Users share slices of self with UCLA student’s viral website Spotify Pie

This post was updated July 4 at 9:46 p.m.

Darren Huang has baked up a viral treat.

The third-year computer science student created Spotify Pie, a website that allows users to view a breakdown of their listening history on Spotify. This information is presented in a multicolored pie chart with categories split by specific genres, such as Oxford indie and tropical house. Huang said he made the Spotify Pie – which took five hours to code – as a recreational personal project after brainstorming the idea with a friend.

“At the time, I just wanted to make something for fun because it was the weeks between midterms and finals,” Huang said. “We thought, ‘Oh, it’d be pretty cool to make a visual chart because I don’t think it’s been really done before.'”

Huang said he was walking one day with second-year data theory student James Cobb when they thought to make a visual representation of people’s music listening habits since they had yet to see such an analytical tool. While platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music regularly offer users yearly breakdowns of their listening data, Huang’s Spotify Pie provides an instant monthly recap in the form of a pie chart.

[Related: New PEER Lab uses sensory experiences to explore music from global perspective]

On the software side, Huang said, the website was built with React, a JavaScript library used for building user interfaces. He said the website uses the software in the Spotify application programming interface to collect data from the music service, such as users’ listening history and the genres of songs in their playlists. After obtaining this information, Huang said Spotify Pie uses that data to reference another music encyclopedia application programming interface in order to show users their top genres, which range widely in specificity.

While Huang said he did not place much emphasis on the site’s design, he tried to use large fonts and a variety of colors in an attempt to grab the attention of Instagram users. In terms of ensuring the webpage runs smoothly, Huang said the increased activity on the site was something he was not initially expecting nor prepared for, as the site kept crashing because of the amount of online traffic.

By the end of the first week following Spotify Pie’s release, Huang said the site had been visited 20 million times. Jo Choi, a third-year computer science student and friend of Huang, said the reason Spotify Pie gained traction was because a user’s results are easy to share, as all of the information can be displayed in a single screenshot.

On Instagram, a sticker circulated on users’ stories, inviting them to post screenshots of their personal Spotify Pies. The sticker, titled “add ur spotify pie !!” has been used more than 72,000 times alongside screenshots of users’ results posted on Instagram stories, with users such as Madison Beer and the official Peppa Pig account taking part in the trend.

Given the positive response to the site, Huang said he has had unexpected encounters, such as when one person Huang met at a concert in Europe asked him what his Spotify Pie results looked like, not knowing he was the creator.

Cobb said the appeal of Spotify Pie comes from the idea of sharing one’s music taste, specifically their favorite artists.

“It’s kind of like sharing a little piece of yourself,” Cobb said. “There’s that appeal (of) how you can share interests with people through art and music.”

[Related: Music supervisor for Emmy-nominated ‘Euphoria’ discusses show’s stylistic use of sounds]

As for future plans, Huang said he will work with a startup company this summer to expand on the idea of Spotify Pie by building a more complex visual representation of users’ music tastes. Reflecting on the project, Huang said he believes Spotify Pie has helped people express another side of their personalities in an interactive way.

“It just comes down to the human desire to show off who you are,” Huang said.