Written By: Sakura Snyder, Staff Writer
UNFULFILLING: Spotify listeners are met with a mediocre year of Wrapped.
When Spotify Wrapped launched its release in 2018, avid music enthusiasts everywhere seemed to excitedly explore this newfound and fresh feature provided on the platform. With a combination of different songs, genres, and albums all “wrapped” into a colorful annual reflection, Spotify Wrapped quickly gained popularity on social media. Since then, it has become a modern musical sensation to share Spotify Wrapped results with others, showing off their listening habits on Instagram or other social media websites. This year held no lower expectations from others, and as listeners tuned into the app in early December, many were looking forward to another great Spotify Wrapped. However, this year’s Wrapped didn’t live up to the hype.
One word: boring. Spotify Wrapped 2024 was an overall dull experience compared to the previous years, for several different reasons. Evelyn Chavez (12) pointed out that listeners missed out on a “top genre and album” this year. Without these distinctive features of Wrapped that made it a solid analysis of a listener’s experience throughout the year, Chavez found it to be an especially “repetitive” affair. Gisselle Cline (12) had similar complaints to Chavez about Wrapped recent lack of features. She firmly expressed that Spotify “eliminated the things that made wrapped fun,” such as “the assignment of random cities and genres.” Cline explained that “it was very messily done,” and that “they could have done something more special and unique.” The length of the Wrapped experience itself was also shortened, in comparison to previous years where listeners received a more in-depth and fun review of their music.
So what caused this obvious drop in quality? It is theorized that Spotify’s abundant usage of AI is the culprit. Implementing AI-generated ads, podcasts, and art into their platform, Spotify founders have seemed to grow an obvious fondness for AI—at the expense of the regular listener experience. Spotify’s massive layoffs of their workforce have resulted in backlashes and criticisms amongst many, including users noticing a connection between these firings and the platform’s conspicuously increasing usage of AI. With an especially shortened and lackluster Spotify Wrapped experience displayed at the end of the year, people’s concerns about AI replacing human creativity have only been heightened.
If Spotify is going to increase its Wrapped’s quality in the foreseeable future, it must first recognize the simple fact that listeners want uniqueness and creativity. Cutting out distinguishable features and replacing them with lackluster AI attributes is not going to do this, as seen by these unfavorable feedbacks.