On Wednesday, December 4, 2024, Spotify dropped its long-awaited wrapped to sum up each listener’s yearly music taste. “Spotify Wrapped” has been an annual occurrence on Spotify since 2015, revealing each trend and change of a listener’s specific tastes.
Spotify brings up statistics for a listener’s most played songs, artists, albums, and even genres. Not only does Spotify present these generalized statistics, but the much anticipated “minutes listened.” Over the year, Spotify tracks exactly how long users spend listening to music. Joseph Mullen recalled, “I always liked wrapped, but this year I noticed it was definitely a lot shorter.”
This year Spotify introduced a new feature: AI categorizing. “[Spotify] used AI a lot,” Joseph explained. “This is fine because it’s growing, but [Spotify] didn’t use it correctly.” Spotify used odd AI-generated genre labels like: “Pumpkin Spice Cheerleading Pop” and “Catwalk Scene Hyperpop,” which was not the best use of AI. The overall wrap seems like the company was “just trying to get it done this year,” due to many patrons noticing the lateness of the annual addition. For Auggie McCarthy, “the delay didn’t pay off for as long as it took, last year was a lot more personal.”
Despite their bad use of AI in Spotify Wrapped, their custom “DJ” makes enjoyable albums out of a general summary of a listener’s taste. “It helps me calm down sometimes,” Auggie McCarthy stated. “Or the music helps me focus as a gateway to get me to do certain things.”
Spotify, like many other music apps, provides an anchoring source to many as a resource of balancing emotion. Joseph said, “Music is so many things to me… it can calm me down and it can make me feel so many different ways.” Although this year’s wrap may have been lacking, Spotify doesn’t fail to uphold its credibility in providing valuable sources of music and income for listeners and musical artists alike.
