How Spotify Wrapped nails data storytelling (without a single chart)
Every year, Spotify Wrapped takes over social media. It fills our feeds with personalized music stats, so much so that, this year I've seen Wrapped shared even on LinkedIn. By all criteria, the campaign is a data-driven one: each frame is a story based on a single dataset, but one thing is missing: there's no charts on the horizon.
Then why is Spotify so successful?
It's All About Us (and Our Data)
Here's the thing: we're all a tiny bit self-centered. And at its core, Spotify gets this. The campaign transforms pretty boring dry streaming data into a fun personalized story that feels like looking into our yearly musical soul. It's just our data - they show us our story, our musical journey, our year in beats and rhythms.
They even bring a short video from your favorite artist. You can make it more personal than that!
Embrace the BANs
Instead of complex charts, simple pies, and a bunch of bar charts, Spotify embraces the "BANs" (Big Ass Numbers - you can also call them Vanity Numbers but BANs is way more fun). When Spotify tells us we've listened to Taylor Swift* 42,489 times this year, you don't need a bar chart to understand that's a lot. One striking number only. It's immediate. It works.
*Or Drake, or Kendrick, we’re not judging here.
Keep it simple
Spotify isn't trying to overwhelm you with every possible metric they could track. Instead, they focus on what matters:
Our ride-or-die artists
Those songs we couldn't stop replaying
Our music personality *because we all love a good label*
The soundtrack of our year's emotions
Spotify excels at data curation. They focus on only the meaningful insights.
Be bold, be loud.
Each year, Spotify goes all out with a new visual identity. They flex their brand like a creative muscle, playing with:
Bold colors & elements that pop
Dynamic typography
Animations that make you want to watch again
Going beyond visual: Wrapped is playful, celebratory, and sometimes even a bit cheeky. It's not afraid to crack jokes about our guilty pleasures or call out our obsessive replays. This personality-driven approach makes data feel less like statistics and more like a sarcastic friend telling us about our year.
Despite the variations in each year's campaign, it's easy to still see the links to Spotify's main brand identity. This through-line is essential to build brand equity. We recognize it as and it has become a familiar entity that we trust.
Built for Sharing
Perhaps most crucially, Spotify Wrapped isn't just built to be shared - it's begging to be shared:
Made for mobile first: the data is separated into snippets of insights that can all be independently shared with a simple focus point for each frame
Animations for social: using motions allow the visuals to pop on our feed and connect each frame into one storyline.
Multiple formats to play with: a video for your stories (most popular for algorithm) and downloadable images for your feed and sharing to your WhatsApp family chat
Sharing feels as natural as hitting the like button.
So What?
Of course, we don’t all work with cool personal data.
But we can still find some inspiration in Spotify's success: when it comes to social media, the most powerful data communication isn't about complex visualizations. It's about making it personal, simple, and shareable.
Next time you share your insights, ask yourself:
What's your one Big Ass Number? That one stat that could make your audience go "wait, what?"
How can you build a story line with clear and simple insights?
How can you make your data more personal? Make it about us.
How can you flex your creative muscles, not just on charts but on the entire campaign, that will make your insights stand out among the ambient information?
Note: This year, Spotify users’ expressed disappointment about the genres, categories and over data highlights of Wrapped. Why? Because Wrapped was created with the support of AI rather than human specialists. It lost a bit of its soul and users noticed. A lesson to take into not letting AI dictate your data stories?
Gabby,
Still ashamed of her 2024 playlist that is definitely reflective of a whole lot of running rather than good taste!
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