Spotify Wrapped’s viral new feature loves Berkeley, Santa Cruz

Spotify Wrapped is here, marking the day where you get to learn what music your friends are really listening to.

This year, the impossible-to-ignore social media campaign, which compiles your listening data for the year in friendly shareable slides, added a new feature called Sound Town, which is drawing a lot of attention — and confusion.  

In addition to the data about your most-streamed top artists and songs, users are now matched with a city where people are more likely to be fans of their most-listened-to artists (for instance, I got Berkeley based on Brian Eno, Arthur Russell and Cocteau Twins, and yes, I’m doing OK, thanks for asking). 

In response to a question about the methodology of the geographic feature, Spotify responded that the city a user matches with corresponds to how much their favorite artists are streamed in that city compared to others across the globe. The feature is totally data driven, based on a user’s cumulative listening history throughout the year.

There are 1,300 potential cities that a user could match with; however, a few inexplicably stick out, according to an admittedly unscientific survey of SFGATE staffers and social media posts.

For SFGATE’s staff, Berkeley was a popular result (other artists popular in Berkeley include Caroline Polachek, Alvvays and Nation of Language). Santa Cruz was also popular, but the wide variety of artists tied to it makes the results hard to trust: De La Soul, People Under the Stairs, Nick Drake, Ecco2k, Bladee, 100 gecs and Grateful Dead (although that checks out). Spotify did not respond to a follow-up regarding the prevalence of cities like Berkeley by time of publication.

Flagstaff, Arizona; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Burlington, Vermont, also were in the mix, implying a common theme of college towns.

Click here to see your Spotify Wrapped, and get ready for your social media feeds to be flooded with Berkeley memes.