Spotify Wrapped 2023 sparks iconic meme with new ‘sound town’ feature
Spotify Wrapped 2023 has a new feature that became an instant meme among LGBTQ+ users. (Getty Images)
Spotify Wrapped 2023 is finally here and all over social media, users are showing off (or, in some cases, hiding) their top songs and artists of the year.
But there’s one new feature in particular in this year’s Wrapped that has sparked people’s interest – and the memes are exquisite.
While guiding users through their 2023 Wrapped, Spotify will this year tell people their “sound town”, which is essentially the city that best matches their music taste.
It wasn’t long before LGBTQ+ users noticed they were all being recommended one of the same three places: Cambridge, Massachusetts, Burlington, Vermont, and Berkeley, California.
The data, based on which city’s populations best match your listening activity, seems to have mostly put LGBTQ+ listeners into one of those three “sound towns”.
As one user put it, Spotify appears to be “trying to make a gay commune in Berkeley, a lesbian commune in Burlington, and a bisexual commune in Cambridge.”
For example, a quick look through people’s Wrapped data on social media will show you that people in Cambridge are likely to be fans of queer-favourite artists like Chappell Roan, boygenius, MUNA, Rina Sawayama, Reneé Rapp, Brandi Carlile.
Meanwhile, fans of Japanese Breakfast, Caroline Polachek, and Omar Apollo are apparently mostly based in Berkeley, and fans of Phoebe Bridgers, Charli XCX, and Mitski and more likely to be given Burlington as their “sound town”.
So, essentially, prepare for Spotify’s “sound towns” to become the new queer identifier.
It’s already taken off on social media, with one user joking: “Does she…you know…have Spotify listening habits in common with Berkeley, Burlington, or Cambridge?”
Others are already planning their moves to their Spotify “sound town” to be with their people.
Even Charli XCX jumped on the bandwagon, revealing that she was a Burlington girly.
Other popular sound towns among Spotify users more generally appear to be Boulder, Colorado, Long Beach, California, New York, New York, and Bozeman, Montana.
At least for now, no wider data has been made available from Spotify about what the most popular “sound towns” were among users, but for now, it looks like Berkeley, Burlington and Cambridge are the top spots for queer listening habits.
So, do with that information what you will.
More broadly, Taylor Swift won Spotify Wrapped this year by being crowned the top artist of 2023, followed by Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Drake, and Peso Pluma.
Meanwhile, the top song globally was Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers”, followed by SZA’s “Kill Bill”, Harry Styles’ “As It Was”, Jung Kook and Latto’s “Seven”, and Eslabon Armado’s “Ella Baila Sola.”
