How Spotify Made ‘2023 Wrapped’ the Realest Thing on the Internet

Leroy> Most definitely. It's something that we spend the majority of the year on. Honestly, there's not many months that are not Wrapped months in terms of that ongoing conversation about development, ideas and planning for the end of the year ahead. We tend to kick off in Q1 on the next Wrapped. We've been talking about it for quite some time. I started this job as the head of marketing in the UK and Ireland in April and it was already quite near the top of the agenda.

Leroy> I think the biggest question early on is what do we really want to talk about this year? What do we want to say that's new? What is that angle that reflects what's happening in culture? Right at the top of this year, we thought about the fact that for us what we really like about Wrapped is it's on the internet happening in the same space, for example, as AI is exploding and you're seeing images of the Pope in a Balenciaga jacket trying to guess if it's real. Is what I'm seeing reality? That's how we landed on this idea of Wrapped being the realest thing on the internet. That was the jump off of the idea this year. What Wrapped does is take real data rooted in real listening habits so you know it's well and truly real.

Leroy> We take that challenge really seriously. First of all I really love working on Wrapped and really want to see it hit that standard every year. I think in terms of everything that happens around it, we take all that as massive compliments. One of the things that we were just talking about the other day was trying to look back to last year, all the various other brands and ways that you see the Wrapped story unfold. People are using it in a way that's quite meme-ified in some ways for other brands and organisations to reflect their own stories of the year. It's interesting to see the way that people can make it their own.

Leroy> One of the nice ways that we set up Wrapped and run it is there's a level of united global direction around those big themes and the creative theme. But then when you come through to a market level, everybody is really empowered to think about how to make Wrapped the most relevant in your market – what are the things that will really start to push the needle there? So for the UK for the first time, we decided we're on our ninth iteration of Wrapped but we still want to surprise people and do something new. So this year for the first time we're taking Wrapped into the live space with a live streamed event [which happened on Thursday November 30th at Drumsheds in London]. The idea is we decided to really think about some of those stories that are specific to our market, the UK and Ireland, that have been exciting data stories for different reasons this year and bring the artists involved together and have them all perform the track that is part of that story of the year. So we have Sam Smith, Chase & Status, Charli XCX, Kenya Grace, Strandz, RAYE and Libianca performing live for an in-person crowd. The performance will go out as a TikTok LIVE stream at the same time. This is a really exciting way that we've decided to do something unexpected this year that people definitely haven't seen before from the Wrapped campaign.

The way that we treat experiential marketing is that we absolutely want the people in the room to have a good time, but it's also about a content creation hub. And ultimately, it’s about being able to see new and original performances from your favourite artists, hear some of the stories of how their tracks have performed this year, and what that's meant for their year. It just feels like a really nice opportunity to celebrate that moment in audio. It's a really exciting one. I think both the live stream and the content that comes out of the event, which we'll be showing people over the coming week or so afterwards, all feel fresh and exciting for Wrapped this year.

Leroy> It's a similar thing. If the fundamentals are about data being made into exciting storytelling, what are those new features we can introduce? There are always new ways to think of how we interpret that, how we surface it. There are some new features this year. One that's worth highlighting that's really exciting is called ‘Me in 2023’. That's really celebrating streaming habits. For each user it uses your listening data for the year and the experience will surface one of 12 different characters that represent the way that you used Spotify this year. Some examples of that are you could be the Shapeshifter - that means you're quick to move from one artist to the next. Or you could be the Luminary - which means that you like light, upbeat music and more than other people. Or another one is the Alchemist - you're creating personal playlists more than other people. 

We know that people really love geographical insights. There's a feature called ‘Sound Town’, which matches you to a city based on your listening habits and the sort of artists you listen to. You'll find out which city's listening you're most like. That will hopefully produce some exciting and fun insights for people.

Leroy> Yeah, it's definitely something we’re conscious of. And hopefully we've hit that sweet spot. There are other product initiatives we've launched this year which have been really fun. There's one called ‘Daylist’. If you follow ‘Daylist’ it will update six times throughout the day, and it reflects the way that you listen to music more regularly, like your usual Tuesday morning or your usual Wednesday evening. You'll see there are some pretty creative titles that come out of that and some really interesting, unexpected genre mixes. That one's been sort of an experiment and really pushing that creativity in a really fun way, that's been really well received. A little bit different to our work on Wrapped but all of these things are part of your overall Spotify experience.

Leroy> With introducing different features, it's always interesting to us to see what things are the more shared, things people really like. That's a good indication of what's really resonating. Often what makes it into the funnier meme responses around Wrapped is always really interesting to me. Hopefully lots of surprises when people get messages from artists. The shareability of the reaction to those is fun.

On the Wrapped Live event in London, I think the reason we're doing it as a live stream and then serving up that content again, post-event is because it's really nice – as much as we haven't done a lot in the live stream space post-pandemic so far, there's always a real sense of occasion you feel in having an appointment to view something and opportunities to discuss it with friends and people online as it happens in real time. Or in your own time if you got back and watch it on our YouTube channel, etc. afterwards. So that's a new thing we're going to step into and see how it goes. Hopefully, it'll help inform what we think about doing next time.

This year there's a real layer of the campaign which is empowering each country to think about stuff that's really valid for them. We're not by any means the only live event happening. We have an event in Indonesia going out live on one of the biggest broadcast channels there, their own version of that Wrapped Live event with locally relevant artists. There are lots of pop ups and different activations. It's nice to have all this stuff happening all over the world that really makes sense to the markets and then you're able to look back and it's such a big, rich treasure trove of stuff that happened that we can take and ideate for other things. I think that the collective creative power that represents is really helpful.

Leroy> As ever there's a significant global out-of-home campaign. A mix of a lot of digital out of home around the globe. All of that is leaning into that realness thing against data. The construct for the out of home is, "Real" and a fact from Wrapped and then, "Realer" and we'll get really granular in that. So as an example, a real fact is how many listeners listened to Sam Smith 'Unholy'. And then the even realer fact is how many people do it on Sunday. It's trying to surface some interesting, unexpected truths about the Wrapped data. 

On top of that, we have lots of special builds. An example is in Australia in honour of Kylie Minogue having a huge moment with the track 'Padam Padam' this year, we've got 'Padam Padam' speed bumps in front of the Kylie billboard there – just really nice creative ways of bringing it to life.

The other side of that kind of stuff is around partner integrations and the way that we'll think about everything from the Spotify Island in Roblox and we're bringing back WonderWrapped, which was done last year, but it just an opportunity to get really special merch when you're in game, through to things like our partnership with FC Barcelona and being able to utilise the LED screens and bring Wrapped to life within the stadium for a couple of matches in December. So lots of different unexpected places that Wrapped will pop up as well as out of home.