The Story

A new Spotify Wrapped feature is making a lot of noise.

I’m a Burlington.

You and 3.4 million others. On Wednesday, the streaming giant released its end-of-year phenomenon — triggering immense pride (see: the top 1% of Swifties), embarrassment (see: friends asking, ‘are you okay?’), and just about every feeling in between. Not to mention, all those social media posts. Many of which were related to a new tidbit called “Sound Town,” which matched users to cities where residents have similar listening habits — essentially, where to find musical soul mates. Despite the fact that there were over 1,300 possible locations, three cities seemed to crop up again and again.

Let’s hear it for Berkeley and Cambridge.

You got it. The three cities were so dominant some speculated that Spotify had colluded with their tourism boards. For the record, Spotify said its measurements are “objective and entirely driven by a user’s listening history.” Not to mention, California’s San Luis Obispo paired with 0.8% of listeners — higher than any of the three cities. That didn’t stop many users from wondering what their assigned Sound Town actually meant. It also didn’t stop a flood of jokes and memes about the types of listeners in some cities. No surprise, since Wrapped has become something of a personality test — which the company capitalized on last year when it did a riff on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Given the enduring allure of personality tests, you can’t blame the company for giving the people what they want.