spotify Explains How Your 2025 Wrapped Data is Calculated,Addressing Potential Surprises
NEW YORK – Spotify is offering insight into the methodology behind its annual Wrapped feature,aiming to clarify how listening data is compiled and presented to users,and preemptively address potential discrepancies or unexpected results. The popular year-end recap, launching soon, analyzes listening habits from January 1st to mid-November.
spotify clarifies that a “stream” is officially counted after 30 seconds of a track has been played. Unlike some services utilizing a full calendar year or rolling 12-month window, Wrapped focuses on this specific timeframe to allow sufficient time for data verification before launch.
The company also details its approach to data filtering, explaining that non-music tracks like white noise and nature sounds are excluded to better represent users’ musical preferences. Furthermore, listening activity within Private Mode and songs/playlists excluded from a user’s Taste Profile are not factored into personalized stories, a distinction from some third-party data analysis services.
Notably, Spotify includes all offline listening data in Wrapped, contrasting with some platforms that limit imported offline plays.
Users seeking to influence their future Wrapped results are encouraged to utilize spotify’s Private Mode for specific listening sessions and the ”exclude from Taste Profile” feature.
Spotify acknowledges that memory lapses and extensive artist catalogs can contribute to surprising results, as can shared devices where multiple users contribute to the listening data. The company frames Wrapped as a festivity of individual listening journeys, offering a deeper understanding of one’s musical year.
Users can explore their personalized 2025 Wrapped at https://www.spotify.com/us/wrapped/ and find more data about the campaign at https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-wrapped/.
