Am I part of Beyoncé’s Beyhive? According to my Spotify 2024 Wrapped, it looks like so

One of my favorite times of the yr is when music streaming services present their personalized end-of-year summaries, which permit listeners to see their most continuously listened to songs and artists. It is all the time revealing – and sometimes justifying. For example, I let everyone know that I am a Jagged Edge superfan and have been for years. Without a doubt, yearly, including this one, Jagged Edge makes my top five most listened to artists list. Put it in your pipe and smoke it, unbelievers!

Before we get into the rationale for this season, let me share with you some necessary facts and figures about my yr of listening. I’m primarily a Spotify user, so all stats come from there; I use Tidal sparingly and just for DJ purposes, and surprisingly, I have almost completely stopped using Apple Music, but I don’t know why. Since you asked, the song I listened to probably the most in 2024 (a minimum of until November) was “Made For Me” by Muni Long. According to Spotify, I’ve listened to this song 81 times, but deep down in my heart and soul that total feels low; I wonder what number of seconds you’ve to audition for it to count as a full audition. But I also watched the video tons of times and listened to it often via TikTok. Either way, it’s a trace. I still think “Made For Me” is one of the best songs of all time.

In 2024, I listened (only) to 23,986 minutes, which is barely about 388 hours of listening (a mean of just over an hour per day). It surprises me what number of hours that’s, because I spend MUCH more time listening to podcasts than albums today, but when I listen to music – when I’m driving out of town with the children within the automobile or at house parties – I listen for longer periods of time. Interesting. And that 23,986 consisted of 1,961 artists.

This is where it gets interesting and that is where we come to my top five songs, so as: “Made For Me” by Muni Long, “Kontrol” by Maleek Berry, “Bodyguard” by Beyoncé, “Bodyguard” by Darkoo “Favourite Girl” featuring Remy and “Special” by Mat.Joe and Thando. My top five artists are Beyoncé (!!!!), Muni Long, Mary J. Blige (which songs), Jagged Edge (endlessly JE), and Common (I’m as surprised by this as Beyoncé).

Speaking of Beyoncé, the most important surprise of the whole season of Wrapped was that not only was Beyoncé my primary artist, but that I listened to her for 1,326 minutes, which someway puts me in the highest 1 percent of Beyoncé’s listeners. There are a couple of things to unpack here, pun intended: for starters, Beyoncé released “Cowboy Carter” on March 29, 2024; “Cowboy Carter” was Bey’s foray into the world of country and Americana music, intended to upend the narrative of the genre as a whites-only venue. To say I like the album could be the understatement of the yr; I liked it so much that I used it to teach part of an opinion writing course at Howard University through the spring 2024 semester.

To do a fast science and math breakdown, Bey’s 1,326 minutes is about 17 spins of “Cowboy Carter,” which lasted just over 78 minutes. With mathematical due diligence, this equates to 22 hours of Bey. First of all, I feel like I’ve been listening to “Cowboy Carter” so much more often (see my Muni Long comment above), but only listening to it in its entirety about 17 times someway puts me in the highest 1 percent of Beyoncé listeners on Spotify. stunning.

People really didn’t mess with this album, did they? How is 17 views of a Beyoncé album enough to put me in the highest 1 percent of listeners? Seriously. Beyoncé has a complete fanbase that goes by her entire name (BeyHive), and someway my 17 spins of “Cowboy Carter” mainly made me a member of the BeHive Elite Lounge Club. Something bad is going on within the state of Denmark. Beyoncé’s most avid listeners could also be on one other streaming service (or YouTube, for instance), but 1,326 minutes is not much for an artist who’s literally one of probably the most bankable artists on the planet.

With that said, I’d like to know if my newfound Beyoncé One-Percenter status entitles me to some kind of fan club package. Will I get silver shoes? Hat? Stunning African American flag? Are there protocols I must follow now to ensure other people know I am within the Hive? Will I get any bees? I’m recent to this life, so I have so much of questions. While I have all the time been a fan of Beyoncé, being in the highest 1% of listeners is a brand new place for me; This can also be the primary time in years that I’ve checked out Wrapped’s year-end stats on Spotify and seen that Bey was on any of my lists. If Wrapped lists existed within the era of self-titled albums, my ENTIRE list could be Bey and her songs. Especially “XO”. I still love this album as much as XO.

Either way, I’m excited to enter this recent phase of life, and as a show of acceptance, I will henceforth spell spaghetti with two “i”s, like “Spaghetti”

Cowboy Jackson is out.