Spotify’s end of year “wrapped” feature has become an annual event for those who use the service to look forward to.
Every December, since Wrapped launched, social media is flooded with screenshots of people’s top songs, albums and artists, as recorded by the streaming site.
Wrapped is so wildly successful at creating publicity and good feeling for the company that now other businesses are trying to get on the re-packaged data train too.
That’s why UK travel platform Trainline have just released a 2019 round-up of key stats to their customers.
Travellers can see how much they’ve ‘saved’ on train and coach tickets, how many journeys they’ve made, how much time they’ve saved using digital booking methods, and their carbon footprint,
But funnily enough, people aren’t finding being asked to reminisce about expensive – and frequently delayed – public transport anywhere near as satisfying as looking back over their favourite tunes…
“Are they taking the piss?” tweeted vlogger Jack Dean (who uploads videos to YouTube under the handle Jaack Maate), posting a parody of the Trainline slides that read “You were only delayed 64 times”.
“Like I really wanna be seeing how much money I spent on delayed trains,” tweeted another user.
Train travel across the UK has come under intense fire this year, amid rising prices that appear to increase alongside regular delays and cancellations.
One operator, West Midlands Trains, even pledged they would not pass January 2020's national 2.8 per cent rise in fare prices to their customers, thanks to such a noticeable “drop in performance”.
Meanwhile, others found the round-up brought back unfortunate memories of just who they were travelling so frequently to see.
Above it all though were the savviest travellers who pointed out that buying tickets through Trainline can actually increase the price, thanks to booking fees.
So those “savings” could actually have been a lot higher…
A few people appreciated Trainline’s efforts though, calling the round-up “adorable”. If you say so…
We would rather have a cap on rail fares but who’s counting?*
*our bank accounts.