Spotify Wrapped is again. After final yr’s broadly criticized flop that included an AI podcast as its spotlight, the streamer’s extremely anticipated annual evaluate characteristic has returned to its roots. This yr, Spotify is doubling down on what it is aware of works greatest: deep dives into your streaming information, artistic experiences, messages from favourite artists, and different social options.
The corporate claims that Wrapped 2025 is its greatest, because it’s introducing practically a dozen new options along with its outdated standbys, like high songs and artists. Plus, it’s providing extra visibility into customers’ information than in years previous. For the primary time, Spotify Wrapped is including a reside multiplayer characteristic to match your listening information with mates.
Wrapped Celebration, Wrapped’s first reside interactive expertise, permits you to invite as much as 9 mates to match listening stats.
Additionally new this yr, your Prime Songs Playlist will embrace the play counts for every of the highest songs, so you possibly can truly see how a lot time you spent along with your favourite tracks.
Different standout options this yr embrace an interactive Prime Music Quiz, a Listening Age characteristic, and Wrapped Golf equipment, which match you to considered one of six distinctive listening types.
The corporate believes these additions is not going to solely deliver again the personalised, partaking expertise that customers have lengthy anticipated from Wrapped, however will take it a step additional by making it extra interactive than earlier than.
Within the Prime Music Quiz, as an illustration, you possibly can attempt to guess which high track soundtracked your yr earlier than seeing the outcomes.
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The brand new interactive Wrapped Celebration characteristic isn’t nearly evaluating the private streaming information you’ve already obtained to your folks’ information, as that’s one thing folks already do on social media. As an alternative, the characteristic presents distinctive information tales to your group, like who’s the “most obsessed fan,” the “early bird,” probably the most “picky listener,” and even one thing as good because the “dinner table explainer,” that means the one who listens to probably the most information podcasts.
Spotify says these awards replace dynamically each time you be part of a Wrapped Celebration, so no two classes are ever the identical — even in the event you run via them once more with the identical group of mates.
The brand new Wrapped Golf equipment, in the meantime, will group you into considered one of half a dozen listening types, just like the “Soft Hearts Club,” the “Club Serotonin,” the “Full Charge Crew,” the “Cosmic Stereo Club,” and others. You’ll additionally obtain a task within the membership primarily based in your listening information. You could be a membership chief in case your listening selections strongly matches the membership’s values, a scout in the event you’re all the time in search of out new releases, or an archivist in the event you take heed to music from previous eras.
One other characteristic, Listening Age, compares your 2025 music listening to others in your age group. To calculate your age, the characteristic considers the discharge years of the tracks you take heed to most. From there, it identifies the five-year span of music that you just engaged with greater than different listeners your age.
As in prior years, you’ll see your high songs, high artists, high genres, and, for the primary time, high albums. When you engaged with audiobooks and podcasts, you’ll see metrics for these as effectively. Artists, writers, and podcasters can have their very own model of Wrapped as earlier than. And high followers will once more obtain video messages from their favourite artists, podcasters, and, now, authors.
You’ll additionally obtain a playlist of your high songs of the yr, as earlier than.
What you gained’t discover on this yr’s Wrapped is any characteristic that advertises it was made with AI.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Spotify’s Senior Director of International Advertising, Matt Luhks, admitted the corporate obtained a “lot of feedback” about its 2024 AI-focused Wrapped expertise, saying it was a “mix of positive and ‘more constructive feedback,’” regardless of the characteristic driving extra engagement than prior years.
“We take all of that in. We use that as information, insights, [and] inspiration for how we approached Wrapped this year,” he stated in a press occasion forward of in the present day’s launch.
“What our users tell us about Wrapped means a lot to us, so it was really informative in how we approached Wrapped this year. And what we tried to build was the most creative, most innovative, most engaging Wrapped ever,” he added, setting a excessive bar for the 2025 version of the now 11-year-old annual year-in-review characteristic.
“We’re the original and, we believe, still the best,” Luhks stated.
Nonetheless, AI was part of the Wrapped expertise. Although the corporate claims the general expertise was not made with AI, it does leverage a LLM (massive language mannequin) so as to add a storytelling layer to Wrapped’s information and figures, and pure language summaries in different components of its expertise, wanting again in your information.
Spotify’s try to repair Wrapped after a notable stumble comes because the streamer faces elevated competitors from Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and others, which have all launched their very own annual evaluate options, impressed by Wrapped.
“Everyone seems to have their own version of Wrapped. Now, there’s a lot of reviews and replays and rewinds out there, but we believe that Wrapped still sets the bar for these year-end recaps,” Luhks stated.
Together with the buyer expertise, Spotify shared its high artists, songs, albums, podcasts, and audiobooks for the yr, with high winners that included, respectively, Unhealthy Bunny (high track and album), Joe Rogan (“The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast), and Rebeca Yarros (writer of “Fourth Wing”).
