Spotify Introduces Listening Location Feature ‘Sound Towns’ In 2023 Wrapped

The much awaited global holiday has at last arrived–Spotify Wrapped day. Taylor Swift took the crown for the most listened to artist of the year, and Spotify users everywhere finally learned what their top songs of the year were. In addition to a calculation of the number of minutes spent using the streaming platform, users’ top songs and artists, and general listening vibe (vampires, time travelers, and more were a part of this year’s wrapped), Spotify also featured a new measure of listening personality–a city given to each user based on their musical profile.

Among some of the notable cities were Burlington, Vermont, Provo, Utah, San Luis Obispo, California, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Fans of the Wrapped process continue to theorize as to why such a feature was included this year. Some joke that the streaming giant must be working with the government to repopulate small cities and towns across the U.S., or that someone at headquarters is secretly hoping to set up a number of LGBTQ+ friendly communes. Spotify users raced to X and TikTok to analyze what exactly these cities meant and what they determined about a person. This social analysis at hand, a number of memes continue to be born.

is Spotify working with the government to populate smaller cities

— Washington Post TikTok Dad (@davejorgenson) November 29, 2023

Social Media Reactions To Spotifygate

Some X users brought back a number of historic pop culture references. Notably, an image of teenagers in the U.K. dressed in some of the most notable 2010s Tumblr fashion trends is circulating with captions taking guesses at which Spotify city’s population it could represent.

burlington usa according to spotify wrapped pic.twitter.com/b2AESPzV6s

— meg succession text posts (@successtextpost) November 29, 2023

Berkeley, CA vs Cambridge, MA pic.twitter.com/ZCoSeobfRU

— lexapro spritz (@Mikey_Sul) November 29, 2023

Additionally, some joke that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders must have been behind the popular Burlington, Vermont suggestion. Sanders has long spoken highly of the state he represents, even famously wearing a pair of local crafted mittens to the 2021 presidential inauguration of President Joe Biden. The image of the senator sporting the mittens became a meme in itself.

the spotify programmer telling everyone to move to burlington pic.twitter.com/421ke0WFE6

— lesbian mothman (@verysmallriver) November 29, 2023

Others present puns surrounding the city names provided in Spotify Wrapped.

coat factories: https://t.co/gLOSClF8Iz

— drew updates (@grewdillis) November 29, 2023

According to the display screen, the cities were handed out based on the per capita of users with similar top five artists in each respective area.

the girls and i going out in burlington vt pic.twitter.com/fIAjeaZEtl

— David Mack (@davidmackau) November 29, 2023

What if we kissed in Burlington Vermont

— liz unphair (@femaleuncle) November 29, 2023

Some are taking the strange Spotify suggestions as an opportunity to bring attention to local artists from the cities in question.

if you got burlington vermont on your spotify wrapped, you should check out some artists who live there like

greg freemanhttps://t.co/SaifCqaZsH

lily seabirdhttps://t.co/9knMasVqKb

dari bayhttps://t.co/FVPfVnr010

— josh terry (@JoshhTerry) November 29, 2023

well i’m off to Burlington pic.twitter.com/7grAb1JHzz

— nicole boyce (@nicolewboyce) November 29, 2023

Others joked in light of the recent release of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds And Snakes” that Spotify users assigned to different cities should have their own hunger games in the Las Vegas Sphere.

one boy and one girl from cambridge, berkeley, and burlington will fight to the death inside the las vegas sphere

— bald ann dowd (@ali_sivi) November 29, 2023

Some continue to question the reasoning for this new feature, as further context is yet to be provided by the streaming platform.