“Your Wrapped doesn’t lie”: Data realism and Spotify’s constructions of music,listening,and listeners in algorithmic recommendation

Abstract

Spotify Wrapped, the year-end campaign of the world’s biggest music streaming company, is a singularly successful marketing scheme in the context of algorithmic technologies. Presenting individual user data in a design tailored to mobile apps, Wrapped has been noted as a unique appropriation of user data as a tool for advertising. This article analyzes promotional materials and features of Spotify Wrapped to investigate the discursive shifts accompanying datafication, which describes the accumulation and use of behavioral data in algorithmic systems, in contemporary music streaming. The article introduces data realism as a concept for theorizing the reconfiguration of music, listening, and listeners effected by these shifts. It shows how the construction of data-as-realness is reinforced through discursive pairings of data and broader cultural practices, supported by Wrapped’s multimodal design, and articulated in listener typologies. Positioning Wrapped’s design within the broader context of algorithmic culture, the paper ultimately considers how critical engagements with Wrapped may challenge or perpetuate data realist constructions of music, listening, and listeners in the context of algorithmic recommendation.