So - first of all, the format was a little different this year. Spotify continues to do its "hyper-targeted" listening data - I think at some point I may have authorized Spotify to put my 2018 Wrapped card on a billboard - and this year its gotten... a little odd. In previous years, I felt like there was a lot to learn about yourself, with things like what was your top song by genre, or quarter, or most repeated, etc. This year, there is a lot of odd data about the songs themselves (like the artists star sign or 'oldest'). I'm not sure I like this new approach. On the one hand, it is a cool use of the data and it is nice trivia, but on the other hand, it is just that - trivia. In the past, I've reflected on how my life changed and how that showed up in my music listening, or what certain habits said about me. This year, I see a lot less of that and more silly stuff like "the oldest song was recorded by a philharmonic in 1959." Interesting, for sure, but it doesn't say much about about me.
Anyways - I've got screen shots and writing space, so let's jump on in.
Firsts: The first song I listened to in 2018 was apparently Mozart's Symphony No. 35. I listen to classical music from time to time, so I was thinking that perhaps this was a deliberate choice on my part. I looked it up just now, and it wasn't - this must have come through on a random classical playlist.
The first artist I discovered (which I am going to take to mean "first time listening to") was Stev. Well, I couldn't remember who Stev was, so I searched Spotify for him. Turns out Spotify's search algorithim makes him impossible to find - entering Stev in the search bar (even with quotes around it) returns various "Steven" related strings. I messed with this for a bit, then turned to Google, and found the Google search card had a link to his spotify, which then opened in my browser, so I clicked that, and eventually got him playing in my Spotify app. If I'm an artist... I'm irate at this.
In any case, Stev does the downtempo electronica with traditional Chinese chamber music influences, so this is probably my jam. I think I'm going to spend some time with his stuff this last week of 2018, so a nice bookending to the year here.
Number of Minutes: Spotify presents this one as a quiz (which, if you recall, was a heavy theme of 2017's Wrapped list). I don't recall if I got it correct or not, but the answer is 25,331 minutes during whatever period they define as "this year." That works out to about 422 hours or 17 or so days. Per Spotify that is up 18% from last year (and overachieving, lol).
Spotify presents this statistic each year, which is fine, although I wonder if they would surface it for premium members with, say 18 hours. I think my $9.99/month is well spent, but I don't know if everyone out there agrees.
In terms of listening, Spotify continues to be a mostly "at my desk" sort of thing. I listen at work. I picked up some Sony Studio Monitors this year which have enhanced my life in ways I didn't initially think possible. This year at my job saw a lot of turmoil - first, we adopted a more "open office" approach that saw me sitting next to a noisy sales team, which caused me to retreat more into the headphones. Then I was assigned to a project that essentially amounted to data entry, and as such I basically just put on 8 hours of music a day. Then, I was moved into a more senior role, and found that I needed to be available without headphones on, and listened less for a period.
One difference this year is that I picked up an audible subscription, and as such my commutes were mostly audio books and not music.
Top Artist: Mokhov. Mokhov is phenomenal, and honestly this is a solid top artist pick. I think he was my favorite this year in a very genuine sense (in the past years I've seen artists like Taylor Swift on this list, whom I like but only made the list because a single song got stuck in my head). Interestingly, I listened to most of his discography.
I've written about Mokhov before - the biggest weakness is that the songs can get sort of formulaic. Still, that doesn't mean that there isn't a boatload of excellent stuff to enjoy.
The Charts. Well - I guess at least Spotify did provide this, in a year where they otherwise went for the obscure or the general.
nervous_testpilot, on the other hand, was a cool find. I'm covering Music for Code, the album I spent the most time with, in depth elsewhere, but in short, it was both terrible and goofy while being impossible and awesome. I think the album was basically someone saying "What music would I like to listen to while I wrote code?" and came up with this - it toys with chiptunes, it isn't overly lyrical, it moves quickly with heavy bass, and its maybe a little on the simple side at times. I listened a couple of times and immediately made a connection to Explosions in the Sky - if nervous_testpilot did a videogame soundtrack, people would find some of his other work and then say "Oh yeah, I'm into soundtracks" when asked about music. Well, to no one's surprise, nervous_testpilot does soundtracks.
It sounds like I'm dragging this album but the fact of the matter remains that it was one of my most listened to, and one that I came back to repeatedly throughout the year. I just can't get over the fact that I liked it so much.
With the top songs, I'm not going to go into too much depth. Noriko's Story clearly was my favorite this year, and Akane is another Levox song that I went deep on. If Noriko's Story is too on the nose with the bamboo flutes, try Akane for something that is solid EDM (heavily looped too). Wishbone is from nervous_testpilot's Music for Code, so no surprises there. Arty's Last Kiss was a real treat. Arty is obviously a giant in the industry, but someone I've always sort of orbited around. His stuff is always a bit more big room than I'm after. Last Kiss, however, is something else altogether. It's just beautiful. It was a song that I put on repeat when I had stuff to get done and wanted my mind cleared. It moves. It's delicate. It has a beat. It's unique, but draws from predictable influences. Maybe the best way to describe it is "delicate" and if you have followed anything I've written about music before, you can see why this matters so much to me.
And... well... I've been doing these since 2014 and I don't think there has ever been a list without a Burn remix so we are all good there.
The Top 100. You don't know this yet but I've been working on a retrospective of the entire top 100 list. Check back and you might actually get to read it.
Non-Mainstream. This is maybe the coolest card in the whole list. I listen to 91% more non-mainstream artists than the average Spotify listener. This is a cool statistic. This is interesting. This is about me and my habits.
Of course, I don't know how mainstream is defined... and of course there is no real baseline here. How much music does the average "mainstream" listener listen to? I will say, this isn't surprising - most of my listening if deep in the ambient/IDM/chill EDM side of things, and even when I dip out I spend time in things like traditional classical which is probably "non-mainstream." I guess I really can, unironically, say "You probably have never heard of them" when someone asks about my music tastes.
Seriously though - cool stats.
Oldest Song. Ah - this one has the potential to be awesome but kind of falls flat. For those of you who are less familiar, La Gionconda is a ballet that I think I picked up because my son was watching Little Einsteins and this was the featured track. Apparently the recording for this version was done in 1959... but the song is from 1875. See - if Spotify could have picked that out, that would be cool. I wonder if this is actually older than some of the other songs I listened to. I probably listened to some rock and roll from pre-1960 at some point this year, but Spotify can only pick out the date the album was released.
So... a nice thought but really poorly implemented torpedoes this one.
Star Signs. Ok, what is going on with this? This is seriously the oddest statistic I have ever had presented. I mean, its cool in that I would have never thought to categorize my music like this. Is there something that makes me drift towards artists of a certain birthdate?
But - let's start with the problems. First, why use star signs? They are so useless and silly. Second, who are these artists? The card lists Tiesto and Skrillex, fine, but who else? What is the sign of the my most popular artist? I know for a fact that Tiesto and Skrillex didn't combine for a high volume of music this year, so obviously something else is at play.
Like the oldest statistic above - a great thought but a poor implementation.
Tastebreakers. This is Spotify's annual attempt to make you listen to music you active decided not to listen to during the year. I don't know why they think this is a good idea but they do it every year. Last year, I went through most of the list and concluded, yes, I am ok with having skipped these songs. I'll probably take a browse through this year and see what is there, but again, if I didn't listen to these songs, why would I want to now?
The Sharing Card. This is cute little summary, and I like that they have worked in the album art. I also enjoy the little "if you don't post did it happen" quip, but I've got them covered without adding in the card. The only weakness I will point out is that the Top Songs list is meaningless without an artist or album to pin them too (searching Akane brings up a lot of other hits that are not the one by Levox that I listened to).
Well, there we have it - Spotify's Wrapped 2018. In terms of the overall Wrapped service, I liked this format more than last year's bizarre "know yourself" quiz feature, and I'm glad they got away from the pastel Christmas color scheme. That said, they still are way behind 2014 and 2015 in terms of interesting data uses! Let's get back to discovering cool things about myself, not useless trivia about when a particular artist was born or when a song was recorded to CD.
I'll probably have some more posts on this coming up - I'm about 75% done with a retrospective on my top 100 songs.
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