A Wrapped for everything Spotify can't see

Spotify Wrapped is the best marketing campaign in software, and it works because it is about you. The trouble is how small a part of you it can see. It knows you played one album 140 times in March. It has no idea that March was also the month you read three novels, saw a film you still think about, and spent a week in Lisbon.

So people go looking. “Spotify Wrapped but for books.” “Spotify Wrapped for movies.” “Spotify Wrapped but for travel.” “Spotify Wrapped but for life.” Those are real searches, every year.

What already exists, and what it misses

Most of the services you use have their own version by now:

• Letterboxd does a year in review for the films you logged there.
• Goodreads does a Year in Books for what you shelved.
• Game platforms and consoles do one for what you played on them.
• Photo apps build recaps out of your camera roll.

Each one is good at its slice. None of them overlap, and none of them know the slices exist. Put them side by side in December and you have five recaps of one year that never mention each other. The year itself did not happen in categories.

There is also a quieter problem: a platform recap can only cover the years you happened to use that platform. Spotify’s is built for the season, too: the Wrapped story is gone after a few weeks and what stays is a playlist. And nobody gets a recap of the year before they signed up.

How to make your own Wrapped

You need three things.

1. One place where everything goes. This is the whole trick. If films live in one app and books in another, you are back to five partial recaps. It does not matter much which place, as long as it is one.

2. Entries, not essays. A diary is the wrong tool: nobody keeps one up for twelve months. What works is a ten-second entry when something happens. Title, date, maybe a rating. You can backfill the rest of the year in one sitting; the big things come back fast when you go month by month.

3. Something that counts it for you. A spreadsheet works if you enjoy spreadsheets. Most people do not, and a table of 140 rows is not a recap anyone wants to look at.

Doing it in Stadu

Stadu is the app we built for exactly this: films, TV, books, games, concerts, places, trips and life events in one free Android app, with no account. You type a title and covers and details fill in. When the year is logged, the Wrapped is already there:

• The year screen. The Stats tab has a chip for every year. Pick one and you see how many experiences you logged, the split by type, your best-rated entries, the first and last thing you logged, and your trips, countries and kilometres.
• A Highlights card. “My 2026” with your counts, the year’s longest trip as a tile (one of your photos or a sketch of the route) and your best-rated entries as posters. There is also a 9:16 story version that combines the highlights with your travel numbers.
• The Year Reel. A flight across a 3D globe through your year in date order, with a card at each stop showing what, where and when, and a finale with your totals. It plays in the app and does not export a video; if you want a clip, screen-record it.

The travel half has its own page: travel wrapped.

Not only this year

The part platform recaps cannot copy: in Stadu every year has a recap, permanently, including the ones you fill in later. Log the big trips and favourite films of 2019 and 2019 has its own Wrapped. The All chip sums up everything, which is how you get a card that says “My life so far”.

The honest limits

Your own Wrapped is only as good as what you put in. Spotify does the counting automatically because it watches you listen; Stadu does not watch anything. It does not scrobble music, does not track your location and does not read your camera roll. You log things yourself, which is a minute here and there, and also why nothing about your year sits on anyone’s server.

If what you want is a recap of your listening, Spotify’s is better than anything you can build. For the rest of the year, you have to be the one who writes it down.