Spotify users are disappointed by a disappointing Wrapped this year

After weeks of anticipation, some Spotify users are disappointed with the streamer’s personalized year-in-review feature, Spotify Wrapped – many even going so far as to call it “boring” or a “flop.”

Among the main complaints is that Spotify prioritized the inclusion of an AI podcast for Wrapped over the other clever and creative data stories it typically offers – such as those that identify your music personality, assign you to a city that shares your music taste, describe E.g. your “audio aura”, or turn your listening story into a game that you can share with friends, among other things. Others are upset by the lack of more detailed statistics and the exclusion of information they’re used to, like top music genres and top podcasts. Spotify declined to clarify how it decided which features to include.

Here’s to more. While this hasn’t stopped people from sharing screenshots of their Wrapped, a scroll through the hashtag is currently met with more complaints than praise.

For example, a top post that called Wrapped a flop has over 108,000 likes at the time of writing.

This year, Spotify has bet heavily on a partnership with Google to transform users’ Wrapped experiences into an AI-powered podcast, rather than the other details and features that typically make Wrapped so appealing. One Spotify user specifically pointed out the lack of “quirky interactive parts” like the “silly personality ratings,” while another noted that the new “Your Music Evolution” feature is “pretty weird.” (The latter had repurposed the niche genres Spotify uses for its personalized daily playlist Daylist to describe how users’ music tastes changed over the year.)

What Spotify users wanted was the same type of top genre information as in previous years, according to the complaints.

Others found that Wrapped did not include their top podcasts in 2024, but this feature appears to have been offered to some podcast listeners and not others, according to posts on X.

Spotify says users must have at least two top shows for top podcasts to be part of their Wrapped experience. A show is eligible if the user has listened to at least 60 seconds of two unique episodes and listened to the show on two different days of the year.

Others said they couldn’t find their Wrapped 2024 playlist. While it appears in the Wrapped feed in the Spotify app as “Your Top Songs of 2024,” your Wrapped interactive experience itself isn’t linked to the playlist, which may be why some people missed it.

The graphic and art designs used for “Wrapped” this year also received mixed reviews, with some describing them as “mediocre,” “really basic,” and much worse, while others expressed that they liked them.

The AI ​​podcast also received a mixed response. Those who had never experienced Google’s NotebookLM before were impressed by the technology, although some expressed a sense of discomfort with the feature. Spotify probably hoped that users would share their AI podcasts on social video apps like TikTok. Instead, a review of the #SpotifyWrapped hashtag on the app shows that many complaints about the feature this year didn’t live up to the hype, with some suggesting AI was to blame.

Additionally, some users linked their disappointment with Wrapped to Spotify’s previous layoffs and suspected that this year’s downgrade was related to staff shortages coupled with an over-reliance on AI. The company laid off 2,300 employees in 2023, which CEO Daniel Ek said had a greater impact on day-to-day operations than expected.

Despite being a year-end feature, “Wrapped” is to some extent part of Spotify’s day-to-day operations, as the company told the press earlier this week that it has already begun work on next year’s “Wrapped.” has begun. Teams from across the company contribute to the effort, including marketing, product, music, podcasts, audiobooks and more. However, Spotify wouldn’t say how many people are working on Wrapped.

When asked for comment on the decision about what to include in Wrapped this year, Spotify simply responded, “Every year we want to give listeners a new and exciting experience on Wrapped.” It’s part of Wrapped’s secret sauce. “