Project Overview

Spotify Rewind is a feature designed to let users explore their personal music history through dynamic, time-based playlists without needing to manually request their extended listening data. By surfacing emotional and nostalgic connections to past listening habits, Rewind strengthens user engagement and personal connection to Spotify.

The Problem

Users currently have no seamless way to revisit their music listening history outside of Spotify Wrapped, which is only released once per year. While Spotify holds rich historical data, accessing it requires a manual export process that most users don’t know exists.

The Goal

Design an on-demand, emotionally resonant feature that allows users to rediscover music from their past Spotify years.

My Role

I led the end-to-end UX design for Spotify Rewind, including user research, persona development, user flow mapping, wireframes, and UI mockups. I focused on creating an emotionally resonant feature that empowers users to explore their personal listening history through time-based playlists and memory tagging.

User Research

I conducted 1:1 Interviews with Spotify users between the ages of 25 and 30 to better understand how users relate to their music history. I focused on identifying past listening habits and current behavior around playlist organization.

Key Findings

Users strongly associate music with specific life moments. Some examples include breakups, school years, and travel.

Participants expressed interest in organizing music by time periods and tagging it with personal memories, especially if it remianed private by default.

Many were unaware they could access their full listening history and wanted easier, more meaningful ways to revisit it.

Similar Feature Analysis

Spotify Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped is an annual, personalized summary of a user's listening habits over the past year, featuring their top songs, artists, genres, and minutes listened.

Spotify Daylists

Spotify Daylists are dynamic playlists that update multiple times a day to match a user’s changing moods, activities, and listening patterns.

Wrapped 2024 brought a 40% increase in app engagement during the first week of its release.

"The more personalized the listening experience is, the more our fans engage"

- Spotify

Personalized content boosts brand loyalty. Data is used to showcase users' listening habits, which can invoke feelings of nostalgia and reminiscence.

Listeners that use Spotify's personally curated playlists stream more than 2x as long as non-playlist users.

What makes Rewind different?

Rewind is on-demand and user-driven, letting users explore any year from their personal listening history whenever they choose.

Rewind lets users reflect, organize, and personalize their music history, offering tools like memory tags.

Rewind focuses on long-term nostalgia and memory.

User Flow Diagram

This user flow diagram outlines the journey of a Spotify user exploring the Rewind feature. It starts with entry points like Home or Library and ends with viewing time-based playlists and adding memory tags.

Strategic Design Decisions

Time-Based Navigation Over Genre or Mood

Users wanted to reflect on music tied to specific life periods. Prioritizing yearly timelines over mood categories grounded the feature in real-life memory recall

Privacy by Default

User feedback showed hesitation around sharing personal memories. Memory tags and notes were set to private by default, with clear sharing controls, prioritizing emotional safety while still encouraging storytelling.

Timeline navigation design encourages memory-based exploration.

Dual Entry Points for Maximum Visability

Placing Rewind access in both the Home screen (banner) and the Library tab (tile) ensured visibility for new and returning users. This reduced friction and aligned with Spotify's navigation patterns, increasing chances of discovery.

Dual entry for discoverability.

Mockups and High-Fidelity Prototype

This UI mockup reflects the original user flow for Spotify Rewind. The feature can be accessed through two entry points: a banner on the Home screen and a dedicated Rewind tile in the user’s Library. After selecting a year, a personalized playlist is generated, with the option to add custom memory tags for emotional context and organization.

Click Here

Try out the interactive prototype

Usability Study Insights

Problem:

Some users found that the memory tag feature felt "hidden" and could easily be overlooked, especially when quickly skimming or saving playlists.

Solutions:

A soft, inline message could be added to the playlist screen. An example could be "Want to remember why this playlist matters? Add a memory tag." This feature could auto-dismiss after first use to keep the UI clean.
A prompt could be integrated into the user flow. For example, when a user saves or generates a Rewind playlist, the following prompt can pop up: "Would you like to tag this playlist with a memory?"

Problem:

Some users found the timeline selection limiting, as it only included full years. They felt that music taste often shifts within shorter periods, and a single year-long playlist didn’t always reflect meaningful changes in their listening habits.

Solutions:

Allow users to filter playlists by season or quarter.
Add an advanced filter option to select custom date ranges.
Use machine learning to detect and segment "music eras" based on sharp changes in genres or artists.
Introduce monthly highlights for years with high listening activity.

How Will This Feature Be Impactful?

Spotify Rewind enhances long-term user engagement by turning listening history into a personal, emotional experience. Unlike Wrapped, which is limited to once a year, Rewind is designed for continuous exploration, reflection, and re-engagement whenever the user chooses.

By introducing features like time-based playlists and memory tagging, Rewind encourages users to reconnect with their past listening in a more meaningful and organized way. It transforms music history into a personalized archive, making Spotify a platform for reliving music.

What I Learned

Through this project, I deepened my understanding of how music can serve as a personal archive and emotional touchpoint for users. I learned that even small features, like memory tagging, can create a more meaningful connection between product and user when designed with care.

This case study also challenged me to think more critically about personalization, privacy, and long-term engagement. I strengthened my skills in designing for nostalgia, visualizing data in an emotionally resonant way, and creating user flows that balance structure with flexibility.

Additionally, working within Spotify’s established design system and user experience patterns taught me how to create new features that feel native to the brand while still offering something fresh.

If I continued this project, I’d conduct further usability testing to refine how users interact with memory tags and explore how Spotify could surface forgotten songs at just the right emotional moment.