At the end of every year, XYZ (one of the most used music streaming services, but we want to maintain their privacy) releases their annual user music report called "XYZ Wrapped" which recollects the music and the artists the world cherished for the year. It started as a fun gimmick and now has turned into a cultural phenomenon. People are more excited to see their stats every year, curious to see what listener archetype they are, most streamed songs, albums, top artists, longest streaming session etc.
This cultural event also shows interesting observations for behavioral sciences, and shows how human behavior can transform a service into a cultural phenomenon that resonates on a personal level.
This year's wrapped was blatantly mid. It did not provide listeners with top genres nor their top albums. Instead of music taste to city comparisons to Noida last year to music evolution like Coastal Grandmother Fingerstyle Yacht Rock season which is clearly AI generated and wont help navigate a listener through a google search also. AI has infiltrated every corner of the creative industries, and the machine’s fingerprints are everywhere; XYZ is just the latest culprit.
The hook of Wrapped is the statistics. We are hooked to the number of minutes we spent listening to a particular artist, album and song. Not only that but we are also shown a percentile of the demographic in which we fit. Not only does this validate the users love towards their favorite artist, it also shows the engagement between the user and the app. This also prompts the user to listen to more songs produced by the artist, thereby driving engagements for both the streaming service and the artist.
Every year, millions of Indians craft their music taste in such a way that they try to avoid the 'curse of Pritam' yet each year, 9 out of 11 people fall victim to this curse one way or another and cannot avoid the Pritam curse.
We humans are social animals. The fear of judgement and rejection and FOMO (fear of missing out) are deeply rooted in our primal parts of the brain. This is also greatly reflected in the behavioral response of XYZ Wrapped. Everyone hopes that their top artist leaderboard makes them look cool and a man of culture , and hence year long they force themselves to listen to a particular set of artists which they probably don't even like.
Nostalgia is a powerful driver of XYZ Wrapped, and this can be seen as the Wrapped story loops your most listened tracks in the background, and this year they also showed your most streamed music of the month. Each song resonates with a particular memory, some romantic, some bittersweet and others euphoric. We are reliving those memories. This makes us share these on our social media stories, akin to sharing a part of our life.
To 'Wrap' it up, XYZ Wrapped is not only a marketing gimmick, but also an annual festival of behavioral sciences and a testament to how consumer behavior intersects with business models.
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