Spotify Wrapped 2023: when it comes out, how it’s calculated and ‘Listening Personalities’ explained

Spotify Wrapped is the hotly anticipated annual breakdown of our music streaming stats and, now audiophiles can flock to the platform to see how their listening habits changed over the past 12 months. Landing ahead of schedule, Spotify listeners can now brag to their friends about their eclectic taste, listening milestones and other music-related data.

But listeners may be confused by the Listening Personalities feature on their end-of-year wrap or even think the streaming platform has missed a few artists. Here's everything you need to know including how Spotify calculates your music, when it stops assessing the data and what the Listening Personalities feature really means.

When is Spotify Wrapped 2023?

Spotify Wrapped 2023 is available now for both premium and free users. Spotify Wrapped landed ahead of schedule this year. For reference, 2022 Spotify Wrapped arrived on November 30 and on December 1 in 2021 and 2020.

To find the feature, all users need to do is open their Spotify app and make sure it's updated. If you want to track your top songs of 2023, Spotify has put it all into a playlist for you - just search for 'Your Top Songs 2023'.

When does Spotify Wrapped stop counting? 

Spotify Wrapped stops counting on 31 October, allowing the music streaming platform time to compile the results for the November/December release​​ before it starts counting again on January 1.

How Spotify Wrapped is calculated? 

Spotify Wrapped works by tracking anyone who has created a Spotify account - both free and premium users. However, you must have listened to at least five different artists and at least 30 different songs. A stream is counted once you’ve listened to at least 30 seconds of a song. Meanwhile, top songs are calculated by play count rather than total time listened.

The top 100 playlist, which is labelled ‘Your Top Songs ....” on your Spotify page, only ranks the first ten tracks according to play count. Artist separation is used thereafter but it still based on songs you had been listening to over the past year.

Spotify also takes into account podcasts when tallying total listening time. Recently, it’s created a separate list for podcasts so you can see how your concerning your love for true crime really is.

For those users who listen to downloaded tracks and playlists offline, these are counted the next time they go online.

What do the Spotify Wrapped ‘Listening Personalities’ mean? 

Last year, Spotify Wrapped added a few new features, including “Your Listening Personality,” which takes your listening habits throughout the year and attributes you a personality type. There’s 16 personality types including The Specialist, The Adventurer, The Fanclubber, and The Replayer.

But how does Spotify Wrapped slot you into a ‘Listening Personality’? It all starts with these four metrics...

Familiarity vs Exploration

This component of your listening personality deciphers your listening habits when it comes to artists. More specifically, whether you like returning to particular artists in rotation or if you’re more adventurous and choose

Loyalty vs Variety

Similarly, Spotify attempts to define whether you prioritise loyalty or variety in your listening habits. This time, Spotify calculates whether you often replay the same tracks or prefer a variety of music before repeating tracks.​

Timelessness vs Newness

Music nerds out there will be obsessed with scrawling through their ‘New Music Friday’ playlist or perhaps, they’ve so hot on the heels of their favourite artists they don’t need to. Meanwhile, some may lean toward revisiting music from different eras.

Commonality vs Uniqueness

Do you follow the heard or stand out from the crowd? In this part of your listening personality, Spotify will attempt to measure whether you listen to artists that are popular with lots of others or prefer more niche picks in your music rotation.