Each year after daylight savings time ends, as the days get shorter and drearier, there’s always two questions on my mind: “what am I going to do for the holidays?” and “when is Spotify wrapped coming out?”
Spotify, the world’s most popular streaming service, releases end-of-year summaries for each user’s listening habits, including minutes listened, top artists, top songs, and similar stats in their annual format, Spotify wrapped. Since its inception in 2016, Spotify wrapped has become a worldwide cultural phenomenon, and today it is one of the most highly-anticipated events in music popular culture. While many other streaming services have also introduced their own versions of year-end summaries, Spotify’s wrapped remains the most popular and widely-awaited event, so I’ll be focusing on that. Nothing but love to all of the beautiful citizens of the world who choose to use other platforms or physical formats for their music listening.
There’s no set date for when Spotify releases their wrapped every year; it usually happens either during the last week of November or the first week of December, leading fans to begin speculating and anticipating when wrapped will be released several weeks before it comes out. There’s also the element of surprise when wrapped is finally released each year, since nobody can truly, accurately predict its release date.
Anyway, after weeks of googling “when is Spotify wrapped coming out 2024?” and refreshing it constantly over the last few days, I woke up yesterday morning to the delightful message I’d been waiting for: “your wrapped 2024 is here!” I immediately clicked on the link, excited as could be, and there they were– my favorite artists and favorite songs of the year… all Drab Majesty, which I half-expected. But for some reason I couldn’t quite place, I left the wrapped experience feeling quite… underwhelmed.
As soon as I logged into social media, I learned many Spotify users were also feeling disillusioned with 2024’s wrapped.
— 🎄 (@leveagoramesmo) December 4, 2024
In past years, beyond releasing stats of a user’s favorite artists and tracks, Spotify would usually release some kind of new feature alongside it each year. For example, in 2018, Spotify showed users their most listened-to musical subgenre, and even had a slide slowing the astrological sign of the artists that user listened to the most.
In 2019, Spotify showed users the music they listened to most by season- another unique, visually engaging way to reflect on their tastes throughout the year.
In 2021, Spotify implemented my personal favorite feature: “audio aura”, a visualization of a user’s listening tastes. I learned my top two moods were “euphoric” and “anxious”, which resonated with me so much that it even prompted me to discover deeper truths about myself. I still cite those two moods, as they relate to both music and my life, often. In 2023, Spotify wrapped showed me a burger of all of the top music genres I listen to, which was cute, and they even included the top genre in everybody’s final summary. They also included a map to show users what city in the world statistically shares their music taste the most. I learned I should probably take a trip to Santa Cruz.
But this year, all we got was a basic list of our top 5 artists and songs. No fun audio visualization or burger graphics, not even a top genre on the final version. We got AI playlist and another AI something, but nothing we haven’t already seen as a feature before. Look at how sad my 2024 wrapped looks next to last year’s version with even just the one missing element:
Some netizens are even theorizing that the AI Spotify uses to count our data was incorrect, citing their last.fm stats as evidence, but that’s all anecdotal as of now. At the end of the day, if you’re one of those people complaining about the songs you listened to most showing up on your wrapped, remember:
Spotify, we love you. Please make it up to us next year. Bring back audio auras.
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