Apple Music’s Replay and Spotify’s Wrapped launched Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively — unveiling a year’s worth of listening history for their users worldwide.
Whether students were labeled a “Vampire” by Spotify for listening to “emotional, atmospheric music more than most” or reached a new milestone on Apple Music, USC is divided over which platform is better.
“I think it’s a fun little thing people can bond over,” said sophomore psychology major Camila Beresford-Redman. “Although it’s fun, it doesn’t really mean anything.”
The format, originally ideated by Spotify in 2016, was later adopted by Apple Music in 2019, bridging the gap for all kinds of listeners.
This year’s Spotify Wrapped featured new additions like “Sound Town,” a pixelated map that displayed a city with similar listening patterns to each user in addition to unique genre distinctions like Darksynth, Dream Plugg and Compositional Ambient. According to the BBC, there are now over 6,000 genre distinctions on Spotify — which are used to sort each of the 100,000 new tracks uploaded every day.
With 210 million premium users, Spotify still dominates the audio streaming subscription service charts compared to Apple Music’s 88 million global subscribers according to Music Business Worldwide.
Many USC students thought that Spotify was the clear winner, especially with its unique, colorful Wrapped format this year. Some even highlighted Apple Music’s downsides.
“I don’t believe in paying for the service and the phone,” said junior Alani Smith, a film and television student. “[Spotify] caters to me.”
Others voiced their support for Apple Music.
Freshman Ayana Gonzalez said, “Apple Music comes with my network carrier of choice, so I take advantage of that.”
Another new feature on Wrapped was the “Me in 2023″ character, which “demonstrates a streaming habit that defined your music listening this year” according to Spotify. Options range from Alchemist to Time Traveler to Mastermind.
Smith said her Wrapped character was a Cyclops. “They said I’m loyal… I stick to genres and artists like really long.”
One USC student even stood strong by YouTube Music, which only has 8.5 million subscribers — and no end-of-the-year recap, according to Music Business Worldwide.
“I’m tired of the YouTube music slander. Yeah, it’s a little overpriced monthly, but I grew up literally listening to music off of the YouTube app because I didn’t want to pay for it,” said junior Faith Nguyen.
Nguyen also pointed out that you can listen to some edits on YouTube that are not accessible on other platforms. “Why go so close-minded as to use Spotify when you can literally access the world on YouTube?... I’m going to be a lone wolf about it, all right.”
Several students were hesitant to share their top artists on their Wrapped or Replay, believing that the platforms did not accurately represent their listening history this year.
Beresford-Redman said Spotify “did me pretty dirty” this year in correlating the location of San Luis Obispo, California with her music habits. “It doesn’t tell me anything about my listening pattern.”
Gonzalez was hesitant to share her Replay as it features “some of the most mainstream on this planet” with Drake, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and Beyoncé at the top.
Smith, on the other hand, was embarrassed to admit that Kanye was her number two artist even though she stopped listening to him this year.
But, Smith confesses she knows why Kanye made the cut. “Whenever I fly over to L.A., I keep Waves by Kanye on repeat and my flight is seven hours. But, I stopped doing that — like I did that for the flight,” she said.
While the music-listeners demographic is divided by the streaming platforms, the year-long wait to the next rewind of their music choices unites them.