- Spotify Wrapped missed the mark this year for many users.
- Some Spotify listeners were frustrated by the recap's aesthetic and missing metrics from years past.
- Some also said Spotify relied too heavily on generative AI in the recap.
Spotify Wrapped came out Wednesday, and some of the platform's users are already eager to put it behind them.
The streaming company's year-end recap gives people insight into their listening habits each year, via stats like their top songs, artists, and minutes spent listening.
This year, however, seemed to miss the mark for many. Listeners took to social media to air their frustrations with what they said was an inaccurate or underwhelming year-in-review that lacked the personality and insightful metrics they appreciated from Spotify's recaps of yesteryear.
"I'm not usually one to complain but this was one of the most boring Spotify Wrapped recaps I've been a part of and I've been a member since 2017," one Reddit user said.
This year's Wrapped did away with some of last year's features. It didn't, for example, reveal listeners' top genres or give them "sound towns," which told you a town with similar music taste as yours.
Instead, this year Spotify introduced features like the Wrapped AI podcast, powered by Google NotebookLM, featuring two AI voicebots discussing your listening habits. There was also Your Music Evolution, which gave highly specific, yet also inscrutable, names like "pink pilates princess strut pop" to describe your musical genres in certain months.
Some users felt particularly disappointed with what they saw given they also had to wait longer for their recaps this year. Spotify Wrapped came out on December 3 this year, a few days later than the November 29 release of last year's recap.
"This is what we waited for? This is so lame and anticlimactic. No top genres, no music aura and all the other cool stuff that was there before," another person said on Reddit.
"It's giving turned in homework late for participation points it feels so lame," one person said on TikTok, writing in the video's text overlay that this year's Wrapped felt "inaccurate" and "disappointing."
One user even said they were moved to cancel their Spotify Premium subscription and switch over to Apple Music, which recently made available on a monthly basis its Wrapped equivalent, Replay.
"Spotify wrapped so bad and full of AI garbage i cancelled my spotify and got apple music," one person said on X.
"Wrapped is an experience that fans look forward to every year, and our approach to the data stories did not change this year," Spotify told BI in a statement.
"We celebrated fan-favorite data stories like Your Top Artist and Top Songs with new insights like longest listening streak and top listening day," the company said. "We're always exploring ways to expand Wrapped and bring new data stories to users across more markets."
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the criticisms around the AI features in Spotify Wrapped this year.
Other users who were disappointed highlighted that Spotify underwent layoffs in the last year.
Spotify cut more than 2,000 total employees across three rounds of layoffs last year. In an earnings call this year, CEO Daniel Ek stood by the December cuts as "the right strategic decision" but said it affected daily operations "more than we anticipated."
Spotify Wrapped debuted in 2016 and quickly became one of the most platform's celebrated features, and for many years was differentiated feature against rival music-streaming platforms.
Spotify Wrapped's popularity and easy ability to share the results to social media boosted its popularity and eventually helped pressure Apple to debut a similar recap feature for Apple Music in 2019, which began as a web-only feature.
Five years later, Apple Music finally made the feature available in the app itself.