Spotify Wrapped and similar wrapped-like features from Apple Music and Amazon Music offer listeners a personalized breakdown of their most-played songs, artists and genres over the past year. It has become an annual event in the UPrep community and worldwide. With the recent release, I wanted to see how much UPrep students listened to music this year.
From a form sent out to the Upper School, 48 students responded. The highest total was over 189,000 minutes listened to, with Troy from High School Musical as their highest artist. For any curious, that’s about 36% of a year or 131 days spent listening to High School Musical and various other artists.
Of the 48 students who responded, the total minutes listened to was nearly 2 million hours. For context, that’s over 1,389 days or four years of constant listening to music. On average, students listened to 45,113 minutes of music.
To determine which artist UPrep listens to most, I weighted results from the form. Any artist listed as the top artist was credited for 3 points, and so on for the top 3.
It was no surprise that Taylor Swift was the most popular artist at UPrep. On Spotify, one of the most popular streaming services worldwide, Swift boasts 92,970,321 monthly listeners, so it’s not shocking to see this global influence mirrored at UPrep. She scored 31 points by being 8 students’ top artist, 3 students’ second, and one student’s third artist.
Junior Paige Johnson ranked among Taylor Swift’s top 0.1% of listeners worldwide.
“I think her humility is one of the reasons she’s so successful,” Johnson said. “She is obviously an amazing singer and brilliant businesswoman but she also somehow seems so normal.”
In second place, Gracie Abrams was one student’s top artist, 2 students’ second artist, and 3 students’ third artist.
Despite losing the famous rap battle this year to Kendrick Lamar, Drake tied for third place with country music star Zach Bryan. While they are from two very different genres, they are both atop their respective genre charts. According to Spotify, Drake has 73,685,124 monthly listeners while Bryan has 28,542,854 monthly listeners.
Although UPrep has a large diversity of music tastes, the general trends in music today are clearly present. The popularity of Taylor Swift and Drake amongst global charts is also seen in our school. However, it’s amazing to see smaller artists get recognition from our community. Across 48 student surveys, there were 35 different top artists, a testament to UPrep’s diversity.
