First of all, sorry for being so late to all this Spotify Wrapped stuff, it took a little while for responses to come in. Second of all, if I get anyone’s name wrong, I apologize. If anybody has a preferred name that I didn’t use, feel free to email [email protected] to fix the error, or comment below.
2024 has been a pretty good year musically for nearly all music communities. Pop got BRAT, Hip-hop got GNX and Chromakopia, Country is generally gaining popularity, and Rock got the return of The Cure in Songs of a Lost World.
For some people, minutes listened is a category to be proud of, while others are indifferent. Jake Kelly is a superb example of the latter, clocking in at 4,949 minutes. On the other end of the minutes listened spectrum, we have a few honorable mentions; Carson Reifsteck listened to an impressive 85,000 minutes, while yours truly listened to 79,000 minutes. Out of the 23 people who answered the surveyed, the person who listened to the most minutes in 2024 was Gian Saunders with a whole 90,000 minutes listened.
This year, you may have noticed that Spotify included a genre evolution segment on Wrapped; most of these genre names are ridiculous so I have to share. Starting off with a tame one, we have, “Pumpkin Spice Permanent Wave Indie”. This name has more syllabic content then it does meaning; I decipher this to mean, “cozy songs for fall.” Next up is, “Cyberpunk Instrumental Post-Hardcore”. I have to admit, I got this genre on my Wrapped and the song it played was instrumental, but I would not describe it as “cyberpunk”, I chalk this up to a shortcoming of the Spotify algorithm. Finally, there’s, “Sigikore Catwalk Hyperpop”. Yep, that’s how it turned out in the survey responses. The only guess I can make to what this genre sounds like is something akin to normal hyperpop.
Most people have a favorite song, they might play it 100 times or so in a year, but some people truly love a song. In third place, Svetlana Lutz got 252 plays of Zombie by the Cranberries. The aforementioned Gian Saunders played COCA ZERO by Camilo Caetano 851 times, but that’s not even the most anyone at Wakefield has listened to a single song this year. The gold medal in repeated listens goes to Corinne Breyault with 2,174 plays of stellar by .diedlonely.
Everybody had a top artist this year, and some people had more obscure artists than others. I’m not saying who got which artist, I’m just trying to highlight some artists you might not know. Both grentperez and idlework. have an indie sound and have songs some people might relate to Laufey. If you want some liminal instrumental music, try .diedlonely, who’s song, stellar was mentioned earlier. For enjoyers of hip-hop, Subiibabii is more trap-leaning, while Rod Wave is more soulful and basically sings bars. For you musical eccentrics out there, listen to teaming in chess, who is by far the least listened to artist on this list. Finally, for those of you who have ever tried to find good local music, try Fugazi, a punk band from 90s DC with a pretty much flawless discography.
I hope you find some new music in this new year, Warriors!