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SPOTIFY WRAPPED: MY MOST FAVORITE HOLIDAY

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UC Berkeley chapter.

There's something so magical about waking up and knowing that today is your day to absolutely abolish everyone else with your 130k+ minutes spent listening to music in a year, or at least from January to October-ish. I don't mean to brag, but in 2018 I had so many minutes of listening that my school knew me as the 'music addict.' Not to mention in 2021 alone I had almost 200k minutes of listening on Spotify — you could say I'm a little addicted. 

However, what makes Spotify Wrapped my favorite holiday is the newest addition to it. In 2022, Spotify added this new feature where musicians were able to record messages for fans thanking them for listening and, in general, appreciating them for all the insane listening they did. And so if the musicians you listened to the most made one of these messages, you basically got a personal message from them that, for me at least, made me feel 10x more happier for listening to my favorite musicians. They're definitely not one-on-one super intimate messages, but to have your favorite musicians thank you for supporting them is always a good feeling. I mean, personally, when I saw one of my favorite bands, COIN, in one of my messages, I jumped with joy because I knew I was one of a few who actually got to see the message in real time and not through someone else's screen. 

I think anyone who is semi-interested in Spotify Wrapped though can agree that getting your end-of-the-year Wrapped playlist, with your 101 most listened-to songs is the best part of Spotify Wrapped. I consider myself a super reminiscent person, which means I connect a lot of the songs I listen to with vivid memories or moments that happened to me while listening to the song, encompass that whole memory in one, or the lyrics just relate to a moment.

For example, on the rare occasions when I listen to "Cold" by Maroon 5, I take a trip back to the last time I visited my family in Mexico in 2019 because during the whole trip, I was addicted to this song. And so every time I get my Spotify Wrapped playlist, I like to reminisce on all the cringy, funny, sad, or frustrating  memories of the year that led to me playing these songs for an ungodly amount of times. So when my Spotify Wrapped comes out and I wonder why "breathin" by Ariana Grande is on my playlist, I can look back at my post-gallbladder removal surgery week when my nurse gave me a breathing toy to breathe into so my lungs could go back to normal. 

Some people love Christmas, and some adore the spookiness of Halloween, but I think Spotify Wrapped Day tops them all. From being able to look back on the year to absolutely abolishing everyone in the minutes you listened to music, Spotify Wrapped is a holiday for all. Unless you hate music, we can all come to appreciate the joy of getting to see which artist you binged a little too much, and will likely continue to binge, but tell everyone that you don't binge.

Troye Sivan Is Spotify's First 'Green Screen' Artist

Man-of-the-moment Troye Sivan gets his close-up on Green Screen, Spotify's new video performance series.

Sivan is the first artist invited to show his stuff for Green Screen, the format for which includes an original recording or previously-released track performed in front of a green screen which, through the wonders of technology, is hewn by the "artist's creative vision," reads a statement.

Each Green Screen video will also generate a live audio recording — in Sivan's case, "Still Got It" — which Spotify releases as part of its campaign. 

"I wanted to partner with Spotify on Green Screen," says Sivan, "because it was an exciting opportunity to give life to one of my favorite songs on the album that wasn't going to be a single. This video helped bring 'Still Got It' to life in a distinct way."

Sivan, the Rolling Stone AUNZ cover star, boasts over 32.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify and is one of the streamer's "most listened-to artists," reps say.

That's across a platform that boasts 550 million users (including 220 million "premium" subscribers), and is understood to reach half the population of Australia. 

Watch "Still Got It" below. 

Everything is headed in the right direction for Sivan, who led the 2023 ARIA Awards last week in Sydney with four trophies, and has a chance to double up at the 2024 Grammy Awards with two nominations (best pop dance recording and best music video, both for "Rush").

Sivan's third and latest studio album Something to Give Each Other topped the ARIA Albums Chart earlier this year, for his first leader, cracked the top 5 in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and went top 10 in Germany and Norway.

Album track "Rush" impacted 12 U.S. Charts there, including a No. 77 debut on the Billboard Hot 100, and a No. 1 on the Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs and Dance/Electronic Song Sales tallies.

According to EMI Australia, Sivan's music has accumulated more than 26 billion streams across all platforms, and shifted 10 million "combined" global album units.

Spotify's line-up of Green Screen artists includes Ivan Cornejo, Tinashe, Nessa Barret,  NLE Choppa, and Asake.

What Is The Top Rap Song Of 2023 On 'Billboard?'

With just a couple of days to go until Thanksgiving, Billboard has released its year-end charts (the music industry, much like all those turkeys, pretty much dies with the holidays, so it is usually best not to count the last month of the year, which Mariah Carey rules with an iron fist anyway). Those charts tabulate all the sales and streams up til the second week of November (including, last year's December stats), then tell us what we've listened to the most collectively (like Spotify Wrapped but for the US as a whole).

While country music, pop, and the rap-R&B of SZA dominated as a whole, the top hip-hop track of the year (at No. 5 overall) was Metro Boomin's take on a mid-2000s classic. "Creepin'" featuring The Weeknd and 21 Savage covers Mario Winans' 2004 hit "I Don't Wanna Know," which itself sampled the Fugees' 1996 song "Ready or Not," which in turn sampled Enya's 1987 song "Boadicea." Released on January 27 as a single from Metro's then-latest album Heroes & Villains "Creepin'" peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 on February 6. It currently has over 1 billion streams on Spotify and 86 million cumulative views on YouTube across its visualizer, official music video, and audio stream (not including the seemingly dozens of bootleg streams).

Of course, if you don't want to count that as the "top rap song" of 2023 since it only features a rap verse from 21 Savage, the next qualifying track also includes 21 Savage. "Rich Flex," from Drake and 21's joint album Her Loss also ranked near the top of the year-end list, coming in at No. 14. Sorry, Pusha T stans and Drake haters (same difference, right?) — it doesn't look like The Boy has lost his touch just yet.

Other top tracks include "All My Life" by Lil Durk feat. J. Cole, "Just Wanna Rock" by Lil Uzi Vert, and "Fukumean" by Gunna. Also, Ice Spice really did prove to be the reigning princess of rap, appearing no fewer than four times on the list — the most of any female rapper.

You can check out the full list here.

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