Media conglomerate Spotify recently released this year’s Spotify Wrapped, giving users an annual recap of their listening and media habits. Accounts are shown what their most listened to songs, genres, and artists are for the year, and even give an exact amount of minutes listened to, and encourage users to share their results on social media and with the world. 

Personally, I listened to 46,014 minutes, with The Beatles (go ahead and laugh now and disregard my opinions now, get it out of the way) as my top artist. 

Regardless of my very obvious music dependence, I’ve always thought that people’s reactions and reverence for their taste in music was interesting. I know people who track every song they listen to, and keep tabs on all their genres and make playlists based on their Last.fm analytics, but still keep themselves up at night waiting for an additional self-report on what they are doing. It’s terribly self-indulgent.

I think that the anticipation of Spotify Wrapped and our idolization of consuming media says a lot about our state. We consume, and then we consume more, and then at the end of the year we consume data and infographics based on our own consumption, and then we make an effort next year to consume in a different way, or consume more media.