The Hollow Allure of Spotify Wrapped

I joined Spotify, the Swedish streaming service, toward the end of 2020, spending the better part of a Sunday transferring my Apple Music library and local files onto the platform. I had nothing against Apple Music—I was even a little sad to leave it. I’d been using iTunes since 2004, and, in 2016, when I could no longer resist the possibility of streaming every song ever made at any moment, I incorporated the service into my library of torrented MP3s and uploaded CDs. When I ultimately jumped ship, it was because I felt like I had no other choice: my friends all used Spotify, and I couldn’t access their collaborative playlists or shared links to albums and songs, nor could they access mine.