The holiday season has arrived, and with it, Spotify Wrapped, the audio giant’s annual data extravaganza that celebrates the most played artists and presents customers’ listening preferences in amusing visuals for laughs and cringes.
The Joe Rogan Experience and Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, both of which are exclusively licensed to Spotify, were ranked top and second globally in this year’s Wrapped, which examined listener statistics between January 1 and November 26. The Spotify Original series Caso 63, which was recently translated into English with Oscar Isaac and Julianne Moore, followed by newcomer Emma Chamberlain, whose podcast Anything Goes will become exclusively available to Spotify starting next year, took over the No. 3 position on the global podcast list. Ashley Flowers’ Crime Junkie, which ranked third on the U.S. list of most popular podcasts, completed the global list.
The audio behemoth also acknowledged the U.S.-launched podcasts with the most first-week streams. Meghan Markle’s Archetypes topped the list, followed by David S. Goyer’s Batman Unburied, Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith, Case 63, the English version of Caso 63, and Back to the Beach, a podcast about Laguna Beach that is presented by Kristin Cavallari and Stephen Colletti.
The firm claimed that former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy’s biography, I’m Glad My Mom Died, was the most popular audiobook, even though Spotify only started selling audiobooks in September (and has since been at odds with Apple over the latter’s in-app payment policies).
Harry Styles and Bad Bunny dominated the main music categories. With 18.5 billion listens, the international sensation and Puerto Rican rapper was once again the most streamed artist on Spotify. His album Un Verano Sin Ti was also the most played album, according to Spotify. Styles’ “As It Was” took the top place as the year’s most-streamed song with 1.6 billion global streams.
