Today I open my Spotify and lots of things occur to mark the end of the year. Java or Artcafe releases their new slew of seasonal cups, at Naivas the Jingle Bells are held, and social media becomes obsessed with reflecting on the year that’s passed. Whether it’s multi-post Instagram stories or a new song release about how this year has affected them, individuals across the world take to social media to publicly express how they feel about another year gone by, me too.
Every year, one company in particular often taps into the power of personalization to address the year-end human need for reflection, Spotify. Personalized features are not new to users, we’ve seen it with Google Chrome’s customized search options youtube, and more. However, Spotify Wrapped executes personalization with a certain flare that is often lacking in today’s industry.
Let’s take a closer look at how they did it.
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To a majority of people, music is a core aspect of everyday life and past memories. By creating a journey for users that includes snapshots of their overall music tastes, preferences, and habits, Spotify has created the music equivalent of a photo album. After looking at our Spotify Wrapped, we’re left with the same feeling that we might have after looking through a horde of embarrassing campus first-year or childhood pictures and nostalgia.
By designing the Wrapped feature to incorporate arrows and slide animations, the user very much gets the sense that they’re flipping through the years. Particularly effective in the journey of introspection is a screen that displays top artists and songs for each year in the decade.
This feature evokes distant memories about songs and artists from our past, taking us back to specific places and times — much like how a picture might jog someone’s memory of a trip they’d taken a while back.
Spotify Wrapped successfully helps users look inwards by reminding them of what they know about themselves through music, whether it’s highlighting their favourite artist or the most played artist of the year or maybe the song that helped them get through their last break up.
Based on data collected by Tower in December of 2019 on average Spotify had been downloaded 1.9 million times during the same three days in the previous weeks pointing to the fact that after releasing Spotify Wrapped the number of downloads increased by 23%.
In fact, Spotify’s number of positive reviews per day on December 5th, the day that Spotify Wrapped was released, was 1,334 which was a record high in the previous 3 months prior to that.
Why did a majority of users respond so well to a feature that is driven by data that has been collected about them? Spotify Wrapped integrates the 3 core functionalities of introspection, discovery, and community, and by doing so they have always been able to successfully pull off one of the best implementations of a personalized feature.
Facts:
- Data collection and analysis are core to business growth.
- Users/Customers romanticize personalization.
- User research and experiences deliver more input to the business.
- Business is not about what you like but what gives the user/customers the best experience.
Contact us today so that we can help you achieve a better user experience and personalization of your business.
