On 6 December, YouTube announced in a blog post its new feature ‘2021 Recap’, which allows users to see statistics about their top artists, songs, music videos and playlists of the year. The Recap can be found on the YouTube Music App as well as on the website. It’s not the first year YouTube offers a similar experience: last year, the platform had released its ‘2020 in review’, a personalized playlist with users’ top 25-100 songs.
‘2021 Recap’ shows many similarities with ‘Spotify Wrapped’, an almost identical feature launched in 2016. The 2021 version has been announced on Spotify’s newsroom on 1 December. Spotify Wrapped stats have been widely shared by its users on Social Media – particularly Instagram stories and, from this year, TikTok – resulting in increasing App downloads by 21% in the first week of December.
If Spotify seems to dominate in this area, YouTube makes the presence of music videos its strong point, listing in the blog post exclusive video contents created during the past year with celebrities from the musical industry such as BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez. The blog post also redirects to the list of top trending music videos and most successful creators, released on 1 December.
While YouTube has a very strong visual appeal, Spotify has tried to up its game by adding new features on its Wrapped campaign, such as the interactive game “Playing Cards” and the colorful graphic “Your Audio Aura”, based on the user’s main music moods.
YouTube seems to follow in the footsteps of Spotify, seeking a similar success and hoping its users will share their new feature: the platform underlined on its blog how the ‘2021 Recap’ can be easily posted on Social Media via a share button.
Interactive Journalist at City, University of London. Originally from Switzerland, very passionate about travel and nature journalism.