They went big in 2023. Did it work?

It’s 2024 already, and I’m still getting pushed to my Spotify Wrapped in the app. Given the December layoffs, I’d thought to avoid writing about Spotify in December, but, given how big they went this year with their wrapped and how incessant the pop-ups have been, I couldn’t resist.

It’s time for a review.

Since it began, Wrapped has since paved the way for end-of-year summaries in top products like Duolingo, Twitch, Apple Music and Reddit.

The year before last, 120 million users access their Spotify Wrapped. That’s almost double from when it first started in 2016 and represents 28% of their total MAU.

As well as getting current users back into the the app, they also drive referrals via sharing. Across all social platforms, Spotify drove 60 million shares of their graphics in 2021. On TikTok alone, the hashtag #SpotifyWrapped racked up 73.7 billion views in 2023. Huuuuuge.

Whether it be your music personality, your music Aura or your music hamburger, Spotify Wrapped spices up their campaign every year.

This year was the year of the burger.

Yum.

We’ll go through the 2023 Spotify Wrapped UX, UI and product marketing to see how the tech giant drives two important KPIs:

1. Growth: through sharing of wrapped content
2. Revenue: through purchases of merch and event tickets

*I’ve taken a bet that these are the two important KPIs for Wrapped based on the review. Have another idea? Let me know in the comments.

Without further ado, let’s have a look.

I opened Spotify on a weekday morning to find my normal deep work playlist for the day (or some UK Garage Classics if I need a real push).

When I opened the app and got to the normally-so-dark-and-cool home page two things caught my eve.