A highlight in the year of Spotify users has come once again as this Dec. 1, Spotify Wrapped 2021 was released. With all of the mania surrounding Wrapped, from people sharing their personal year in music on social media to the nationwide and even worldwide statistics Spotify has released, what does it all mean?

Wrapped is an annual service produced by Spotify, supplying personalized statistics for every user on their music listening habits throughout the year. Since 2016, Spotify has been using wrapped as a marketing tactic for their service and it has been a huge success. Wrapped has generally supplied a user’s most listened to artists, songs, and genres but it has changed throughout the years.

The additions to wrapped this year have been more minimal gimmicks than anything substantial. First is  “2021: The Movie” where some of your top songs would be matched to the moods of certain possible movie scenes. The other new feature is “Your Audio Aura,” a colorful visualization based on the moods of your music from the past year. 

Olivia Rodrigo cemented her pop stardom this year with the top two most-streamed songs in the nation being her own “drivers license” and “good 4 u”, with many other songs from her debut record cracking the top 50. Globally “drivers license” also owns the top spot but “MONTERO” by Lil Nas X comes in second. 

For the most-streamed artist, nationally Drake tops the list off of the back of his most recent release, and surprisingly despite only releasing re-recordings of previous releases, and a deluxe version of her album from 2020 “evermore” this year, Taylor Swift grabbed the spot for the second most-streamed artist. Swift is also 2nd most-streamed globally, with Badbunny replacing Drake.