With 2024 coming to a close, Spotify users eagerly awaited this year’s Wrapped. However, after receiving their results, users felt their results were inaccurate. It was on Wednesday, Dec. 4, that Spotify released its routine Wrapped statistics to its users. Many became skeptical that this year’s Wrapped was created by heavily relying on new features incorporating artificial intelligence.
Any users on Spotify will get their Wrapped as long as they listen to at least five artists and 30 songs for a minimum of 30 minutes; the tracking period starts Jan. 1 and ends Oct. 31. The algorithm of categorizing users’ top songs is simple: whichever song had the most plays will be at #1. Because of the tracking ending before the December, listeners have sometimes been left confused, knowing they listened to one song more than another.
“Through the combination of Spotify’s powerful personalization technology and generative AI, we’ve created hyper-personalized Wrapped experiences that connect millions of listeners worldwide with the music and audio they love,” Spotify stated on its website in regard to 2024’s Wrapped.
A question came to the surface with this statement: was too much AI used to the extent that the statistics were no longer “personalized?”
Due to the controversy of this year’s release, Spotify faced backlash and online blasts from users. Instead of including detailed statistics, such as top albums or genres, the company provided a “Music Evolution” section. Here, users were given their top micro-genres throughout the months. However, these genres are only used on Spotify, not in stores or even for Google searches.
Users also missed the 2023 feature of “Sound Town.” They were connected with people all over the world by pairing them with cities that listened to the same genres and artists.
“I loved the ‘Sound Town’ feature,” senior Julius Hendricks said. “I was super upset to see its removal; this year’s Wrapped was so boring and was definitely AI generated.”
It wasn’t just Hendricks that expressed this opinion; under a Spotify Instagram post regarding this year’s Wrapped, users flooded the post’s comments with their thoughts.
“AI has ruined all the fun things; it’s like finding out Santa Claus isn’t real–feeling disappointed, but still choosing to reluctantly participate anyway,” user @brookielove09 wrote. “Bring back the magic of Spotify Wrapped circa 2019.”
Over the past years, especially for this year and 2023’s Spotify Wrapped, users have been disappointed. They feel like there is less to look forward to with Wrapped. Will the feature end up being exiled altogether due to apps such as stats.fm that record user listening statistics all year round?
“I use an app called stats.fm, and it tracks your music listening and it had different some different things than Spotify wrapped,” freshman Anna Lusardi said. “Not all, but some.”
