At the end of every year since 2016, Spotify has released their users’ listening summaries in a data compilation called Spotify Wrapped.

The globally top-streamed artists of 2022 were Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd and BTS. The globally top-streamed songs of 2022 were “As It Was” by Harry Styles, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, “STAY” by The Kid LAROI feat. Justin Bieber, “Me Porto Bonito” by Bad Bunny feat. Chencho Corleone and “Tití Me Preguntó” by Bad Bunny. Here’s how the Urban student body 2022 Spotify Wrapped compares…

(Data from an anonymous student-body survey with an 11.68% margin of error.)

Top artists & songs

Many of the surveyed Urban students’ top artists were Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar. The most popular top songs were “Late Night Talking” by Harry Styles and “No Other Heart” by Mac DeMarco.

Genres

Among the students surveyed, there were 42 unique top genres, with pop taking the lead.

Infographic credit: Eliot Solomon.

Another popular Spotify Wrapped category is top genres. Many of Spotify’s listed genres seem unconventional, such as “goblincore” and “lowercase.” In an article about the 2022 genres in Spotify’s newsroom, Spotify wrote that they “identify emerging genres or remodel familiar ones so they are more recognizable, representative, and holistic to our listeners and their communities.”

Despite the intention of appealing to their user base, many found the genre classifications confusing. “The genres [Spotify] gave me make no sense…I don’t think they are genres,” said an anonymous student in a response to the survey.

Minutes Listened

The majority of Urban students surveyed listened to around 30,000 – 50,000 minutes (about 500 – 830 hours in total, and two hours per day) of music/podcasts on Spotify in 2022. The highest response was 128,696 minutes (around 2,100 hours) listened, about seven hours a day.

Infographic credit: Eliot Solomon.

Data Collection

Spotify collects data such as a user’s top songs, albums and artists by the number of streams. Every 30 seconds listening to a song is considered one stream. According to a tweet from Spotify in 2019, data for Spotify Wrapped is only collected from January 1 to October 31 to get the finished product out by the end of the year.

Despite reminding users that they collect their data, Spotify Wrapped is highly anticipated and enjoyable. Every year, Instagram stories are flooded with them, leaving little need for Spotify to market the campaign. This way, Spotify has inspired other listening platforms to create similar campaigns, such as Apple Music’s “Apple Replay.”