Spotify Wrapped Sound Towns

About

Spotify Wrapped Sound Towns refers to a feature in the 2023 Spotify Wrapped that gave Spotify users a city location whose citizens resembled their own music taste. Many memes and parodies surfaced from the feature, predominantly centering on Burlington, Vermont (Burlington, USA), Berkeley, California (Berkeley, USA) and Cambridge, Massachusetts (Cambridge, USA) which were seemingly the most common sound towns. Many Burlington memes surfaced from the discourse, humorously likening the city to a utopia for LGBTQ+ people or basic white guys and girls.

Origin

On November 29th, 2023, Spotify Wrapped's 2023 edition was released for all users.^[1] As a part of the 2023 edition, Spotify implemented a feature called "sound towns" which assigned the user a city that resembled their music taste based on the music taste of the city's residents (example image shown below).

Spread

Berkeley, USA

Initial memes about the sound towns feature namedropped Berkeley, California, due to a seemingly high percentage of Spotify users being assigned the town. For instance, the first known tweet about Berkeley and Spotify Wrapped was shared by X^[2] user @jarodzsz on November 29th, 2023, gaining 12,000 likes in eight hours (shown below, left).

Soon after, on November 29th, 2023, X^[3] user @_pure_444 said, "Berkeley USA filled with real bitches," gaining roughly 11,000 likes in eight hours (shown below, right).

Others posted videos, like X^[4] user @papi_lechuga on November 29th, 2023, who captioned the video of lesbians having a smoke off with "Berkeley, USA," gaining roughly 15,000 likes in four hours (shown below).

Berkeley, USA pic.twitter.com/vbfLv3K2G6

— 🫧🧼𝕭(jörk)𝖊𝖓🧼🫧 (@papi_lechuga) November 29, 2023

Burlington, USA

Soon after posts about Berkeley, memes started to surface that namedropped Burlington, Vermont, which was also a seemingly high percentage of Spotify users' sound towns. The first known post about Burlington and Spotify Wrapped was shared by X^[5] user @listenupnerds on November 29th, 2023, reading, "Spotify Wrapped 2023, brought to you by the Burlington, VT Board of Tourism," receiving roughly 4,100 likes in six hours (shown below).

Soon after, multiple posts about Burlington surfaced online, such as a meme shared by X^[6] user @realaccountyeah on November 29th, 2023, receiving roughly 11,000 likes in six hours (shown below, left).

Later on November 29th, X^[7] user @nicolewboyce captioned the Sad Ant With Bindle image with "well i’m off to Burlington," gaining roughly 8,200 likes in four hours (shown below, right).

Cambridge, USA

Another highly discussed sound town on the day of 2023 Spotify Wrapped's release was Cambridge, Massachusetts, evident in a post shared by X^[8] user @Mikey_Sul on November 29th, 2023, that compared Cambridge and Berkeley, gaining roughly 4,600 likes in less than a day (shown below, left).

In turn, many meme creators began referencing all three cities, such as X^[9] user @brokebackstan on November 29th, 2023, who joked about building communes in each city, receiving roughly 48,000 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References