Why Your Spotify Wrapped Resume Has Songs You Never Listened To
It’s that time of year again: Spotify is here to tease you by reminding you of your music habits over the past few months. Most people should have a good idea of what albums and songs they have drunk this year. As a friendly reminder, all you have to do is open your new Spotify 2020 Annual Report , but you can get ready for one or two surprises.
Let’s talk about the presentation first. You can’t just view your report online this year. You will need to launch the Spotify Android or iOS app if you want a complete animated deck of slides. Otherwise, you have to be content with simply browsing the list of “best songs” through a browser, which is not so attractive:
These reports aren’t perfect – or your memories of musical tastes over the year may not be as accurate as you think. Your Spotify Wrapped report may show songs and artists you swear you never listened to ; You may be wrong, but you may not be crazy. There are several reasons why weird songs might sneak into your Spotify annual report, and we have a few additional suggestions if you want a more accurate idea of how shocked you were this year.
Spotify’s 2020 Wrapped Has Limited Timelines
If you’re going crazy with some big November issue, you probably won’t see any of this on your Spotify Wrapped resume. Spotify hasn’t updated its information to show how it compiled your 2020 annual review, but the streaming service usually doesn’t cover an entire year with these conclusions. After all, Spotify takes a while to create . And this is how it happened with last year’s list:
From 1st January to 31st October 2019, any auditions thereafter will not be included. This gives our teams enough time to put everything together. Some additional stories include statistics from previous years, such as total minutes, top performers, and more. These stories cover the entire listening year (Jan 1 – Dec 31).
I think it’s safe to assume that Spotify is undergoing the same treatment this year.
You could have logged into Spotify at a party
Remember, whatever you do with your Spotify account is fair for the Wrapped report. If you let friends select songs while driving, or used your Spotify account for background music at a party (or many parties), unexpected music may appear in your report. And no, you cannot edit these songs or artists from your report in any way, as Spotify describes:
We cannot update your statistics or playlists as they are based on your personal listening history. Sorry about that! For the future, it is always worth considering that, for example, if you left Spotify playing in the background or allowed friends to play their tunes with your account, this could affect your listening data.
It is also possible that a friend, roommate, or loved one is innocently using your Spotify account through various smart devices , which could also affect what appears in the Spotify annual report. That explains why my playlist is full of weird Disney instrumental tracks this year – my fiance often jams on a smart speaker in our bedroom to help her fall asleep.
Someone Hacked Your Spotify Account
It sounds a little far-fetched, but it’s not impossible, especially since Spotify still doesn’t offer two-factor (or two-step) authentication. I’ve read a number of reports from Spotify users in which they complained that hacking their accounts at some point this year messed up their Wrapped report. And while this is something you probably should have noticed if you logged into Spotify and saw a bunch of weird music in the Recently Played section, you may not have noticed.
That said, if you see a lot of music in your report that doesn’t make sense, now is the time to change your Spotify password to something unique and secure. And once you’ve done that, sign out of any other devices that might be using your Spotify account, just in case.
How to Get Better Statistics Than Spotify Report
I have nothing against the annual Spotify tally, but if you want to get an in-depth look at what you’ve been listening to over the course of the year – or at any point, really – consider connecting Spotify to your Last.fm account . This option no longer exists in Spotify apps, but you can configure it on the Last.fm side .
There are also many third-party services that you can use to track Spotify listening statistics throughout the year. The third-party website statsforspotify.com is great at telling you about your best tracks and artists from the last month, six months, or even before you’ve used Spotify.
There is also Obscurify , with which you can compare … the uniqueness … of your musical tastes to everyone else; Skiley , which can provide you with a lot of information about the tracks and artists you listen to the most; PlayedMost , which is self- explanatory; and Receiptify , which also shows your best tracks. All in all, last.fm should be whatever you want, and I’d rather connect Spotify to a reliable service that’s been around for decades than some random pop-up website. While I don’t think a third-party website is going to hijack your Spotify account, make sure you actually scan the requested permissions before connecting Spotify to unfamiliar sites – just in case.
Update 12/2/2020: We’ve updated this story for the 2020 Spotify review and added some new recommendations for third-party Spotify statistics.