Pop music has subsided, as new artists have taken over Williston students’ Spotify “Wrapped.”
On Dec. 6, Spotify released its annual “Wrapped” feature, which provides users with their listening statistics for the year. The year’s big hits were artists such as Noah Kahan and Zach Bryan, whose popularity has grown immensely on the Williston campus.
“Wrapped” shows users, in charts, videos, and graphics, their top five artists, songs, and genres, as well as how many songs and artists they have listened to, and even the total minutes they listened over the course of the past 12 months.
Listeners even receive a short video from their top artist, thanking them for being an avid fan of theirs.
First launched in 2016 by the Stockholm, Sweden based streaming giant, this marketing campaign has its users waiting excitedly to see their “Wrapped” every year, even creating a whole day sensation out of it.
Gabi Bobiak, a junior from Acton, Mass., had both these artists, Bryan and Kahan, as her top two. She even spent a total of 4,878 minutes listening to Bryan, categorizing her in the top 1% of his fanbase on Spotify.
On the complete opposite side, Maya Vulakh, a sophomore from New York City, still avidly listens to the pop artists whose popularity may have been softened by Kahan and Bryan in 2023.
Maya had artists like the The Weeknd and Ariana Grande in her top two; Kahan and Bryan didn’t make her list.
Maya notices these changes in the people around her.
“I’ve noticed my friends have been saying how great these new songs are, which, because I dislike country music, I haven’t really wanted to listen to or even really pay attention to when they’re obsessing over them,” Maya said. “Even my own roommate has a Noah Kahan poster hanging on her side of the room when I could care less about these newly popular artists, in the nicest way.”
Maya, though she’s already formed opinions, does appreciate some aspects of the music.
“Although it seems like I already have really formed opinions about it, I actually found I liked the meaning in a couple of the songs when one of my favorite pop artists covered a Noah Kahan song … Because what I listen to is still relevant, I see a lot of mixture between the two popular music genres, so I can understand why they (Kahan and Bryan) were so popular on last years ‘Wrapped.’”