Broadcasting your music taste is a much older trend than Spotify, however. Jack Hamilton, an associate professor of media studies at UVA, pointed to the distinctive clothing jazz music fans wore during the early 20th century as an example. In the digital era, music blogs devoted to different genres proliferated.
“There were very influential hip hop blogs, or rock fan blogs, or pop fan blogs, but these were pretty niche,” Hamilton said. “You had message boards, too, but these were even more niche than the blogosphere.”
In the ’90s and early 2000s, the barrier to entering many music fandoms was higher than it is today. Hamilton said that often meant people engaged more deeply with what they listened to, because they had spent time learning about musicians and music history.
“Even just posting on Facebook your top 20 albums of the year required you to keep up with new music and have really informed, considered opinions on what you were listening to,” Hamilton said.
Sharing your Spotify Wrapped is “an event,” Chadha said.
Most social media algorithms show users content from accounts they don’t follow, “but the day Spotify Wrapped drops is the one day where you’re most likely to see things from people you actually know,” Chadha said. “Nothing beats an in-person conversation, but digital communication like that can satisfy some social needs.”
Spotify works like a “personalized radio station,” Hamilton said, generating playlists based on what users habitually listen to. Someone might listen to a track dozens of times without knowing any other music by that artist.
Spotify’s algorithm for producing these personalized playlists is kept in a black box, so it’s difficult to tell whether it reflects users’ tastes back to them or creates their taste. Regardless, Spotify and other streamers undoubtedly influence what people listen to and how often.
Still, Hamilton and Chada agreed, the music you like is a central part of your identity, revealing things like your relationships or even where you’re from. People have broadcast their music taste for a long time, wearing Nirvana T-shirts to identify themselves as grunge fans or Taylor Swift friendship bracelets to brag about scoring tickets to the Eras Tour.
“People listen to music for different reasons. Maybe someone listened to a certain instrumental a lot, not because they love it so much, but because it’s good background noise while you work or study,” Chadha said.
That’s a comfort to anyone who might have felt their Wrapped results were a little too revealing.
“I would never assume the music someone listened to the most was necessarily their favorite. We don’t do that for any other form of media,” Hamilton said.
Take a look at University Communications’ Spotify Wrapped this year.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source news.virginia.edu ’
