Spotify Wrapped has been dominating discourse since it dropped early December, especially in thanks to one of its new data points that’s got people talking: your listening age. Online, it feels like everyone is talking about either an outrageously young or older number the algorithm chose for them. To this day, Wrapped is one of Spotify’s most engaging features, and many forget that it started with an intern.
Spotify first came out with its Wrapped-branded, personalized end-of-year listening analysis in 2016, but it looked nothing like it does now. It started as an emailed link of a playlist. Now, Wrapped is as much of an experience as it is a ritual, swiping though a story-like format with interactive elements, slowly revealing your habits. Wrapped started using this format thanks to a former intern and Howard alumna, Jewel Ham.
Ham is a multidisciplinary visual artist — and one of ESSENCE’s seven contemporary Black women artists to watch in 2021 — who served on the design team during her 2019 internship for the streaming platform. She originally took to Twitter late 2020, revealing the more interactive story format was an idea she pushed during her three months at the company. She even shared the design concepts she created and shared that summer.
“I was a person that had Spotify and loved Wrapped, but it was just a link they would send at the end of the year,” she previously told Refinery29 about what led her to want to elevate Wrapped. “When I gave the presentation at the end of my intern project, it was received really well. They liked the idea. That was my last day.”
At the time, a Spotify spokesperson denied this was accurate. Instead, they told Refinery29 that since Wrapped’s inception, “hundreds of employees have contributed ideas and creative concepts that have made the experience what it is today. While ideas generated during Spotify’s internship program have on occasion informed campaigns and products, based on our internal review, that is not the case here with Spotify Wrapped.”
Wrapped is, undoubtedly, a collaborative project at the company, but Ham’s influence was key. At the time Wrapped rolled out its new story-based format, it was the hot new social media feature because it was so engaging. Snapchat started it, and Instagram followed, and then so did everyone else. Based on what Ham says went down during her internship, she helped evolve Wrapped to be the cool, shareable listening analysis it is today.
After the internship, the Charlotte-born and Brooklyn-based creative graduated Summa Cum Laude from Howard University in 2020. Her art — which centers Black interior life — has been included in a long list of exhibitions from the Met in New York City to Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. She has also worked with institutions like the Smithsonian and AMC on custom digital designs.
As Spotify Wrapped continues evolving and having breakout moments, like the new listening age number, we’re remembering the Black woman who helped advance the end-of-year roundup to the interactive and shareable moment it is today.