It’s that time of year again folks, on Nov. 29. Spotify and Apple Music will come out with a curation of everything you’ve been jamming to throughout the year. Everything from your top favorite artists, to most played songs, an accumulation of minutes and genres you’ve explored, these streaming services are social media powerhouses during the holiday season because of these seasonal features. 

But how accurate can these recaps really be? Of course, Spotify and Apple Music both have technology that sorts out each individual user’s information, but the system’s data can be rigged by the listener. 

All users of these apps are able to listen to whoever they want and replay the song however many times, but are they actually listening? Or are they turning on the song, playing the artists playlist, and putting it on mute?

Summit Senior Reese Campbell is an avid user of Spotify. She is in charge of making the playlists for school dances and the Summit lacrosse team. Campbell has over twenty playlists on Spotify and has a wide range of music tastes. 

“I like how I sort of have to guess who is going to be my top artist…I always predict it’s going to be someone I’ve been listening to a lot recently, but sometimes [Spotify] proves me wrong and it’s a nice little surprise,” Campbell said. 

Summit Senior, Lucy Misischia loves listening to music and instead, prefers using Apple Music for streaming. 

“Sometimes my music plays without me knowing. This has to contribute in some way to my minutes listening,” Misischia expressed, “I think many kids find ways to outsmart the technology and get their minutes up on purpose… especially if they repost it on Instagram,”

Many teenagers have made it a trend to post their personalized recaps on social media, mostly Instagram. This platform has become a place where music lover’s can share and compare top artists, songs and minutes. 

“There definitely is slight competition to see who racked up the most minutes,” Campbell said, “I feel a bit of pressure when I repost mine… if my top artist is popular, it feels a bit embarrassing because it’s so basic,”

Whether users like to admit it or not, it’s important to remember that not everything you see on social media is accurate. The kid who bragged that they had listened to over 600,000 minutes over the past year, may have not been revealing that it’s due to the podcasts, or music loops they play which can mess up the accuracy of the streaming count.

As we near the end of November, the stream count deadline approaches, which causes many teenagers to stream as much music as possible, in order to display a “respectable” amount of minutes on their social media. 

As of this week, both Spotify and Apple Music have teased the arrival of this year’s Wrapped, which enables users to look back at their favorite releases of 2023.