** EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second part of our two-part series. To refresh yourself, click here to go to Part 1.

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** Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series

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With the demise of the OG music channel, MTV, still fresh in our minds, what better way to honour such an icon than with a trip down memory lane of the Canadian version, MuchMusic. From how it all started, to how it became the pop cultural icon that defined generations, and what led to its ultimate demise. MuchMusic was more than just the Canadian version of MTV – it was the main-stay pop cultural icon that carved its own identity and made its mark on Canadian culture.

If you’re from the Gen X, Millennial, or Gen Z generation who grew up in Canada, there’s a high probability you watched MusicMusic at some point or another during your adolescence. Whether you watched during their origin years of the ‘80s, their heyday at the turn of the millennium … or mostly knew them for their non-music content, MuchMusic easily defined the adolescent years of all three of these generations. And believe it or not, before YouTube and the internet, the only way you could watch music videos was through MuchMusic – or MTV, if your family was rich enough to afford satellite TV. But MuchMusic was more than just a channel that broadcasted music videos; it was a pop cultural mecca that gave voice to its fanbase, carved its own identity, and shed light on societal topics important to its viewers. And although it left an indelible imprint on Canadian pop culture, it wasn’t so much technology but corporate consolidation that killed this music video star. Or has it really died off entirely?

Origin Story

On August 1^st, 1981, the first-ever music video, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, aired on MTV and it sent a clear message: radio was dead and a new era was here — the era of the music video. Now, of course, radio still exists today. But MTV’s message was clear that a new era had arrived: one of music promotion and consumption, all in the form of a channel solely dedicated to playing 24/7 music videos. With their catchy slogan “I want my MTV”, it spoke to the demand from the youth who were looking for a new way to engage with music. And it wasn’t long after its inception that MTV become a pop cultural phenomenon in its own right -- one that not only influenced music and fashion trends, but one that was the primary source of popular music…all while defining a generation’s culture. The groundwork MTV laid out in the early ‘80s would become the foundation for a Canadian version that would come only a mere three years later.

MusicMusic And The Early Daze

The year was 1972. Having garnered his experience with CBC during the 1960s as a relatively known tv personality but a relatively unknown media executive, Moses Znaimer was denied an opportunity to pursue his creative vision at CBC and ultimately left. Little did he or anyone else know this would be the catalyst for what would later come to define his career and the childhood of generations to come. Landing at CHUM Television, Znaimer, and the British ex-pat producer he hired, John Martin, put together a new show that would later put its owner on the map. This new show featured a less polished but more specialized programming that wasn’t popular with other broadcasters at the time.

By taking the promo videos record labels sent out and combining them with the avant guard style of guerrilla filming Znaimer was already known for along with Martin’s musical knowledge, they created a new music-oriented show called The New Music, followed later by a show called City Limits. And those promo videos? Those weren’t the typical, polished music videos you see today. Back then, they were just videos of the artist playing live with the recorded music dubbed over it. And their only purpose was to promote the songs and artists without the need for costly in-person television appearances.

Fast forward to 1984. Znaimer and Martin take their proven approach to new wave television and created a new music hub created under the umbrella of CHUM Television, named MuchMusic. By this point, MTV already had three years on them, so Znaimer and Martin sought to create a distinguishment between this new MuchMusic and their American predecessor. Where MTV was on the second floor overlooking Times Square in New York City, MuchMusic was on the ground floor of their HQ at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto. And rather than adopting the same approach MTV used of bringing the camera to the scene, MuchMusic flipped it by creating the scene and having the camera be present. “At MTV, they were on the second floor in Times Square and almost untouchable,” recounts former MuchMusic VJ, Rick “The Temp” Campanelli. This “untouchable” approach altered the relationship between the broadcaster and the audience, so much so that MuchMusic decided they would break down those barriers to bring the music to the audiences wherever they were to make it about the fans and their love of music.

The other distinguishment came from Znaimer’s time at CBC, where he noticed most televised shows were filmed using stationary cameras -- which at the time were very large, very heavy, and very bulky pieces of machinery. And in keeping with the break-down-barriers approach, Znaimer and Martin carried their unorthodoxy filming approach over to MuchMusic, with that heavy reliance on the handheld camera not only prevalent throughout much -- pun intended -- of their on-air broadcasting, but it became synonymous with its iconic style. This particular style of filming would later prove to be years ahead of its time when reality TV adopted the same guerrilla style approach many years later.

Both Znaimer and Martin were instrumental in taking MuchMusic from idea to reality, but another key player in its inception was Nancy Oliver, Director of Operations. She worked alongside Martin to develop their own VJ system, with the first set of VJs hired from existing on-air personalities and internal hires who helped to define the channel’s initial unscripted style. Where MTV heavily relied on scripts and teleprompters the VJs would read off of, MuchMusic’s approach was to simply have the camera operator and the VJ speak directly to its viewers.

As the years progressed, the process for hiring VJs became a reality show contest known then as MuchTemp -- later renamed the MuchMusic VJ Search -- where the premise of the VJ was to act as the conduit between the musician and the viewer. And similar to a radio DJ, the VJs were also music lovers themselves. But what separated the MuchMusic VJs from radio DJs was that they looked like the viewer, which further bridged the gap between the musician and the viewer and served to further distinguish themselves from MTV. “At Much, you got a glimpse of what was going on inside, or you could be part of the environment as an audience. We weren’t really speaking to young Canadians; we were speaking with young Canadians,” recalls Campanelli, the most notable VJs hired from MuchTemp.

Millennial Culture

As MuchMusic gained traction and credibility over the proceeding years, the relationship between its two founders deteriorated over their opposing creative approaches. This opposition resulted in Martin’s departure from MuchMusic in late 1992, which ushered in a new Director of Music Programming, Denise Donlon. Under her direction, she would take MuchMusic into, as she referred to it as, its “Drive for Relevancy Era”. And Donlon was no stranger to MuchMusic, having been part of it since its inception and predating that by working on City Limits. Remember that show from the pre-MuchMusic days? This new era with Donlon at the helm spoke directly to the Millennials who were now becoming teenagers themselves at this point.

By this point, pop culture had shaped every aspect of modern life and was reflected in the growing budgets for music video production. Big name directors could easily command seven figure budgets for their videos, which is an astronomical amount by today’s standards let alone back then. As more videos hit the airwaves, there was more competition for the spotlight with the commercial success of a song now hinged on the strength of its music video. Donlon began to notice the origins of community and connection MuchMusic had cultivated was now getting lost in the glamour and hype of pop culture and the programming. She pushed to unpack videos more in depth and assembled VJs with distinct styles and opinions to match this new approach. VJs such as Sook-Yin Lee, George Stroumboulopoulos, Ed the Sock, and Rick “The Temp” Campanelli, each represented different demographics, styles, and genres of music -- all aimed at attracting and representing the diverse nature of their Canadian audience.

Donlon also leaned on her activism background by prioritizing media literacy into MuchMusic’s programming with shows like the Too Much 4 Much segment, where a panel of VJs, special guests, and artists analyzed controversial videos banned from the airwaves. Between 1992 and 2000, Donlon challenged and analyzed the dominate pop culture themes rather than continued to glamourize them, all while seeking to deconstruct the persona behind the celebrity. And if you’re thinking there’s pressure for this idealistic approach to media literacy and programming, then you’re correct. But despite the increased pressure from sales and marketing to please advertisers and shareholders, Donlon was successful at maintaining the quality of program messaging instead of purely pandering to ad revenue --- which, back in the golden era of television, was the mainstay for revenue. Donlon’s dedication to media literacy and to the preservation of MuchMusic’s origins would remain a prominent fixture until her departure in late 2000.

The Technology Era

As the new millennium took off, so did MuchMusic’s viewership, with more and more Millennials tuning into to MuchMusic on a daily basis. At the height of the music industry in 1999, it was worth $22.7 billion US in revenue from music recordings alone. And MuchMusic was leading the pack with its market share of music videos in Canada, which was largely attributed to the CRTC’s -- Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for those unacquainted with it -- licensing regulations that had already been established at MuchMusic’s inception.

But all this idealistic media-literacy-and-entertainment popularity ride MuchMusic was riding high on throughout the ‘90s all came to a screeching halt at the turn of the century. While adapting to Donlon’s departure in 2000, a new Vice President and General Manager of MuchMusic was named. David Kines, who came from humble beginnings as an editor in the early days of MuchMusic, would emerge as the new VP and GM. And along with this management change also came a technological change. The explosion of Napster onto the pop culture and music scene that not only initiated the shift in relationship between listeners and music - it revolutionized the way they consumed music.

Napster

By hooking Millennials en masse -- the same demographic by the way MuchMusic was set on hooking for themselves -- Napster users not only had access to a massive catalogue of music that was not only free, but that catalogue filled a void MuchMusic couldn’t: on demand music. This meant Napster users no longer had to pay for an album in stores or wait to hear to their favourite song to play on radio or TV – they could simply download a song or an entire album and listen to it as many times as times as they wanted. And in some cases, they could download an album even before it officially hit store shelves. As the Napster drama played out in the courts – hello, Metallica, who famously sued Napster -- and in the public sphere, it was only a matter of time before others, like KaZaA, KaZaA lite, BearShare, and LimeWire would get in the game.

But another technological change that added more fuel to the on-demand music fire was the release of Apple’s iPod and iTunes in 2001. By allowing its consumers to import their music -- legally or illegally acquired -- into iTunes, they could sync them to their iPod and take their music anywhere. Without a doubt, this delivered a significant blow to MuchMusic’s viewership as more Millennials migrated to these new technologies as their main sources for music consumption. And of course, during this time, the iPod evolved to include video plays. However, just like a new kid in school, a new technology was about to arrive on the scene that took the attention off of iTunes and delivered a harder blow to MuchMusic. Enter YouTube into the chat.

YouTube

By the mid-2000s, both Napster and Apple not only dominated but transformed the music scene with on-demand music consumption. And by that point, -- 2005, to be exact -- the internet had really taken off with the likes of MSN Messenger and MySpace, all allowing their mostly young consumer base to connect with each other directly. Seemingly overnight, Millennials became the on-demand music generation with their immediate gratification altering how music was valued and consumed, and shifted the listener demand away from full albums and onto singles.

All this despite MuchMusic already had been releasing yearly compilation CDs as early as the mid-’90s — by the likes of the Much Dance series which featured the top pop songs of that year, and Big Shiny Tunes which featured the top rock and alt songs. We’ll get into the evolution from singles to streaming a little bit later, but this new shift in music consumption gave the once-unknown website YouTube the platform to rapidly grow into the go-to place to watch music videos. And this leverage only added more fuel to an already burning inferno. And this inferno was quickly coming for MuchMusic.

With on-demand music already on the scene and now music videos on-demand, viewers no longer had to wait for scheduled shows to see their favourite music video. And YouTube provided a place where music videos could be easily watched at any time. Suffice it to say, MuchMusic brought a knife to the on-demand gun fight. But technology wasn’t the only existential threat to MuchMusic at this time.

** follow for part two.

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**Editors note: At the time of writing this (December 31st, 2025), Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, was the most-steamed album in a single day on Spotify, and closed out the year at the top of Billboard’s Top 200 albums.

What a year it was for online discussions that kept you glued to your phone. From the Coldplay-Kiss-Cam-Callout in July, to the Taylor Swift breaking the internet yet again not only with her engagement announcement but for another announcement: the release of her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. But that all that online discussion glitter quickly turned to dust once her album dropped in October, changing from the usual discussions of the musical direction to a noticeable quick shift into accusations of her association with white supremacy groups. And these accusations were ultimately found to be baseless and hadn’t been a part of her previous album drops. So, if you found yourself wondering how we went from the usual Taylor-Swift-album-drop discussions to Taylor-is-associated-with-Nazism, then you’re not alone.

Rolling Stone magazine was the first to break the news on the research behind what transpired with The Life of a Showgirl. But it also connects to Blake Lively and her current legal battle and ushers in a new era and economy – The Algorithmic Economy and the Era of Misinformation. The parallels of online discussions between the Depp v. Heard trial and the Swift v. Nazism discussion bare a strikingly similar discourse to one another, which we’ll get to that in a bit.

Depp v. Heard –

This is not the first time social media and false stories have manipulated narratives in the court of public opinion, and the 2022 Depp v. Heard defamation lawsuit is no different. Depp sued his ex-wife, Amber Heard, over claims she had made in a 2018 op-ed published in the Washington Post. The highly televised civil trial not only spurred countless memes, it was also the target of narrative manipulation; a claim which further fueled accusations by Heard’s legal team of swaying the jury, who had not been sequestered for the duration of the trial.

Throughout the six week trial, online narratives portrayed Heard as a liar followed by accusations of staged photos of her injuries. And it’s important to note, many of those narratives, including the ones we just mentioned, were never substantiated by the facts of the case. However, that didn’t stop those narratives from spreading online of an emotional Heard went viral. Even brands like Duolingo and Milani joined in, which if that sounds weird for a business to join in on this, then you are correct.

Now, it’s fair to say that Depp wasn’t immune to online narratives himself, but his were not as noticeably damning as the online commentary towards Heard. Heard’s lawyers for the case even claimed those narratives were leveraged by Depp’s team to unfairly sway the jury’s perception of Heard to deem her as an uncredible witness. And not only that, this civil case was also infamous for its massive social media influence – mainly TikTok – and the intense public engagement that ultimately led to Depp largely winning the case. The Depp v. Heard lawsuit quickly became a pop culture juggernaut reminiscent of the OJ Simpson criminal trial in 1990s, dubbed “The Trial of the Century”.

Look, it’s easy to look at both the Depp v. Heard and the OJ Simpson trial and say both these trials occurred during very different times – and for the large part, yes, that is correct. But, despite one trial being criminal and the other civil, what both these trials have in common is the leverage of media to promote false narratives as a bid to sway a decision. And that very same theme is emerging in another upcoming civil trial involving two other notable actors, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. But we’ll get into that in a bit.

GUDEA’s Findings –

If you’ve been living under a rock, it almost seemed impossible to have escaped the barrage of marketing surrounding the release of Taylor Swift’s 12^th studio album, Life of a Showgirl. Since making the announcement of its existence back in August, there was a flurry of non-stop marketing and online conversations leading up to its release in early October. But all that press, in its careful curation Swift is known for, quickly changed to discussions that turned extreme in many ways that many people found bewildering.

Online discussions surrounding the album initially began as scrutinizing the artwork on the varied versions of the LP and CD, to the merch that rolled out to accompany her latest era. But all of that discourse quickly changed seemingly overnight. Social media posts began to crop up accusing Swift of implicitly endorsing the MAGA movement -- a movement in which she has vehemently denied publicly in the past. Other posts began to surge in velocity alleging the use of the word “savage” in the song “Eldest Daughter” was racist. This was in addition to the lightning bolt charm necklace on her merch page along with the lyric “My mama told me it’s alright/You were dancing through the lightning strikes”, from the song, “Opalite”, were all references to white supremacy groups. Despite Swift’s track record of challenging false narratives against her carefully branded image, these posts largely focused on specific word choices, which served to further fuel their virality. Swift, nor her team have commented on this story or immediately returned requests for comment.

All these findings stem from recent research conducted by the for-profit behavioral intelligence tech startup, GUDEA, who track how reputation-damaging claims emerge and go viral on the internet. They concluded a cluster of coordinated “inauthentic” accounts pushed the most inflammatory content about Swift in the lead up and subsequent release of her album. Additionally, they found “significant user overlap” in the bot-accounts that were directly responsible for manipulating Swift’s narrative.

GUDEA analyzed 24,679 posts from more than 18,000 users across 14 platforms and found the narratives -- like those we just mentioned -- originated from “inauthentic” users that triggered actual authentic engagement either from Swifties dismissing these conspiracies, or from others who tried to contextualize these claims. “The pattern of inauthentic provocation [to] authentic user discourse is a hallmark of successful narrative manipulation,” the research says.

Often originating on sites such as 4chan or KiwiFarms, these engagement-provoking narratives were infused into the Swift conversation before migrating onto social media platforms via bot-accounts. From there, they organically sustained themselves by gaining further algorithmic virality from the authentic engagement. These narratives in turn became algorithmically reinforced, with their visibility increasing with each authentic engagement. “The false narrative that Taylor Swift was using Nazi symbolism did not remain confined to fringe conspiratorial spaces; it successfully pulled typical users into comparison between Swift and Kanye West,” the researchers wrote. Which is an incredibly worrisome thing to have happen: To take narratives that were posted on fringe forums, originally isolated from the rest of the internet, and seeding them on mainstream platforms, where the algorithms picked them up, and gained virality based off the authentic engagement they received.

GUDEA’s research identified two distinct spikes in dates involving the misleading activity related to Swift. During the proceeding days after the October 3^rd release of Life of a Showgirl, GUDEA’s data identified approximately 35% of those false narratives to have been generated by “inauthentic” accounts. And, between October 13^th and 14^th, that number jumped to a staggering 40% of posts generated by inauthentic accounts, with conspiracy content making up 73.9% of the total volume of the conversation. The research found the album rollout and the subsequent commentary surrounding it, demonstrates how a “strategically seeded falsehood can convert into widespread authentic discourse,” which acts to reshape the public’s perception “even when most users do not believe the originating claim.” Which is an alarming thing to hear: That despite many of the readers’ disbelief in the actual false narrative posted, they inadvertently fuelled the narrative’s virality simply based on its engagement, ranging anywhere from commenting on it to even sharing it. And that can have real-world consequences for those these false narratives involve.

“This is something that we’ve seen escalate on our corporate side – this type of espionage, or working to damage someone’s reputation,” says GUDEA founder and CEO Keith Presley. And Keith has a point: regardless of whether a false narrative gets debunked, the damage has already been done to who the false narrative is about.

The Blake Lively connection –

GUDEA contends that despite all this data, they do not know the identity of the individual or group behind the Taylor Swift false narratives – and it’s quite possible that we may never know. But one thing they did find was “significant user overlap” in the accounts that manipulated Taylor Swift’s Nazi narrative and those involved in a separate yet similar campaign against Blake Lively.

The legal and PR battle between Lively and Baldoni began after the press tour for the movie they starred in together, This Ends With Us. Shortly after the press tour, Lively began to face a barrage of criticism online relating to comments she had made in a resurfaced interview. A YouTube clip posted by the journalist who gave that interview, Kjersti Faa, titled “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job”, quickly went viral on social media, painting Lively as rude and difficult. Flaa has denied having anything to do with Baldoni and his alleged smear campaign.

In Lively’s court filings, she alleges Baldoni and his team attacked her public image shortly after the now-infamous January 2024 meeting where she, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and Baldoni discussed the “hostile work environment” during the filming of the movie. Lively accuses Baldoni of orchestrating a plan to “destroy” her reputation through a “sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” against her. She further argues Baldoni used a “digital army” to post social media content that appears to be authentic and ”…designed to eviscerate Ms. Lively’s credibility” by engaging “…in the same technique to bolster Mr. Baldoni’s credibility and suppress any negative content about him.” Sound all too familiar? That’s because Baldoni hired the same crisis manager Johnny Depp hired during his civil litigation. It’s important to note, Baldoni and his legal team have strenuously denied any involvement in such campaign. A court date for this lawsuit has been set for May 2026.

So, by now it’s pretty clear the pattern that’s emerging with these smear campaigns. According to GUDEA researchers, the intersection these sets of accounts that shared all the negative posts about both Lively and Swift suggests “a cross-event amplification network, one that disproportionately influences multiple celebrity-driven controversies and injects misinformation into otherwise organic conversations.” In other words, all these narratives combine across various platforms to create an ecosystem. And these ecosystems comprise of network user communities, who exert cross-event influence to escalate these narratives with other “inauthentic” user accounts from one narrative which often appear prominently in another that shifts personas depending on the topic, platform, and narrative tension. Think of it as the cross-over episode no one asked for.

While the true intent behind these false narratives remain unknown, the playbook of these deceptive narratives is more than transparent: to persuade authentic users to engage with these posts as a means to boost their reach in any given digital ecosystem. And the Swift and Lively overlap demonstrates how network user communities have the ability to influence anything from album sales to even going as far as to destroy someone’s reputation. “…that’s going to get rewarded by the algorithm. You’ll see the influencers jump on first, because it’s going to get them clicks,” says Georgia Paul, head of customer success at GUDEA. And Georgia is right: the moment these false narratives get planted, picked up by bot-accounts, and gain algorithmic attention through authentic engagement, the virality of these narratives continue their velocity with influencers posting and sharing these narratives.

We’re not going to get into a debate over influencers and fact-checking – we’ll simply run out of time. But for what it’s worth, these narratives, regardless of whether they’re true or not, are designed to elicit an immediate emotional response. And this emotional response is what causes you to engage with the post, which only adds more fuel to its algorithmic dumpster fire and furthers its reach. So, is there anything we can do about this, and if so, what steps can we take to reduce, and even eliminate, these false narratives from dominating our feeds?

Remedies –

Look, this can all sound a bit overwhelming; from the idea that we’re all collectively being sold manufactured narratives as a bid to manipulate media on an unassuming audience, to rigged algorithms designed to show you more content that elicits immediate emotional responses. What if we were to tell you there are easy, actionable steps that you can take today to help combat the rise of rage bait and false narratives? Would this change your perspective away from the seemingly David-and-Goliath type of battle the tech companies want you to believe?

One thing you and I can do is to take inventory of the immediate emotional response a post elicits. If your initial emotional response to a post is extreme and immediate, chances are, the post you’re reading is a false narrative containing little-to-no factual evidence. Because that’s what it’s designed to do. So, if your initial response is extreme, there’s a very strong likelihood it’s fake.

Another step you can take to combat these engineered false narratives is to look to see who is posting this information. Is this a reputable source for information, or is it an imageless profile with little-to-no followers and little-to-no actual posts all seemingly from a short timeframe? If the answer is yes, chances are it’s a bot account whose sole purpose is to generate and spread false narratives.

A third action you can take is one that may not initially win over fans but is good for your overall mental health and hits the tech companies where it hurts. And that is to simply reduce your time on these platforms. By now we’re all well aware that social media platforms generate a large, if not all, percentage of their revenue from ads, with close to 98% of Meta’s revenue generated through ad sales. By eliminating or reducing the amount of time you spend on these platforms not only increases your mental health, as one study by CHEO Research Institute, and published in Psychology of Popular Media, found. Youth who reduced their social media time to only one hour a day had a 20% reduction in symptoms of depression and a 26% reduction in symptoms of anxiety. Now, more research is needed to concretely link these findings, but their initial results are compelling. Not only does reducing your exposure to social media reduce symptoms associated with depression and anxiety, but it also takes away from those who stand to benefit financially from you being on these platforms, as well as those who spew out false narratives.

Conclusion –

By now, we’ve discussed how planting false narratives regardless of who is posting it can have massive effects on how that information is started and shared. The cross-event amplification these false narrative ecosystems create demonstrate a level of “sophistication” in the expanding industry of reputational harm across social media and have the potential to not only cause reputational harm, but they also have the ability to influence and sway public perception – and in some cases, even juries. Of course, all of this is highly concerning, given their ability to influence and sway legal decisions to even public policies, which is a really scary thing when you think about it. “…there might be other nefarious actors, not US-based, who have reasons to see, ‘If I can move the fan base for Taylor Swift….does that mean I can do it in other places,” says Presley.

And Presley isn’t wrong: he even went as far to “half-jokingly” comment GUDEA’s research found “the internet is fake”. And with Meta removing factchecking from their platforms in favour of “Community Notes” -- similar to that of Twitter/X -- only serves to increase the frequency of these false narratives by shifting the responsibility onto its user-base, which isn’t a reliable source.

And it seems as though governments are slow or even reluctant to pass laws regulating sites that seed false narratives. But until then, there are things that we can do to reduce our susceptibility to these false posts and prevent them from spreading. From reducing the time we spend on these platforms, to verifying the sources of posts, to the awareness of the immediate emotional responses we have towards them. Because what Keith Presley laments, “They know what they’re doing.”

Picture this: It’s 2015. You’re scrolling through social media trying to decide if the dress is blue or gold, you have a Spotify playlist on with songs from Drake’s Hotline Bling fills your room. You’re trying to figure out what you and your friends are going to watch tonight: Is the MTV VMAs or Game of Thrones….or perhaps a platonic Netflix and Chill by binge-ing a new series on Netflix? Whatever it is, there was no way of getting around how influential 2015 was for pop culture. From the emergence of the #MeToo movement, to Patricia Arquette’s Oscar acceptance speech highlighting the gender pay gap, to Adele saying Hello after a four-year hiatus, to the Year of the Squad complete with Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, and Taylor’s famous squad, 2015 marked a pivotal year in pop culture – with one notable new addition: Spotify Wrapped.

With a year marked with political, musical, and societal changes, Spotify went from a Swedish music streaming app in a sea of competition all vying for the top spot as the go-to music streaming app to a trailblazer with the launch of Spotify Wrapped. But what started as a simple email marketing campaign quickly turned into the viral pop culture phenomenon that other apps tried to emulate has now turned into a data privacy debate. Before there was Spotify Wrapped, there was Year in Music. So, let’s dive into how it all started, where it’s going, and the controversy surrounding this viral pop culture tradition.

The little email that did -

Launched in 2015 as an email campaign under the working title Year in Music, little did Spotify – or anyone really – know that this little email marketing campaign would turn into a viral pop cultural phenomenon, catapulting them straight into the stratosphere as top dog of the music streaming game. But that was a few years away. The email all Spotify users received was nothing in comparison to what Wrapped has evolved to become over the past decade.

But before we dive into the evolution of Spotify Wrapped, a quick recap of the popularity of email marketing back in the mid-2010s as the way to market to a consumer base. And it wasn’t just the way to market, it was the ultimate way -- and most popular method -- to market. Due to its strong ROI and strategic importance in spite of the rise of social media, many businesses prioritized email campaigns as the best way to market their reach to new and existing customers. All thanks to Gmail (and other email apps) becoming standard on mobile devices, with iPhone and Gmail dominating the marketing with their notification feature and making emails what social media notifications are today.

On a Sunday back in December 2015, the inaugural Year in Music email dropped in the inboxes of all Spotify users. Back then, all the email consisted of was just that – a simple email; nothing more than a simple summary of the customer’s listening habits from the year, neatly wrapped (pun intended) in a data-driven marketing campaign that combined user data with creative storytelling. Or, at least, that’s how Spotify describes their viral pop culture tradition. In a sense, what you got back then is similar to what you get now: Data – raw, raw data. Wrapped’s three-part global campaign consists of the overall top charts, fans’ personal stats and artists’ stats, began to attract a larger consumer base with roughly 5 million unique users in its inaugural run.

Fast forward to the following year, 2016. And this time around, it wasn’t just an email, and it wasn’t called Year in Music anymore – it was now an immersive experience whenever you opened the Spotify web browser. And instead of it dropping on a Sunday at the beginning of December, it was now on a Wednesday sometime in mid-December. It also rebranded itself to what we now know it as Spotify Wrapped. Even more than that, this time around, it wasn’t just a summary of the user’s top artists and other features found on Year in Music, the main feature that year was a curated playlist consisting of the user’s most-listened-to songs of the year – a format that’s still continued today.

In 2019, yet another evolution of Wrapped appeared – this time, Wrapped wasn’t restricted to their web browser, it was now on their app. This simple yet impactful decision not only made it easier for users to discover and share their yearly recap, it also increased its reach to its consumer base now that it wasn’t restricted to a web browser, which was in decline due to the rise of apps.

Wrapped’s evolution continued yet again in 2021 with the integration of social features that allowed Wrapped’s format to extend beyond its static lists of the app by introducing features like Audio Aura that created a colourful “aura” around your Listening Personality.

Another feature new to Wrapped that year was Wrapped Blend, which sounds more like an off-brand non-corporate coffeehouse, or a type of over-priced smoothie at Erewhon than a feature found on Spotify Wrapped. This new feature was a collaborative playlist that allows users to combine their annual listening habits with their friends to create a shared playlist based on their combined top songs from the year – a feature that’s been present on Wrapped. This feature was introduced alongside short video messages from users’ favourite artists. All these new additions were designed to enhance self-expression and social sharing. And as if all these changes weren’t enough, Wrapped 2023 brought the inclusion of interactive games into the mix which saw an impressive reach of 227 million users, a record for Spotify.

So, if all the changes Wrapped has made over the years hasn’t confused you enough, let’s talk about the dates Spotify uses to compile all this data. We’ve all seen the memes online about December being the month of music purgatory, a lawless time when you can seemingly stream anything you want without it affecting your Wrapped algorithm for following year. Many users have attempted to game the system by manipulating their plays based on dates, and many have failed. That’s because the true dates Spotify uses to pull their data for Wrapped is closely guarded – guarded heavier than the Louvre’s wifi password.

In the past, Spotify confirmed the start date for their data collection does, in fact, start in the beginning of January. “We start at the beginning of January with all of your listening that begins right then at the beginning of the year,” says Molly Holder, Senior Director of Product for Personalization at Spotify. And in 2024, Spotify did clarify their data collection doesn’t end on October 31^st -- as some online rumors have long speculated -- with the end date of data collection going “all the way through…up until a few weeks before we launch the Wrapped product,” according to Holder. December is a great month to omit from their data compilation, given the numerous holiday celebrations that occur throughout the month, which could likely have an unwelcomed effect on the Wrapped’s outcomes. Any parents with small children can most likely agree with this, with children’s music streamed on app already throwing off their yearly Wrapped results.

Now that we’ve dispelled any speculation surrounding the dates of Wrapped’s data collection, what about the day Wrapped drops? We already mentioned the inaugural Wrapped was the outlier, having dropped on a Sunday back in 2015 (December 6^th, to be exact), and we’ve already discussed in 2016 and 2017 the release date was on a Wednesday (December 14^th and December 13^th, respectively). But what about 2018 and 2019? Well, Spotify kept us on our toes and moved the day once again. This time, it was moved to a Thursday (December 6^th and December 5^th, respectively). And just when you thought there was some consistency to this, enter 2020. Not only was 2020 a chaotic year for many, Wrapped dropped on a Tuesday (December 1^st). In the preceding three years (2021-2024) making yet one more change, this time back to its roots on a Wednesday (December 1^st, November 30^th, November 29^th, and December 4^threspectively).

So now that we’ve gone over the timeline of the dates Wrapped has dropped, have you picked up what we’ve thrown down with the exact dates of release? If you haven’t, I’m not sure if we can help you. If you have, congratulations, you’ve picked up on the pattern that Wrapped typically drops around the very end of November or early part of December. And you’ve probably picked up on the fact that Wrapped hasn’t dropped for 2025….yet! At the time of writing this on December 1^st, the most likely date for Wrapped 2025 to drop is Wednesday, December 3^rd. But don’t place your bets on Kalshi just yet. Spotify has been mum on this year’s Wrapped release date. “It’s almost like election night,” Louisa Ferguson, Global Head of Marketing Experience for Spotify.

With competitors like Apple Music, JetBlue and Audible all attempting to create their own version of Wrapped with little to no success, it’s no wonder the exact release date is kept secret. This secret along with their relevancy of Wrapped all “…started as a marketing campaign without any type of digital component,” says Ferguson. And that digital component Ferguson is referring to is something we’ll dive deeper into in a moment, but first, let’s take a look at where Wrapped is now.

Where it’s at now -

Alright, so we’ve looked at how Spotify Wrapped has evolved over the past decade, but what we haven’t looked at is what it is – like, really is. Having morphed from a simple email to the immersive, shareable experience it is today, Wrapped has become a cultural tradition that not only has permeated into our collective psyches, it also embodies the latest technologies. Enter AI to the chat.

In 2024’s Wrapped edition, we saw yet another first: The integration of AI – or Artificial Intelligence for some of you folk lucky enough to be out of the know on this – by including a personalized AI podcast, an AI DJ, and an AI Playlist.

With last year’s Ten Year Anniversary, the 2024 Wrapped incorporated AI and Personalization into the mix that appeared as “Your Music Evolution”, a data story that broke users’ listening history into three phases consisting of descriptive titles and connected artists. This was Spotify’s most ambitious evolution to date. Other new features included a revamped visual design in bold, looping animations which was inspired by the “constant reinvention” in music, AI-generated “Wrapped AI Podcast”, a short audio recap narrated by AI hosts using Google’s NotebookLM as well as the integration of its AI DJ / AI Playlist tools. Another first for Spotify was the inclusion of Wrapped Summaries, created specifically for content creators, consisting of personalized Wrapped hubs made for artists, songwriters, podcasters and audiobook authors geared to deepening its engagement with the creator community. And just like any trailblazing entity that launches itself into the stratosphere of pop culture, it comes without its criticisms.

How Wrapped works -

Before we jump right into the criticisms surrounding Spotify and Wrapped, let’s quickly discuss how Wrapped actually works. Any time a user plays, skips, searches or saves a song, Spotify logs that event, and that event compounds into queries that feed into a central data warehouse, where Spotify data engineers aggregate and model all the data to compute it into individualized bite-sized metrics. From there, Spotify sprinkles its magic -- aka human curation -- with Spotify data engineers identifying rising tracks and artists from the qualitative insights and off-platform signals.

And exactly what are those “off-platform signals”? According to Spotify, the off-platform signals they use refer to any sources that exists outside of their app or website, such as monitoring social media trends, to identify new music and cultural trends, trending tracks and artists. Moreover, Spotify contends this creates the ultimate shareable experience, which works to promote their reach further. For instance, anytime you share Wrapped on your social media pages. And although this all sounds idyllic to the average person, it does come with its alter ego: AI.

It’s no surprise Wrapped is powered by vast amounts of user data collected throughout the year as well as machine learning. The editorial insights Spotify boasts is behind the success of their viral yearly tradition all feed back into the recommendation system within their algorithms. This delicately balances the familiar with discovery by noting your behavior while on their platform to learn more about you and your tastes. And this delicate interplay between the algorithms combined with the human curation lends Wrapped to appear to feel personal and culturally relevant. The final component to the inner workings of Wrapped takes all the data and presents it to the user in a fun, friendly interface that allows it to be easily shared on their socials. Which all seems innocent and customer-centric enough. But is it really though?

Seemingly handing over your data to a large tech company does seem a bit insane when it’s framed that way. With the virality of the Wrapped campaign presenting user data in a fun, friendly manner that’s designed to influence its users to share them on social media, it’s no surprise Wrapped has become a marketing juggernaut for Spotify, delivering enormous engagement without requiring any additional work from the user. To illustrate Spotify’s reach, globally in 2024, Wrapped rolled out to 184 markets, supported by TikTok and Instagram due to their sharing integrations and voice commands (think “play top songs 2024”), which further fuelled the virality of Wrapped.

Criticisms –

In recent years, Spotify has been accused of “weaponizing’ their users to advertise them for free, which manufactures a real sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) for people who don’t use Spotify as a means to drive them to become a Spotify user; thus, permitting them to participate in Wrapped. This impact is visible within Spotify’s metrics. According to their analytics report for Wrapped 2024, there was roughly 2.1 million social media mentions in the first 48 hours of dropping, over 400 million TikTok views within the first 72 hours, and roughly 10.5 million users who actively shared their Wrapped results. This all resulted in a 40% spike in engagement for Spotify during launch week. In this Attention Economy, that equals to massive engagement, marketing, and big money…for Spotify.

To draw a comparison to this, in 2020, Wrapped generated only 20% more Spotify app downloads. All this consistently drives brand awareness for Spotify, making Wrapped a “cultural report card” for its users and making it become the viral phenomenon that other brands have tried to emulate but cannot replicate. Even before Wrapped drops, millions of people are already talking about it. Take for instance, Wrapped 2024. By mid-November of that year, close to 2.2 million people were already talking about it. And by mid-December, Wrapped had dominated social conversations worldwide and was constantly trending with hashtags and memes. So, it goes to show the social force behind this marketing campaign that continues to drive Wrapped’s success.

But behind every marketing campaign there are criticisms. And one such critique of Wrapped is that it’s a culmination of a year-long tracking campaign packaged as fun to express one’s musical tastes. As TechRadar observes, Spotify “follows every stream” to collect an ever-growing cache of personal data, then presents it as an entertaining package, which amounts to nothing more than “marketing surveillance” rather than a marketing campaign. Digital rights advocates bluntly echo the same sentiment, referring to Wrapped as “market[ing] surveillance as fun”. And the research seem to back this critique.

Research indicates Spotify collects more than just the listening counts of its users by collecting data on user demographics -- such as gender, IP-based location, presumed nationality, and social class -- to build their detailed “taste profiles”. Spotify then shares this data with advertisers – a claim Spotify doesn’t deny nor confirm but does state on the privacy page of their site that it does share your data with third parties. Despite that, Spotify does mention on their site it does allow its users to opt out of most of their information shared with third parties. Spotify claims it has to share data with third parties as it’s a core aspect of their business model.

Look, we could talk all about how subscriptions aren’t a lucrative business mode - especially when it’s been documented countless times the low payouts Spotify provides its artists, unless you’re Taylor Swift, but that’s a conversation for another time. Despite Spotify disclosing the reasons behind sharing your data with third parties, it was enough for European regulators to fine Spotify €5.4 million in 2023, citing data transparency failures. In fact, privacy experts warn Wrapped’s free appeal comes at a cost to its users in the form of data sharing.

Data sharing aside, another critique of Spotify Wrapped has to do with the content itself. Some users and analysts who found Wrapped 2024 to be underwhelming despite the huge audience numbers it has amassed. This was largely attributed to the AI elements integrated in which created “micro-genre” labels that weren’t useful outside of the Spotify platform, with users claiming that listening to a pair of AI Hosts narrate the year felt “soul-destroying”. Furthermore, criticisms of Spotify arose after their choice of AI implementation post massive layoffs in 2024. This goes without mention the additional costs both financially and environmentally that AI-powered engines generate, which indicates a potential listener-backlash to AI-powered storytelling.

The mono-culture that Wrapped’s content has created serves to only reinforce the dominance of superstar artists, like Taylor Swift, while withholding support for indie or up-and-coming artists who also happen to share space on Spotify’s platform. The “most-streamed” charts have been glossed over, almost like a gentrified version of real issues that almost seem to paint an idealized version of the music industry while simultaneously ignoring artists’ struggles.

Conclusion –

So, we’ve discussed the evolution of Spotify Wrapped over the past decade from its humble email origins to the immersive, shareable -- in more ones than one would expect -- experience it is today, to the criticisms that lie within Wrapped that includes sharing your data with third-party advertisers to the behemoth mono-culture it’s created which seemingly glosses over the real-life struggles of the music industry. But suffice it to say, Wrapped has emerged as a textbook example of what data-driven marketing looks like in this digital age by harnessing millions of user data, gamifying it, and packaging it as a deeply personal, emotionally engaging experience designed to extend its reach through social media. This immersive marketing campaign has achieved what so many have strived to accomplish: Users freely and unwittingly offering up their data and freely promoting their brand en masse, potentially laying the foundation for what could arguably be the most successful marketing campaign of the 21^st century.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have to share my Wrapped 2025 results with my following.

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She will always be known as ‘the girl who didn’t go to Paris’. And it will always be known as the magazine that gave rise to the girl formally known as an intern on the hit MTV realty series from the 2000s, The Hills. Of course, I’m talking about none other than Lauren Conrad and her former “employer”, Teen Vogue.

This isn’t just another knee-jerking reaction to yet another millennial icon’s demise, but the announcement of the closure of Teen Vogue might as well be. It was announced this past week that, after 22 years in operations, Teen Vogue would cease operations as Vogue magazine’s widely popular publication that brought political, societal, cultural and fashion themes to a younger audience. In a move Teen Vogue’s owner and parent company, Condé Nast, describes as “a transition that’s part of a broader push to expand the Vogue ecosystem”, announced the closure as more of a transitionunder the banner of its flagship namesake, Vogue.com. But there’s more to the story than just transitions and closures during a time of media take-downs and consolations, delivering yet another catastrophic blow to media and journalism.

Just days after announcing the closure of Teen Vogue on November 3^rd, 2025, twenty Condé United union (the union representing Condé Nast staff) editorial staffers confronted Stan Duncan, Head of HR for Condé Nast, seeking transparency surrounding the decision to fold Teen Vogue. This led to a tense interaction with Duncan declining to engage in discussions with those staffers, and led to the prompt termination of 4 of those employees: Jasper Low, a senior fact checker for The New Yorker; Jake Lahut, a senior politics reporter for WIRED; Alma Avalle, digital staffer for Bon Appetit; and Ben Dewey, video staffer with Condé Nast Entertainment.

Condé Nast on their part claimed the rationale for those terminations were due to “extreme misconduct” and subsequently followed up their actions by filing a federal complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the union’s parent union, the NewGuild of New York, for violating its contract. The union, on the other hand, responded back in a statement stating the company [Condé Nast] was violating the contract’s just-cause protections and its “federally protected rights as union members’ job to hold power to account and ask difficult questions”.

You be the judge. The video included as part of The Wrap’s coverage on this story was taken by one of the staffers who participated in the confrontation. The clip depicts the staffers approaching Duncan’s office and asking to meet with him regarding their concerns around the recent closure of Teen Vogue, with Duncan refusing to engage other than to usher those staffers back to work. Interestingly enough, the footage does not depict any threatening behaviour throughout its two minute duration, with Condé Nast stating the video “captures only a portion of the incident” with “several additional minutes…missing.” No word yet on whether the staffer who recorded this footage was part of the Condé Nast’s terminations.

But before we jump into the meat and cheese of what’s really behind those layoffs and terminations, let’s dive into some background on who Condé Nast and Teen Vogue were prior to this development.

So, who exactly is Condé Nast? Condé Nast is one of the largest American mass media companies you’re only just hearing about now. Founded in 1909 by – you guessed it – Condé Montrose Nast, who was a publisher that also bought Vogue magazine that very same year. Operating in 32 markets, serving 37 brands in 26 languages, Condé Nast has more than 1 billion consumers throughout their print, digital, video and social media platforms. Some of the brands under the Condé Nast umbrella include Allure magazine, WIRED, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and until recently Teen Vogue.

Emerging onto the magazine publication scene and entering our collective pop culture in 2003, Teen Vogue spent the first part of its lifespan as a teen-centred publication that prominently featured the current ‘it’ teen stars of its time, top fashion trends as well as dating and lifestyle tips. It wasn’t until the mid-2010s when Teen Vogue pivoted their model to include more political stories that corresponded with and during Donald Trump’s first administration with their seminal op-ed article entitled, “Donald Trump is Gaslighting America”.

In the subsequent years following their seminal article, Teen Vogue featured articles covering other topics of serious journalism to include BLM (Black Lives Matter), Gaza, and the Climate Crisis, alongside their trendy original teen-centric programming. This arguably brought what was once only reserved as mainstream adult themes to a younger -- mostly teen -- consumer base. A place where a teen could get fashion and makeup tips alongside articles informing them about the significance of George Floyd and BLM, climate change, and the increased religious ideological integration into politics and regulations…just to name a few. Alice Wong, a disability rights activist and author, laments the closure of Teen Vogue left her heartbroken as “Teen Vogue was one of the few places that published disabled journalists regularly.” It goes to show, the closing of Teen Vogue goes further than just shuttering another magazine.

The transition of Teen Vogue to Vogue.com not only resulted in the closure of a magazine, but it also resulted in the top editor, Versha Sharma, stepping down, as well as the layoff of Teen Vogue’s political editor and 5 other editorial staffers, mostly who identified as women of colour or as transgendered.

The closing of Teen Vogue not only raises concerns about Vogue’s ability to continue its political reporting, it also suggests the perspectives and voices of young women – including those of trans women and non-binary people – still remain a threat to these institutions. And what are these institutions?

According to the liberal American think-tank, the Roosevelt Institute, the closure of Teen Vogue illustrates the mass media consolation to an American presidential administration. In a statement released by the Roosevelt Institute, they confer with other reporting by identifying this as “…evidence that corporate concentration eliminates innovative ideas and silences voices with less power.” Further adding: “Teen Vogue has consistently been one of the only media outlets centering the perspectives of young people and has done so with bravery and honesty”.

In response to the media attention this closure has brought, a spokesperson for Condé Nast stated the decision to close Teen Vogue will help to increase its reach, as “Teen Vogue has faced ongoing challenges around scale and audience reach for some time.”

So now we know the fate of Teen Vogue, only time will tell what the true impact of its departure and the imprint it made on its audience and culture as a whole.

As of November 12^th, 2025, Condé Nast has 44 jobs posted to the careers page on their site, with 3 of those jobs posted as soon as November 11^th, 2025. None of those jobs were associated with those who were laid off or terminated, but the future will tell if any of those will be added to the list. Despite the grim outlook of Teen Vogue, its journalistic reporting and its imprint in popular culture, the Roosevelt Institute summed this up aptly by saying, “In a moment where our country is experiencing generational shifts in thinking, we are all worse off without their reporting.”

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