Spotify Wrapped is Spotify's personalized, end-of-year campaign that repackages a user's own listening data and hands it back to them as a shareable story. Between its 2017 debut and its 2019 run, it went from a small campaign to a cultural moment that is still thriving in 2026. I ran a comparative social listening study across both years to find out, empirically, what changed with the goal to turn that into learning when evaluating personalized, data-driven campaigns.
Role: Social Media & PR Research Analyst
Type: Comparative Social Listening & Campaign Analysis
Status: Completed case study
The question
In December 2017, #SpotifyWrapped drew 4,158 mentions on Twitter. Two years later the same campaign drew 593,000, about 143 times more. Everyone called that "going viral." I wanted to know what was different about the conversation.
The US and UK led both years. The gender split was close to even in both.
I independently designed and ran the entire comparative study.
In Brandwatch, I pulled every tweet using six Wrapped hashtags (#SpotifyWrapped, #YourSpotifyWrapped, #Your2019Wrapped, #SpotifyWrapped2019, #Your2017Wrapped, #SpotifyWrapped2017) for both Decembers.
I compared volume, timing, sentiment, emotion, geography, top accounts, hashtags and emojis, then checked the patterns against Google Trends and news coverage.
I pulled every tweet using the Wrapped hashtags for both Decembers in Brandwatch. I compared volume, timing, sentiment, emotion, geography, top accounts, hashtags and emojis, then checked the patterns against Google Trends and news coverage.
What 2017 looked like