Since the early days of illegal downloading and the infamous Napster, the industry of streaming music has made tremendous strides. Today, streaming music has become an effortless and seamless experience as people are able to press play on whatever speaker or headphones they have and listen to their favorite artists, all within a few touches at their fingertips. In fact, it was estimated by the IFPI that people on average, spend 20.7 hours per week listening to music in 2023, which is an increment by almost 13% as compared to 18 hours in 2019. 

As the industry continues to progress, streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Youtube have now become a household name. These developments have revolutionized the way people interact with music and how musicians get favor on YouTube. Now, people simply have to pay a small monthly subscription and they would have endless options for music spanning the world’s range of genres, languages, and cultures. With just a few more taps, they can also create personalized playlists and share music to their friends. 

Technological developments have changed the way we live our everyday lives. Traditional albums and CDs were once upon a time, everything that consumers needed. Over the years now, it has been facing a decline in sales. Innovation will lead to consumers wanting more and it’s possible that the landscape of the industry are to shift again. With the increasing demand for music streaming services, particularly due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19, app makers are increasingly emerging and striving to cater to this expanding market and seize a share of the industry. 

From CDs to Data-Driven Engagement with Spotify Wrapped

Instead of these streaming platforms only keeping consumer data for that purpose, Spotify came up with an interesting way of showing it off and making data-driven content for their users with its yearly Wrapped feature. This is where Spotify creates personalized lists that summarizes their users listening habits over the past year, presented to them in a visually appealing format. It shows users information such as their minutes spent listening, top listened to songs and artist, genres discovered, and more. Users love this feature as it is somewhat a trip down memory lane and a summary of how their year went by. Spotify loves it because it creates engagement for their users who share their personalized wrapped on social media which is indirectly a form of free marketing.

Another way personalization can be achieved is through curating content. This is a slightly more indirect approach where a platform creates a public playlist which eventually leads to people engaging and creating their own. Spotify does an excellent job at doing this where they have created tons of public playlists, each following a certain mood or character and are frequently updated. For instance, they have created work-out playlists, chill playlists, party playlists, sad playlists and more. From here, users have the opportunity to discover new music and artists that they might not come across otherwise. They can then freely add them to their personal playlists and share them with others.