Spotify Wrapped Year-In-Review for Google Play Music Users — 2019 Edition
Thought I’d update my 2018 article and make it a bit more user friendly. You still have to go through the process of downloading your activity, but now the final step has been done for you — I am providing a webpage for you with the script loaded (all you have to do is “upload” your file.)
You should probably not try to go through this process on your phone. A friend of mine tried that, gave up and opened his laptop. He had no problem doing it on his computer.
I don’t have the info needed to do something as in-depth as spotify. I can’t tell you how many minutes you listened, or what your favorite genre was. What you’ll get are the top 50 artists and songs you listened to every year that you have data for. Here’s what mine looks like:
There are essentially two steps to this. One is extracting the data from google, which is still a bit of a hassle. Two is running the extract through my script, which is now as easy as a select and click.
Step 1 — getting the data out of google
Nearly every interaction you have with google is stored with them and you do have the ability to extract and view those interactions. We’re going to use such an extract to get your listening statistics. You have to go into your google account and get it. Here’s how:
Visit this URL: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1
You’re going to want to create a new archive, available under the heading “CREATE A NEW ARCHIVE.” You don’t want to download all your activity, so the first thing you’ll want to do is hit that “Deselect All” button, circled red in the screenshot below.
After you click it, all those checkboxes will change to unselected. Then, scroll down until you find an option called “My Activity.”Click that checkbox, circled for in red for you here. (Do not bother with the “Google Play Music” option here.)
Once you’ve checked that, click the thing that says “All activity data included”.
This will pop up. Click “Deselect All.”
All the checkboxes will be unselected. Then scroll down until you find “Google Play Music” and check it. (This is the “Google Play Music” that you want.)
At the very bottom, click OK.
Back under “My Activity”, the thing that used to say “All Activity” should now say “1 product selected.” Next to it is a button that says something like “Multiple Formats.” Click it.
In the popup that appears, next to Activity Records, there is a dropdown that probably says, “HTML”. Click it.
Select “JSON.”
Click “OK.”
It should now look like something similar to this.
Now, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Next step.”
Then you’ll see something like this. Select the options that make sense to you. Sending download link via email and using a zip file are probably easiest. These are the default options. If you listen a lot (and I mean a TON), maybe increase the archive size so that it’s not split up. Then, click “Create archive.”
You’ll get something like this.
Now you have to wait. I did it twice this year — one time it took an hour, the other time it took a minute. I don’t know how long it’ll take for you. When it does finish, you’ll get an email like this:
Click that blue Download archive button. It’ll probably have you log in, for security purposes. After you enter your password, the download will happen automatically. If you downloaded a zip file, and if you’re on OSX, when you double-click it, it’ll create a directory called Takeout, and if you expand that directory, you’ll see this.
It is that file right there -MyActivity.json — which is what you want.
Step 2 — Process the activity.
I’ve made this so much easier than last year. All you have to do is click this:
https://us-central1-steve-personal.cloudfunctions.net/processgpm
The resulting page looks like this:
Click in that rectangle, upload your file, wait about 3 seconds, and your done! Step 2 is so much easier. (:
Troubleshooting
I’ll update this section as I hear more feedback with people’s experience.
- Did you remember to unzip your Takeout file and upload MyActivity.json? I’m not going to try to process your zipped compressed Takeout file — I only want the MyActivity.json.
