Students are approaching the eventful end of the year of finals and winter break. But wait! It’s usually overlooked as we end the year, but it reflects the year personally for each person.
Spotify Wrapped. After all, what would be a New Year without Spotify Wrapped coming out?
Being called out on most replayed songs, artists, and albums, and to be humbled by avid listeners who have spent thousands of minutes on Spotify, who wouldn’t want to know their yearly Spotify stats?
Many users on social media have agreed this year that Spotify Wrapped is a forgotten trend. Every year, there was a boom of speculation about when it would come out, with users waiting on the edge of their seats to wake up one morning to see Spotify Wrapped. This year, a couple of crickets chirped, mentioning Spotify Wrapped with no success, as the number of views and likes gradually increased.
“Everybody knows it, so every year it gets less and less exciting,” says McKenna Swanson, Senior.
Before this charming tradition began, what did people do to discover their own unique music tastes? The first alliteration of Spotify Wrapped was in 2015. It was named “Year in Music”. It tracked users’ listening over the past 365 days. Yet, not going viral for what it is known as now, it included data on certain users’ most-played songs and the amount of minutes they spent listening to Spotify.
Now, Spotify Wrapped has grown to include features that other apps don’t provide. Spotify Wrapped hasn’t been released on the same day every year. It’s been annually announced anywhere between November 30th and December 6th. As its popularity has grown, its rival apps, such as Apple Music, have made similar marketing campaigns, like Apple Replay. There isn’t any other app that does it like Spotify. What Spotify really stands for (from the other music streaming platforms) is the algorithm they use. It is more reliable because it strictly uses your personal data. Spotify was the first music company to start the trend of yearly music wrap-ups. A record 227 million monthly active users participated in the 2023 Wrapped.
When there was no result over the weekend two weeks ago, it was theorized that it would come out on the upcoming Wednesday because that was the usual weekday that it came out in past years. And so it did! The morning of December 3rd, that’s all students talked about! But was it worth all the waiting?
Given the specialized design of swirl illustrations and handmade visuals, you would assume they would support the idea of making content original. The stylized black and white, yellow, purple, and green art created for each slide separates their company from other music apps. They were so close to differentiating from Apple and YouTube Music in the use of AI in producing music streaming apps and wraps.
The use of AI wasn’t a secret when scrolling down to stop on a specific slide named “Wrapped Listening Club,” where they have 6 connotations along with symbols based on your listening style.
“The use of AI last year made user this years user ignore Spotify Wrapped,” said Ethan Jones, Senior, “Last year the advertised the use of AI when it first came out and that how the collected the data which made the data less accurate because of how it was organized.”
This year, the data was purely the statistics collected from the app, not AI, including data that was new and not the usual date like the amount of music minutes listened and ranking of most listened artists.
“Spotify has been threading AI through its products for years, but 2025 was the year that the technology made its way to the core of the streaming platform and the music industry as a whole,” wrote the Rolling Stones Philippines. Including the Artificial Intelligence DJ, which no one seems to use.
“The DJ function I always disliked on the update a couple of years ago. It was so weird, it’s boring to come up with something that isn’t used,” said Senior, Tenille Heflin, “Spotify could have been more creative without a generated system.”
