Sanford students share their Spotify listening statistics after Spotify Wrapped is posted.

By Zachary Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

SANFORD, Maine – Sanford students celebrated their music statistics after Spotify and Apple Music released their 2023 recaps on listening habits.

On Wednesday, Nov. 28, Apple Music released its annual statistics report for user listening data, which was followed by Spotify’s release of their version on Nov. 29. Following this, The Spartan Times hosted an anonymous student body survey to determine Sanford’s listening habits.

In this survey, students were asked who their top artists and songs were, whether they used Apple Music or Spotify along with their minutes listened to, and whether or not they believed that the premium subscription was worth what they were paying for.

Taylor Swift was the top artist students reported,  followed by Drake in second place, and a tie for third place with Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan.

For listening minutes, 14.9% of the votes accounted for listening to 10,000-20,000 minutes during the year, which was the highest account for the votes in the category. This was followed by 14.2% of students who reported to have listened to 20,000-30,000 minutes.

For genres, rap was the most popular among Sanford listeners, which rallied 23.6% of the votes. This was closely followed by pop with 22.3% of the votes. Country was named the third most popular genre among Sanford students, which obtained 13.% of the votes.

Of the students surveyed, Spotify was voted as what students preferred app for music, holding 80% of the votes, whereas Apple Music only retained 13% of the votes. The other 7% was reserved for other streaming services.

One student stated that Spotify’s algorithm was better than its competitors at providing listeners with personalized playlists.

Another student argued that most of what Apple Music does is similar to Spotify, but they chose Apple Music because of the free usage of the service with the purchase of certain Apple products.

As for the premium subscription of the service, the vote was close with 50.7% of the voters reporting that they do pay for the service, whereas 49.3% do not.

“I prefer not having ads when listening to music,” said one of the voters, “I like the option to download multitudes of songs when offline, and I overall like the abilities it provides. While it can be expensive over time, it feels worth it for the emotional investment music holds.”