having Apple Music Replay, Apple’s version of Wrapped, Spotify’s approach is unique and the best way to see music trends. The design, presentation, and shareability make it a case for an effective PR strategy in music streaming.
What can Spotify Wrapped teach us about the future of PR?
Spotify Wrapped demonstrates how data visualization and narrative work together to create a powerful strategy for communication and promotion in music:
- Personalization of data increases engagement
- Visual Storytelling makes data accessible
- Shareable content (earned media)
Other companies separate from music and entertainment are applying these lessons from Spotify Wrapped. This past December, many companies like Duolingo, Uber, Life360 have been inspired by Wrapped and used its strategy to leverage the trend. By transforming data into visual identity, Spotify has started a trend that engages audiences on a personal level, and its innovation has launched into a worldwide trend.
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