Spotify has responded to rumours that Wrapped was “invented” by a former intern, saying the reports, which have circulated for years, are not “accurate”.
ICYMI, music-listeners the world over were swept up in their year-end stats with the release of Spotify Wrapped earlier this month, but in between revelling in our faves getting a shout and cringing at our guilty pleasure tracks, the annual report rebirthed one persistent rumour.
That rumour first started doing the rounds in 2020, when artist and former Spotify design intern Jewel Ham shared an X post claiming she “invented” Wrapped’s stories feature — i.e., the interactive, sharable in-app slides that showcase the listening data — the year prior.
“I really invented the Spotify Wrapped Story concept as an intern project in 2019 and they have not looked back since LMAO,” Ham wrote in the post, which has since garnered 400,000 likes.
The claims picked up even more steam when Refinery29 published a report about Ham’s experience in Spotify in 2020, but the app has since denied the Wrapped feature was invented “by one person”.
“Wrapped has been around for 11 years, so the idea that it was invented by one person during a 2019 internship just isn’t accurate,” Spotify wrote in a Substack post earlier this month. “Big products like this come together through many teams working over time, not from a single lightning-bolt moment.”
Spotify went on to track the progression of Wrapped from a microsite sent directly to listeners by email in 2013, to the in-app Stories feature by 2016 — a time when “stories-like interfaces [were] something every product team on the planet was actively tracking and adapting to”, Spotify said.
“That shift, once the format spread to other major platforms in 2016 was not a surprise revelation. It was part of a much larger evolution happening across the entire mobile design landscape. Hundreds of people worked on this evolution and development,” the app wrote.
Spotify reiterated that Wrapped is the result of “hundreds of people” and not one singular ‘inventor’, but said the rumour is so enduring that “even our own families think each of us ‘run’ it”.
“We don’t. And the true reality is yes, we get to play a role, but we are one of hundreds each year,” Spotify said.
It’s not the first time the streaming service has tried to put the kibbosh on the speculation around Wrapped.
It doubled-down on denying Ham’s claims in a statement to Refinery29 in 2020, repeating the sentiment that “hundreds of employees have contributed ideas and creative concepts” that led to Wrapped.
“While ideas generated during Spotify’s internship program have on occasion informed campaigns and products, based on our internal review, that is not the case here with Spotify Wrapped. It’s unfortunate that things have been characterised otherwise,” Spotify said.
Though Ham has a different understanding of things, she said she didn’t have a major gripe with Spotify over competing claims around Wrapped’s invention. “It was a good internship, and I had a good time,” she told Refinery29 in 2020.
It comes as we continue to pore over our 2025 Wrapped data, including the listening stats of Australia as a whole and the new feature of Listening Age introduced this year.
Spotify has yet to credit the creator of that function, but whoever it was seemed hell-bent on reminding me I’m somehow 76 years old.
Lead images: Spotify and X
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