My Spotify is Wrapped

My most recent self-hosting accomplishment coincidentally came just in time for the beloved/dreaded end of year tradition of posting Spotify Wrapped screenshots all over social media.

Due to my decision to end all of my subscription services, this is my first year since it first was launched where I don't have my own Spotify Wrapped to check out. I have found an alternative solution however, and so far it has given me hope that it will be much better than what Spotify offers.

What is Scrobbling?

While it apparently also means kidnapping or stealing, the act of "scrobbling" is to share your music and listening habits on the internet. Spotify Wrapped is a proprietary form of scrobbling – that is, you are only able to do it in the rigid ways that Spotify makes available to you.

You aren't able, for example, to share what your top listened artist was in a certain week or month without using some external service. In the Spotify web player or desktop application, the sidebar that can show you what your friends are currently listening to is also a form of scrobbling, but still a limited one.

For as long as I can remember being on the internet, sharing your current playlists or music interests has always been around. Many social apps have had ways to display the song you're currently playing, as far back as MSN Messenger, but also into the present day with apps like Discord.

I recently wrote about the process of moving from Spotify to the self-hosting music streaming service that I run for my family on my new music website (which is, at the moment, designed for a desktop experience – my apologies if you try to view it on your phone). I didn't talk much about the fact that leaving Spotify meant that I would be losing out on things like Spotify Wrapped or the other (minimal) social features that exist, mostly because I forgot about them. Regardless of how infrequently people use them, they are probably the features I like the most about major platforms like Spotify, by having such a huge user base there are lots of social features that allow easy sharing among friends.

Open-Source Scrobbling

I don't regret leaving behind Spotify, and I'm definitely not writing this to make people second-guess the decision if it is something you're considering. I'm writing because I've been using an open-source scrobbling platform for a few weeks now and I'm finding it better than all of the social features Spotify ever had combined.

Musicbrainz is an open-source music / audio encylopedia, and the same organization behind it also runs a platform dedicated to sharing and cataloguing your listening habits. This platform, Listenbrainz, lets you link all sorts of music streaming services, including common ones like Spotify and Apple Music, but also a wide variety of streaming platforms that you can self-host. It also supports manually adding your listening history, curating playlists, finding "similar users", and much more.

The dashboard gives you all sorts of fun tools that let you inspect and explore your listening habits, and you can even remove certain songs or artists from your taste profile so that the recommendation algorithm ignores it.

After a few weeks of listening data it gives you a weekly "discover" playlist with songs that, so far for me at least, have been good recommendations. You also get recommended a list of similar users, can view their listening habits and playlists, and can choose to follow (or ignore) users that you want to stay updated on their listens.

The platform is by default an open one where anyone can view your listening statistics, but there is no requirement to have your name or any identifying information available on your profile. I chose to use a recognizable username (follow me / judge my music taste: @davidjardine) but the vast majority of people seem to have totally random usernames.

There are a ton of cool features that I've only begun to explore, from the art creator that lets you generate graphics in the style of Spotify Wrapped for any time period you'd like to the new releases section (self-explanatory I hope) to the "music neighbourhood" visualizer which generates an interactive web for any artist so that you can explore and discover closely-related artists. Plus there is even a yearly "wrapped" report for you if you do prefer having one automatically made at year end – I just haven't used the site long enough to have one to show you.

Personally, just the ability to track and share a simple ongoing list of my listening habits would be enough but Listenbrainz goes the whole way with tons of fun discovery and social features. I can't recommend it enough and have already convinced at least 2 of my friends to move over to it.

Control Your Listening Data

Even if you aren't ready to make the jump to ditch the mainstream streaming platforms, this is an easy half-step to begin the process of taking back control of your music library. You get full access to everything you've listened to, you can hide/delete data as you choose, can generate all sorts of reports / statistics at any time of year, and so much more. For the truly dedicated, there is also a full-featured API and there is even the ability to self-host your own Listenbrainz server if you want to maximize your privacy.

There is no reason to keep letting the giant streaming platforms dictate when and how you can enjoy your music listening history and stats.

If you want to learn more about how ListenBrainz works, you can visit their about page with the button below: