From Spotify to banking, data ‘wraps’ are taking over the festive period and exposing all our bad habits. Anna Moloney wants out
The rise of wrapification and why you can keep my data, please
In the year 2025, it feels like Spotify Wrapped has reached the status of full Christmas tradition, akin to stockings over the fireplace and the baby Lord Jesus in the manger himself.
The annual ritual – in which the music streaming service stores up our listening data for the year only to dump it back at our feet at the end of it – generated 200m engaged users within just 24 hours this year, up 19 per cent on 2024. At City AM HQ, certainly not short of data obsessives, there was practically a frenzy as everyone rushed to download their own and flaunt their taste to the rest of the newsroom (though not so much myself with a listening age of 65 and top artists of Taylor Swift and ABBA).
But this year it’s not just Spotify, with a whole cavalry of brand data ‘wraps’ nonconsensually charging towards us: Strava, Deliveroo, Youtube, Apple photos, even Tesco Clubcard – you can barely open an app in December without corporatopia holding up, as ‘twere, the mirror to nature, whether that involves graphs detailing hundreds of al desko meal deals or slideshows of an ex played to jolly festive tunes. When my Lloyds banking app offered to give me a spending year-in-review, my boyfriend curiously peering over my shoulder, I practically hurled the device across the room.
SNL this year mocked the phenomenon with a sketch about a fictional Uber Eats wrapped, in which a character was forced to confront how many chicken nuggets they ate. A day later, Uber actually launched that feature.
Do we actually gain anything from these data breakdowns? Personally, I’m not so sure. In terms of my Spotify Wrapped, not only does it first shame me by broadcasting my pedestrian music tastes, it then also reinforces them by creating a playlist of all my most-played songs, which (unsurprisingly, as it consists of all my favourite songs) is a playlist I will then proceed to play for the rest of the following year, ensuring my next-year wrapped looks near identical to the former. Thus, rather than (urgently) expanding my musical palette, my Spotify Wrapped instead seems to trap me in some sort of Sisyphean Tay Tay listening loop.
So in 2026, a plea to leave my year unwrapped please, and just leave the past in the past.
We wish you a Merry Fishmas
Christmas party season at London’s top hotels rarely skimps on the thrills, but this year I was most taken by a rather unusual centrepiece at the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair: a giant fish, a tuna to be precise. Personally, having only before seen them tinned – which now feels rather unbecoming – I had no idea of their magnificence, and the chef told me this was only a medium-sized one! It was so big in fact (far dwindling the magnificence of their ‘inclusive light instalment Christmas tree’) that I actually did a double take when I saw the creature, thinking it was a sheeny sculpture before six sushi chefs came over to whisk it away. Proof that party decor can be multipurpose and giving me slight insight into why so many boys on dating apps can’t resist pictures with giant fish.
And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die!
Is there anything better than A Christmas Carol in December? There are a couple of Scrooges in the City AM office that beg to differ but for me there is no surer recipe for festive joy than hearing the words ‘And Tiny Tim – who did NOT die!’ exclaimed in a theatre. This year, I’ve been lucky enough to go to two productions, seeing both Paul Hilton at the Old Vic and also enjoying the immersive dining experience at The Lost Estate’s Great Christmas Feast.
Both are excellent and well worth snapping up tickets to, even during Betwixtmas or early January, when I think it still feels just as special to go (and cheaper to boot). Last year I went to the Old Vic’s production in January and it was the perfect antidote to the post-Christmas blues.
Help! My top tips from the slopes
I’ve just come back from a ski trip to Obertauern in Austria, where I attended the inaugural event for A Winter Garden, a new music festival launching in the Alps. It turns out the resort was a fitting choice, home to a rich music history of its own as the place where The Beatles filmed scenes from their 1965 film Help!. And indeed, being a very, very scared skier myself, ‘help!’ was my catchphrase of my trip, yelped as I part-pizza-ed, part-tumbled down the mountain. But, lo and behold, towards the end of my trip, I made a discovery: lessons! This was my fourth time skiing but only my first time having a professional ski lesson and, you’ll be shocked to hear, it really does make a difference. For all the scared skiiers, you can take that top tip for free.
Anna Moloney is deputy comment editor at City AM