Every year, Spotify releases to each user their top artists, songs, listening statistics, and more information about the music people listened to that year. This is referred to as Spotify Wrapped. This year, anticipation was especially high. Many people jokingly refer to Spotify Wrapped day as a holiday, and love posting it every year. But why do we love showing what music we’ve listened to over the course of the year? What do we gain from displaying our top artists and songs? Is it an act solely out of our own interest in our listening habits, or is it a way to gain social acceptance? And how does this affect the very way we listen?

Most Saints seemed, overall, excited to see who their top artists were. Senior Dali Llovido’s top artist was Ariana Grande, which she said surprised her a bit. But she did not share her Wrapped on social media. “I don’t feel the need to disclose my Wrapped, unless someone asked. I don’t know if I was scared of judging, I just kinda didn’t want to post it. I love listening and talking about music, but it’s not that big of a deal to me.”

For most people, showing their Spotify Wrapped is a fun way to connect with others about their music taste. “I posted mine. I thought it would be cool to share because everyone posts theirs, so I was excited to share it,” said senior Helen Marcillo. It would be untrue to claim that sharing music opinions and habits was not a great way to connect with other people. Many people love showing their listening status, even using outside apps and platforms to track and share what they are currently into.

Senior Nathaniel Inman uses the tracking app Last.fm, which does essentially the same job as Airbuds, to watch his own listening statistics. “I think it’s interesting to see my trends.” However, there are stereotypes that float around tracking your own music habits and sharing them. Last.fm and Airbuds users, and those who are too interested in their own music habits, are often seen as pretentious or obsessed with their own superior taste. This is mostly just a stereotype. “I listen to mostly everything and I love listening to whatever people recommend to me. So I wouldn’t really say I’m pretentious,” said Inman.

For all the people who have a laugh at those “pretentious” or overly invested music fans, there is an equally loud opinion that it is harmful to shame people for wanting to look deeper into their favorite media. An opinion piece by Benjamin Errichetti, called “You Don’t Listen to ‘Pretty Much Everything,'” states, “The point of art is to move people…When you find that one song that touches you, the one that’s heard by your ears but felt by everything in you, it should send you into a passionate spiral down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia pages and fan forums…” The opinion that no one should be excited to share their own taste would go against the focal point of Errichetti’s argument: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

So, whether or not you felt the need to post your Spotify Wrapped, and whether or not you take tracking your listening habits too seriously, hopefully this Spotify Wrapped season is a happy one for all of us!