It’s the most wonderful time of the year again. That’s right: Spotify Wrapped is finally here. The magical time where friends surprise you with the weird new genre or artist they’ve been into, or when you start doing math to determine if it’s even possible for someone to listen to that many minutes of music. Do they even sleep?
As a music lover, musician and data nerd, I’m almost embarrassed to admit how excited I get for Spotify Wrapped every year. And not for the reasons you might think (though I’d be lying if I don’t share some of my stats to gloat just a little). The first thing I look for is other people’s top 100 playlist because I LOVE finding new music. Without my friends’ Spotify Wrappeds, I might have never found out about the Psychedelic Doom genre. My brother’s top artist in 2016 might not have become my top artist in 2017 (Dijon, for those wondering). And I definitely wouldn’t know that Spotify has over 398 genres (like I said, I like a good humble brag).
This year, we wanted to bring a bit of that wonder to InterWorks Wrapped. So, we dug deeper. We got more metrics, asked more questions, and added a few more twists this year. We did this all with three goals in mind:
- Showcase the unique and excellent music taste here at InterWorks.
- Promote connections: both between InterWorkers, but between you and us.
- Help you look cooler now that this year’s Spotify Wrapped has come around.
That’s right. We want to bring some of InterWorks’ great music taste and give it to you. This year’s InterWorks Wrapped includes much of the familiar: top artists, top songs, top genres, etc. But we had one big addition that I’m particularly excited about: a music recommendation engine.
Add a Little Spice
When Spotify Wrapped is dropped, we at InterWorks immediately get started trying to collect that data and get it into our hands. So, we send out a survey and try to get all the data we can from what Spotify shows us. But we all know they’re holding out on us. Spotify collects much more data on songs than just who listens to them. So, this year, we utilized Dataiku and Spotify’s API to pull in some new metrics, such as “energy” or “danceability” and even “liveness.”
The Process
I love to learn and am relatively capable when it comes to the world of API’s. But this was a team effort. I needed to give the Tableau developers data as soon as possible. We needed to have a relatively quick turnaround, and, while I’m pretty good, I’m not as fast as we needed when it came to Python development.
Luckily, we also have plenty of Python experts at InterWorks who were willing to help! However, they were busy, had limited availability, and had to be able to pop in and out of the project when it worked for them. So, naturally, I went to Dataiku. With Dataiku’s ability to collaborate, its code friendly environment and user-friendly GUI, we were able to knock out the data collection and preparation with ease.
The Result
Our goal for this year’s InterWorks Wrapped was similar to previous years: how can we get music and data to make people feel more connected. We tell the story of music trends at InterWorks, as always, but we added two new sections this year. First, we added a “Recommendation Engine.” By selecting music traits you like, we pair you with an InterWorker with a similar vibe, as well as their top song! Feel free to reach out for more music recs! Additionally, we wanted to try to capture some of the stuff that Spotify Wrapped didn’t. So, we asked! We collected InterWorks’ favorite live shows, underrated artists and their self-described “weirdest” songs. We hope that this viz helps highlight the uniqueness of the individuals here at InterWorks, while also showing how we’re all connected!
As a note: We’re still pouring over 2023’s data and building our dataset! Right now, we have the viz populated with 2022’s data, but the new data should be here soon. In the mean time, pull out your time machine and see what we were up to in 2022!
Want to take a look? Click here to see our dashboard on Tableau Public!
