While music fans still eagerly await this year's Spotify Wrapped, the streaming platform has teased fans with a nod to Taylor Swift.
Every year, the audio streaming giant releases insights into subscribers' individual musical tastes, according to their most listened-to songs, artists and genres. Spotify Wrapped also crunches your data to compare it to wider listening trends. Once it is released, many users share their personalized music summary on social-media platforms.
This campaign began in December 2016 and has been published every year since. It tends to get released in late November or December, but it still hasn't hit people's Spotify accounts at the time of writing, making this the latest it has been released in recent years.
Now people online have pointed out that Spotify is using friendship bracelets, which have become synonymous with Swift, to tease the end-of-year release. And some are theorizing Spotify Wrapped will be published at 10 a.m. ET on December 4.
Newsweek emailed Spotify and a spokesperson for Swift for comment on Wednesday outside of normal business hours.
The X account (formerly Twitter) @SwiftNYC, which regularly posts updates about the singer, has reshared a clip of a video graphic that Spotify has published. In it, the makings of a friendship bracelet are floating around. "Spotify uses friendship bracelets to tease Spotify Wrapped ..." the caption reads.
The clip was first posted to X by user @kaiamal13, who wrote: "omg [oh my God] spotify's insta story the way this is a friendship bracelet!!"
It has become commonplace at Swift concerts for fans, known as Swifties, to swap friendship bracelets with each other; lyrics inspired the trend in the singer's track "You're on Your Own, Kid" from her Midnights album.
It is expected that Swift will be the No. 1 most-streamed artist again this year. She was the most-streamed artist on Spotify globally and in the United States in 2023, with over 26.1 billion streams. This was the first time she topped the year-end artist global chart.
Another Swift fan account on X, @chartstswift, shared its theory as to when Spotify Wrapped will finally be published.
"Spotify Wrapped will be officially released on Wednesday at 10 a.m. EST. Taylor Swift is expected to rank as the #1 artist for another year," the post reads. At the time of writing, it had been viewed more than 1 million times.
This year, people have joked about trying to curate their style last minute, with Spotify subscribers sharing how they were trying to hack the system in posts on X by listening to certain songs over and over.
However, there is bad news for people hoping to change their Wrapped at the 11th hour, as Spotify only collates your listening data from January 1 to October 31.
This Instagram story isn't the first time that Spotify has honored Swift. In May, the streaming platform shared a special nod to the singer and her record-breaking Eras Tour by creating a playlist with songs from its official set list.
Following a break after dates in Asia and Australia, Swift restarted the tour in Paris on May 9, where she introduced a new set list to include songs from her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), released on April 19.
Spotify shared the new tour set list, with the playlist containing 44 songs, amounting to approximately three hours. The tracks range from "Cruel Summer" belonging to her Lover album to "Down Bad" from TTPD.
Once it is live, your personalized summary of what you listened to most this year should appear on the home screen with the message: "Your 2024 Wrapped is here." This should sit below your six most-recent listens.
Spotify previously reminded users that it might not appear on their account if the app isn't up to date, adding that an up-to-date app means you are "getting a fully optimized Wrapped experience."
"When the time comes for the big reveal of your personalized 2024 listening trends, you want to be ready," the company said in a statement. "You'll also be able to easily share your unique finds or fun tidbits from your yearlong listening with friends on social media."