Why Does My Spotify Wrapped Have Songs I’ve Never Listened To?

It’s that time of year again: Spotify is here to remind you about your musical habits over the past 12 months with Spotify Wrapped. Most people should have a pretty good idea of what albums and songs they binged on Spotify this year. But if you need a friendly reminder, all you need to do is pull up your brand-new Spotify annual report for 2023 – just keep in mind that you might want to prepare for a surprise or two.

These reports aren’t perfect — that, or your recollection of your musical tastes over the year might not be as accurate as you think.

Songs and artists might appear on your Spotify Wrapped report that you swear you’ve never listened to; you might be wrong, but you also might be onto something.

There are a few reasons why strange songs can permeate your Spotify annual report, and we have a few extra suggestions if you want a more accurate idea of how you rocked out this year.

Why are these songs I don’t recognise on my Spotify Wrapped?

Wrapped has a limited timeframe

If you’ve been going wild with some big November release, you may not see these on your Spotify Wrapped recap.

When answering FAQs on the way Spotify Wrapped comes together (a few years back), the streaming service shared that “The Wrapped personalized (sic) experience covers streaming for 2021, beginning in January and ending a few weeks prior to launch in December”.

Spotify needs time to create the whole experience, after all.

You might have pulled up Spotify at a party 

Remember, anything you do on your Spotify account is fair game for the Wrapped report.

If you let your friends pick songs during your road trip, or used your Spotify account for background music at a party (or many parties), unexpected music might show up on your report.

And, no, you can’t edit these songs or artists out of your report in any way, as Spotify has described for earlier Wrapped drops:

We’re unable to update your stats or playlists since it’s based on your personal listening history. Sorry about that! For the future, it’s always worth considering that, for instance, if you left Spotify playing in the background or let friends play their tunes with your account then your listening data might have been affected.

It’s also possible that a friend, roommate, or loved one is innocently using your Spotify account via your various smart devices, which could also impact what appears on Spotify’s annual report.

That explains why there’s a lot of weird Disney instrumental stuff on my playlist this year — my fiancé often fires up the jams on our bedroom smart speaker to help her get to sleep.

Someone hacked your account

This sounds a little far-fetched, but it’s not impossible, especially since Spotify doesn’t offer two-factor (or two-step) authentication.

I’ve read a number of reports from Spotify users complaining that having their accounts hacked at some point this year messed up their Wrapped report.

And while this is something you probably should have noticed if you logged into Spotify and saw a bunch of strange music on your “Recently played” section, it’s possible you’ve been overlooking this.

Nevertheless, if you see a lot of music on your report that doesn’t make sense, now’s as good a time as any to change your Spotify password to something unique and secure.

And once you’ve done that, log out of any other devices that might be using your Spotify account, just to be super-sure.

You were listening to songs in ‘Private Sessions’

In addition to all the above, the Spotify team has also confirmed that “Private Session listens don’t count for charts and songs, but do count for minutes listened”.

So, if you have any guilty pleasures you were expecting to see in your Wrapped list, think again.

This article has been updated since its original publish date with details regarding Spotify Wrapped.

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