Why You Can Trust CNET Show Off Your Superior Music Taste With These Spotify Add-Ons
Now you can enjoy Spotify Wrapped any time of the year
If you've clicked through Instagram Stories in the past few months, you may have seen a mysterious collection of crinkled grocery store receipts posted by friends of yours. Maybe you've seen Spotify Pies making the rounds on Twitter: Pie charts of hyper-detailed top genres, ranging from familiar umbrellas like rock and R&B to are-these-even-real categories like "metropopolis."
These viral streaming wrap ups offer exciting, visually compelling ways of understanding your streaming habits that extend far beyond Spotify's helpful (but rather lackluster) On Repeat playlist. Unlike Spotify Wrapped 2021, these aren't confined to just once a year, because now every day is a holiday!
What's even cooler about these Spotify aggregators is that they're not made by Spotify itself; they're built by third-party developers and music fans aided by Spotify's open-source API. The only potential downside? Unlike Spotify Wrapped these clones are desktop- or browser-based only, but at least they are also ultra-sharable. So, with that in mind, here's a look at how these "scrobbling" clients work and how they can change the way you stream — from finding out "how NPR you are" to grading the relative obscurity of your music — starting with some of my favorites.
Probably my favorite of the Spotify Wrapped clones, volt.fm describes itself as "your Spotify profile on steroids." Volt.fm launched in September 2021, but just hit over 1 million users last month, and it's easy to see why: It's by far the most thorough of the Wrapped clones I've seen. Volt.fm shows data on your top artists, tracks and genres, similar to last.fm.
It's also the only client I've seen that shows you detailed information on top decades, longest and shortest songs, and the popularity or obscurity of your favorite songs and artists on one platform.
Beyond that, what really makes volt.fm stand out is its social element. When you click on any of your top artists, you can see a list of the top 10 (volt.fm-registered) listeners — which could include yourself. While I haven't personally had the privilege of seeing my name alongside a golden medal icon for any of my favorite artists, I'd imagine it's an even higher honor than when Spotify Wrapped told me I was in the top 0.5% of Lorde listeners.
But more than that, you can share all the information on your page with others. Volt allows you to create a link for your profile, which others can look at and even compare their own profiles with. Think Spotify's Blend playlists, but with a more in-depth look at your all-time listening.
Last.fm basically laid the framework for what has become today's Spotify Wrapped. In some respects, its roundup functionality is similar to the others here showing top songs, artists, and albums from various time frames. However, it's the specific listening history of tracks and albums — called "scrobbles" — that really sets this clone apart.
Similar to how Spotify allows you to see monthly listeners for an artist, last.fm can tell you the total number of listeners and scrobbles for artists, albums and specific tracks. For example, "As It Was" by Harry Styles (which has been out for about three months at the time of writing) already has over 14 million scrobbles on Spotify.
Last.fm also stands apart from these clients because it's the only one on this list with both a dedicated mobile app and the ability to scrobble music you listen to on other streaming services.
A wonderful (and dangerous) tool for people who already have a superiority complex about their music taste, Obscurify gives you a percentage rating on how obscure your music taste is compared to others: The higher your rating, the more obscure your taste. Obscurify also helpfully lets you know which of your favorite tracks and artists are considered obscure.
If you've only recently begun charting into obscure musical territory, fear not: Obscurify will show your all-time and current (based on the past six weeks) score on a super cool bell curve.
Plus, in addition to obscurity ratings, Obscurify also provides audio analysis insight into your most acoustic, energetic and danceable tracks.
A now-monthly mainstay of the streaming conversation, Receiptify is perhaps the most straightforward Spotify Wrapped clone. It's also the most shareable: Receiptify shows a list of your top 10 tracks from a given time frame (ranging from four weeks to all time) with a cool grocery store receipt-like design, complete with your total listening time. It's a cool way to visualize your streams without getting bogged down by excessive details.
Musictaste.space is like Obscurify and can show your top songs, artists and favorite genres. It also provides a breakdown of your acoustic, happy and danceable music selections, though it goes a step further: Musictaste will also share what percentage of your music falls under these categories and how you compare to the national average. (Apparently my music is only 56% happy? But hey, that's still 10% higher than the US average!)
The coolest feature of musictaste.space, still in beta, is its playlist creator. With this feature, you can choose up to five artists or tracks and varied energies, ranging from "mostly electronic" to "pretty sad," to songs which are either popular or obscure. Hit the generate button and the service will automatically create a 50-song playlist matching that vibe.
Perhaps the funniest of the clone clients, nprcore.me weighs your top songs and artists against NPR's 50 Best Albums of the Year lists to generate a score of how "NPRcore" your taste is, alongside a caption like "Obama is your favorite president" or "you're literally Ira Glass."
How do Spotify Wrapped clones work?
Spotify's open-source API (Application Program Interface) offers two main features that truly make these clients capable: an audio playback database and Spotify's audio analysis engine.
Firstly, clones like Receiptify and volt .fm are able to load your entire listening history , enabling you to see how your tastes have changed over the years. Spotify's API allows these platforms to access past data no matter when an account is registered, not just once an account is linked. By comparison, Last.fm may have been the first website to compile and display music listening history (called "scrobbling") but it was unable to load listening history from before users created Last.fm accounts.
Audio analysis is part of what makes these newer sites able to gather more in-depth information. If you've looked at your Spotify Wrappeds, you've probably noticed increasingly detailed information on the style of music you listen to, ranging from how "danceable" your playlists are to what your music "aura" is. This comes from Spotify's automated analysis, which synthesizes information on rhythm, pitch and timbre. While this is used in-house on Spotify, it's also open to developers, who in many cases have thought of creative uses like Obscurify's database on your most acoustic, energetic and happiest tracks.
Spotify has a webpage dedicated to developers with a blog, support page and an annual Developer Day for showcasing their work. While writing this piece, I learned that a co-worker who is by no means a developer, used the Spotify API tools to practice some basic coding skills because it's that user-friendly. (Hey, Emily!)
How to use Spotify-adjacent clients
Something I love about most of these Spotify apps is that they make it easy to sign up. Many don't even require a separate account. In most cases, you simply log in one-time with your Spotify account, give the platform a few permissions and then you're set.
Logging in with Spotify is often the first step. Once you enter your login credentials, a Spotify page will display the permissions you need to give the third-party app . For most, these permissions will be to view your account and listening activity data.
Some clients like musictaste.space and Obscurify offer customized playlists based on your data, and in those cases, you'll also need to permit them to take actions in Spotify on your behalf, which is the permission that allows them to create playlists you can edit and follow.
Don't worry: If you ever want to revoke these permissions, you can easily do so from spotify.com/account under the App section.