For the sixth year in a row, Spotify Wrapped has revealed the top artists, songs, genres, albums, and podcasts that millions of users around the world were discovering and celebrating. What’s different this year? How much we cared.
In 2021, public interest in Spotify Wrapped more than doubled compared to 2020, which was otherwise a record year. This eye-popping moment shows how the Wrapped feature has become even more successful, but it’s additionally notable because we’ve seen less engagement to most events overall in 2021.
While other audio platforms such as Apple Music try to compete, even with all its resources, Spotify remains the King. Wrapped is more than just a curated yearly playlist — it’s a personalized report that looks into the depth of each user’s listening habits. It’s because of this personalization that makes content about it so buzzworthy online.
For this reason, we explored the Spotify Wrapped content in 2021 to see how engagement compared to 2020, and highlighted the entertaining memes that flooded social media platforms.
Public interest to Spotify Wrapped was higher in 2021 than in 2020
Spotify Wrapped is always published during the first week of December, so we compared the public interest levels of the first 48 hours after it was released for 2020 and 2021.

In 2020, Spotify Wrapped was written about 1.4k times and garnered over 85k engagements. This year saw a compelling increase — a similar amount of articles published, but over 179k engagements to those articles in the first two days. Whereas last year public interest began to taper off in the afternoon before spiking again the next day, this year engagements stayed relatively high for the entire period. In fact, the biggest peak on day one doesn’t even occur until later in the evening, and spikes again the morning of day two.
There were a few significant peaks of interest before then — one being an article about BTS ranking third on the list of Spotify’s most streamed artists — but the more notable moment arose when news broke about Brazilian singer Marília Mendonça being the year’s most streamed female artist, although it was only for one day. The article in Caras, a Portuguese entertainment publication, received 3.3k engagements in one hour and caused the two largest spikes overall.
In contrast, 2020 only had one pinnacle moment during the first day of release, and it actually came from Spotify themselves. The landing page for 2020 Wrapped generated 3.4k engagements on day one, then seemingly fell back down where interest mostly leveled out until the same page spiked again the following morning.
Now we know that 2021 wrapped has captured the public’s attention so far, but what is keeping them drawn in? Let’s take a look at the biggest stories this year.
The top articles in 2021 are about the year’s most streamed artists

We previously mentioned how Marília Mendonça’s success on Spotify’s rankings sparked interest, but the article from Caras was also the most engaged piece of content overall, outshining the rest of the contenders by far. Since it’s publishing on Dec 1st there have been more than 63k engagements to the story.
The Brazilian singer wasn’t the only international sensation making headlines about Spotify Wrapped, with K-pop stars and Puerto Rician rapper Bad Bunny competing for attention. The Korean publisher Allkpop had the second most engaged article with 14k engagements and wrote about the most listened to K-pop songs, which of course included several hits from BTS.
Articles that featured Bad Bunny saw less engagement than ones about K-pop stars, but the rapper was able to generate 18k engagements to stories about him being the most streamed artist globally for the second year in a row.
Memes and humorous posts dominate social media
These days almost everything seems to get turned into a meme. They’re a cultural obsession that can add a dash of silliness to even the most serious situations. Spotify Wrapped is definitely more lighthearted, and the public are loving the memes that have sprung up across social platforms.
First is Instagram, where the biggest meme to surface since Dec 1st comes from the account Pubity. The post jokes about Spotify being better suited to reveal the year’s biggest music accomplishments than the Grammys. The comment section was flooded with people announcing their own results, and so far the post has earned 419k engagements.
Another fan favorite on the platform came from the account Memezar which features an image of actress Scarlett Johansson and a self-deprecating joke. Although a little less upbeat than other memes, it was wildly popular on the platform, receiving over 335k engagements.
every time spotify wrapped drops pic.twitter.com/Vfpxwup7kz
— nard (@avantnard) December 1, 2021
“no one cares about your Spotify wrapped” “no one wants your fit checks” “no one watches your instagram stories” i do. i’m literally obsessed with my friends
— EJ Chong (@ejknoodles) November 25, 2021
Twitter goers will be pleased to know that memes and funny posts about Spotify Wrapped were also highly appreciated on the platform. One of the biggest tweets was a meme that implied how much better off Spotify users are than Apple Music users because they receive the yearly wrapped feature. The funny feud generated over 234k engagements.
A subject that was discussed across various social channels was how much people actually care to see the Spotify Wrapped results of their friends, or even strangers. A feel-good tweet that saw over 124k engagements was about encouraging people to share more on social media. Overall the excitement surrounding sharing Spotify Wrapped results was high.
We can’t quite uncover the reason for Spotify Wrapped 2021’s spike in engagement compared to last year — maybe another tumultuous year had everyone seeking sanctuary through their music — but it’s clear that users are more excited about the feature than ever, and the continuous rise of international musicians keeps people all over the world engaged.
To read more about how streaming services are driving engagement this year, read our blog about Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, and HBO here.