Wrap your head around it: algorithmic self-making and performances of taste on Spotify Wrapped
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines how Spotify Wrapped is perceived and understood by Brazilian users, exploring the algorithmic imaginaries (Bucher, 2017). that surround its appropriation in everyday life and how the datafication and the dashboarding of music consumption are incorporated into performances of taste (Airoldi, 2021; Prey, 2018). Focusing on Wrapped as an annual ‘algorithmic event' (Annabell & Rasmussen, 2024) we contextualise it as part of ongoing discussions on the platformisation of music and the algorithmic mediation of identity, as well as debates about digital memory and media events. Based on a social network analysis of posts collected from Twitter/X and a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 38 Spotify users, we argue that in Brazil the ‘eventness' of Spotify Wrapped is distributed, clustered but sparsely connected, and marked by fleeting, fluid and ephemeral feelings of shared experience and recognition rather than by enduring communities. Foregrounding ordinary acts of constrained agency (Siles, et al., 2022), our findings also indicate that Brazilian users playfully and skilfully incorporate the perceived logics of datafied consumption and algorithmic mediation to produce desirable Wrapped results - whilst also hoping that 'the algorithm’ would be able to understand listening contexts and only capture those sessions that are 'Wrapped-worthy'. We conclude by highlighting the continuities and specificities of the phenomenon in relation to existing theorisations of everyday data cultures (Burgess et al., 2022). In doing so, we contribute to the growing body of literature on music streaming studies, platform studies, and critical algorithm studies.
Language: English
Topic: Music History and Culture
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Award: G1851622532
OpenAlex ID: W7154689616