Play of the Week newsletter by Chris​ ​ ​​​​

​

Newsletter issue: #182
Read time: 1m 39s

A big thank you to Appy, our sponsor, who keeps this newsletter free to the reader: TRENDING 🔥 Turn your UX knowledge into Products Appy.AI let's turns your knowledge into a sellable AI product in about 2 minutes. Complete with a website, payments, & customer support. No coding required. You've created frameworks to solve problems others are still stuck on. That's valuable. That's sellable. Build your UX AI Agent → ​

​

Last week, 227 million people turned themselves into walking billboards for Spotify.

Voluntarily.

No ad spend.
No incentives.

Just... pure design magic.

If you're a designer and you're not studying Spotify Wrapped, you're missing the masterclass happening right in front of you.

Here's what Spotify did (that most products completely fuck up):

Lesson 1: Data isn't insight until it's emotional

Your analytics dashboard shows "323 minutes of podcasts listened to"

Wrapped shows: "The day you let podcasts take the wheel for 5 straight hours — you stitched together a day of business, AI and negotiation insights”

Same number.
Completely different impact.

As designers, we're obsessed with showing data.

Metrics.
Charts.
Dashboards.

But nobody shares a dashboard.
They share stories.

Wrapped turns your listening history into a diary.

It connects data to memory. To mood. To moments.

That's the gap most products never bridge.

Lesson 2: Design the share moment, not just the feature

Every Wrapped card is screenshot-optimized.

The aspect ratio.
The typography.
The colours.

Spotify knew you'd post this to Instagram within 30 seconds.

So they designed FOR that moment.

Most designers treat sharing as an afterthought. "Oh yeah, add a share button."

Wrong.

If your feature has social potential, design the shareable artifact first.

Then build around it.

Lesson 3: Iteration beats perfection

Wrapped 2024 was a disaster.

Mismatched songs.
Generic personality insights.
Algorithm overload.

Tech outlets roasted it. Users complained everywhere.

Spotify's response?

They acknowledged it. Fixed it. Shipped it in 2025.

New features:

• Listening lens (shows why you listen, not just what)
• Scene switcher (groups music by life moments)
• Actually accurate genre classification

This is what mature product thinking looks like.

Ship. Listen. Iterate.
Ship again.

Lesson 4: The data trade-off needs to feel fair

Wrapped works because Spotify tracks EVERYTHING.

Every skip.
Every repeat.
Every 2am sad song on loop.

The intimacy you love is built on surveillance.

But we don't care.
Why?

Because the value exchange feels worth it.

Spotify gives you something meaningful back: self-knowledge wrapped in beauty.

That's the real design lesson... Bonus Lesson 5:

If your product collects behavioural data (and most do), ask yourself:

What are we giving back that makes this trade feel fair? Beautiful insights? Useful patterns? Emotional resonance?

The best products make users forget how much data they're giving up.

They turn surveillance into storytelling.

And that's both brilliant... and slightly terrifying.

Wanna learn more about Spotify Wrapped? I wrote a deep-dive here 👇

My Wrapped said my listening age was 100.

Am I aging that rapidly? 🥶