Want to Make Your Spotify Wrapped Better This Year? Start Now

Spotify Wrapped has become quite the event. You’ll know the minute the streaming giant drops its annual roundup of user listening habits, because your social media feeds will be flooded with data of your friends’ most played songs, number of hours listened, and proud declarations of superfan statuses.

There are some people, however, who don’t feel entirely comfortable sharing their Spotify Wrapped with anyone else. Listeners whose lists are dominated by guilty pleasures, perhaps, or their kids’ music, or artists they’re no longer a fan of.

If you want to reach the end of the year with a Spotify Wrapped that reflects who you are, and the music you truly like (or are happy to own up to, at least), then some preparation work is needed now—much earlier in the year. Thankfully, the streaming service gives you several ways of tailoring the listening your Wrapped roundup will take into consideration, so you can share your results proudly when that time comes.

Exclude Specific Playlists

You can exclude any playlist from being used in Wrapped.

David Nield

You may well have a specific playlist you don’t want to count toward your Spotify Wrapped data. Maybe that’s a playlist you constantly use at the gym or as background music for working or falling asleep to or that one your kids have set up. Spotify lets you exclude certain playlists from your recommendations and your Wrapped roundup.

With the targeted playlist on screen in the web, desktop, or mobile apps, click or tap the three dots at the top of the track list and choose Exclude from your taste profile. Spotify won’t let this playlist affect the profile it builds on you, unless you decide to include the playlist again (which can be done from the same menu).

The feature is primarily intended to give you better recommendations in your mixes and other areas of Spotify, but it affects Wrapped too. Any tracks inside excluded playlists won’t count toward your top artists and songs of the year, but excluded playlists will be counted as part of your total listening time, Spotify says.

Listen in Private

Private sessions won’t be logged by Spotify.

David Nield

Another way of protecting both your recommendations inside the Spotify app and your end-of-year Spotify Wrapped is to enable private listening. The feature is exactly what it sounds like: A private listening session that won’t be logged in the records (similar to incognito browsing on the web).