Spotify Wrapped is here. Does it matter?

In the Age of AI, the holiday magic of Spotify Wrapped is beginning to fade.

Today, Spotify dropped its annual Wrapped tradition, with colorful sharable graphics and playlists recounting the artists, songs, and genres that we chose as the soundtrack to our lives in 2024.

But this year, I can’t help but wonder if my Wrapped is more of a reflection of what *I* chose to listen to or what Spotify’s algorithms told me to.

AI-generated listening recommendations have never been more inescapably woven into Spotify’s design than it is today. Usually, when I open Spotify, the very first section I see is called “Made For Van,” a set of playlists that are exactly what they’re called - algorithmically made for me. There’s my Discover Weekly that updates on Monday, DJ, Daily Mix 01 (of six different mixes that Spotify generates daily), Daylist (which Spotify updates every few hours), Daily Drive (also updated throughout the day) and my Release Radar that updates on Friday. Then after the “Recently Played” section is the “Your Top Mixes”, all AI-generated mixes than span from being based off artists (Tyler, The Creator Mix) to genres (Jazz Mix) to decades (2010s Mix) to pure vibes (Upbeat Mix). And below that section is “Recommended Stations” which are AI-generated “radio stations” (which are, for the record, no different than playlists) based on specific artists. Today, these playlists are obviously all Wrapped themed, spanning from “Your Top Songs 2024” to “DJ: Wrapped” to “Your Music Evolution 2024” to a custom 3-minute podcast with NotebookLM’s AI hosts. Why I need all four, I’m not sure.

Now, as much as I love “handmaking” my own playlists (I currently have a library of around 100 playlists made by me, not for me) and listening to 100% human-curated, independent radio (I’m a proud NTS Supporter), I also, admittedly, listen to my daylist well… daily. It’s eerily often quite spot on. It generally knows what I like to listen to in the mornings and evenings, which is rather consistent, but surprisingly spot on during the day when my listening habits vary based on location, mood, weather, activity, random life happenings, a show or movie I watched, etc. I have a rather wide and eclectic taste in music that spans across genres, so to predict, with great accuracy, multiple times a day, every day, which hour I was already thinking, before even opening the app, of listening to grunge rock versus motown soul versus indie pop feels quite incredible. The other morning, I specifically searched for “hard bop” jazz mixes on NTS Radio. That day, I later opened Spotify and saw my daylist for the morning was titled “classic jazz hard bop monday morning”. However, the only reason I wanted to listen to hard bop that morning was to write, which I had no idea I was going to do when at the time my daylist was generated. So in that way, it was quite impressive; one could even say magical.

Still, as much as it feels like my daylist is reading my mind, whenever I choose to play one of Spotify’s AI-generated playlists versus manually search for an artist or song, I’m ultimately listening to what it’s telling me to listen to. Sure, it’s telling me what it thinks I want to hear, but let’s be clear: the AI has the aux, not me. Which means this year, my Wrapped feels a little less like a end-of-year reflection of my musical journey and more like an annual findings report on how the algorithm sees me— or worse, who it wants me to be. Perhaps it would be more accurate this year if instead of getting a graphic that said “You pressed play on this artist x times” it said “In 2024, I predicted you’d enjoy [xyz] and based on the number of times you played this recommended mix, I guess my predictions were right.”

This gives Spotify the power to tip the scales as to who may already be on your Wrapped. By listening to primarily AI-generated playlists, we allow Spotify to create the pool of artists who can even be considered for making it into our top stats. This year, Khruangbin was in my top five artists. As much as I enjoy and would recognize the sound of their vibe, I can barely name one of their songs off top. Texas Sun? So how did they make it in my Top 5?

I’ve noticed that my algorithm sometimes develops an earworm for a specific song or artist. It wouldn’t matter what genre the playlist was— it could be anything from a funk soul mix to a downtempo house mix and my algorithm would insist on sneaking that one artist or song in every mix, over and over again, even if they didn’t make sense. Wrapped told me that Khruangbin is one of my favorite artists, but that’s not true. They were one of my algorithm’s favorite artists. I just listened to it. Through enough consistent, passive, non-intentional listening on my end and potentially intentional and strategic curation on the algorithm’s, I allowed the fate of my Wrapped to be pre-determined.

I believe there are also probably some dangerous implications to being told something about yourself— and about the music for that matter, that— if rooted in predictive algorithms that can be shaped and bought— may not be entirely true.

This year my Wrapped told me that my number one artist in 2024 was Beyonce. If you know me, this would be shockingly laughable. I probably haven’t thought much of Beyonce since March of 2024 when Cowboy Carter was released. Even then, I think I really liked only two of her songs and probably played those two in my rotation for no more than a few days. Her music rarely makes it onto any of my “Made For Me” mixes, so unlike Khruangbin, there isn’t even room for passive listening error. I truly have no idea how she ended up as number one.

I felt somewhat similar last year, pre-brat era, when my Spotify Wrapped told me that my number one artist in 2023 was Charli XCX. This also felt inconceivable. Sure, I think I had a phase where I played one of her songs more than usual, but even looking back at my Top Songs 2023 playlist, there are so many other songs that I remember running up in plays with the “repeat-one” loop on. However, after being told she was my number one artist, I got a “special” pre-recorded video of her thanking her fans (this year she came in at number two and I got another video from her again). I had a feeling they weren’t reaching out to small bedroom pop producers to send a thank you message to their fans. Which means, there was money behind Charli’s thank you video. And where there’s money, that has to translate to views. There’s a good chance Charli XCX, nor Beyonce, weren’t my top artists— that spot may have become a pay-to-play opportunity. But if this is true, what does it mean to trust a product like Wrapped, designed to reflect yourself back to you, but instead may lie to you and makes you believe preferences about yourself that aren’t true for a price?

What does it mean when we all post our Wrapped to Instagram and tag big stars like Charli XCX and Beyonce, instead of tagging and putting on lesser known, indie artists that we may have actually been listening to more? When Charli XCX says on “Von Dutch”, “It's obvious / I'm your number one” perhaps it should’ve been more obvious when she was my number one in 2023 that proclamation may have been bought and not earned. That can’t be good for emerging artists that rely on Spotify as a platform to release music and build their own fan bases. And that can’t be good for us as consumers to not know what we like because we like it or because we’re being told to like it.

What may be just as bad as not knowing if Beyonce is actually my number one or not, is also not knowing what genre her music, or anyone’s music, actually is anymore. In 2020, my Wrapped told me that “Escape Room” was one of my top genres. Along with much of the internet, I had no idea what this genre was and after going down some reddit holes, came across an article that explained the genre to be made up by one of their data scientists (excuse me, data “alchemists”), Glenn McDonald, based on the listening patterns of users— not rooted in historical context, technique, time or any of the other aspects that are used to categorize and define genres. To me however, many of the artists that made up this “genre” already belong to existing genres and subgenres. This year, I was told that a couple of my favorite genres were “liminal skateboarding alternative r&b”, which one can just call alternative r&b and actually, I think is all probably more leftfield pop, and “lounging funky groove jazz house”, which is mostly deep house, that has actual roots and lineage that can be traced back to Chicago house music artists like Larry Heard aka Mr. Fingers. Being slopped together in this newly constructed “genre” felt purely in service of creating a labeling system to better train Spotify’s algorithms, potentially beginning the process of displacing music from its history and deteriorating the entire fabric of music genealogy as we’ve understood it.

And where has this making up of genres based on “vibes” gotten us? What are the consequences of letting algorithm define genre? Being served AI playlists titled “Ethiopian jazz” without including ANY tracks by legends like Hailu Mergia, Mulatu Astatke, or any other actual Ethio-jazz artists.

While the “vibe” of the tracks may be exactly what I was looking for, what does it mean for the largest music platform in the world to improperly inform and educate its users on what they’re listening to? What does it mean when Spotify no longer cares if a pop song is classified as R&B, R&B classified as jazz, a contemporary UK jazz song classified as Ethiopian?

In a world where outside of music, socio-politically the lines between fact and feeling are increasingly blurred, I’m not sure yet what the implications are of being told at the end of the year through my Spotify Wrapped that my favorite genre isn’t actually that genre of music at all. That my favorite artist isn’t actually my favorite artist but the one who paid to be there. That my favorite music, isn’t actually, stat-for-stat my favorite music, but the music an algorithm predicts is my favorite. This year, awaiting my Wrapped feels a little flatter, more distorted, and less mine. It’s not Van’s 2024 Spotify Wrapped. It’s Van & AI’s 2024 Wrapped. This year, we made this one together.

In the past, whenever Wrapped came out, I couldn’t wait for that sonic walk down memory lane. Who were the artists I couldn’t stop playing? What was that one song I played over and over again when I was falling in love or hyping myself up on the way to the gym? Which artist was I going to proudly rep as being in the .005% top fan base of because I remembered obsessively playing their album on day in and day out, never able to get enough of the high that succession of songs made me feel.

This year, I was happy to see that Portraits of Tracy made it in my top five artists, though I was hoping the trans producer and multi-instrumentalist from Baton Rouge, Louisiana would be my number one (she definitely deserved it over Beyonce). But I also fear that Wrapped is no longer the signature, crafted gift to consumers that it used to be, but simply a shoddy, seemingly inaccurate, and potentially rigged byproduct of the AI and algorithm development Spotify actually cares about. Perhaps Wrapped simply doesn’t matter as much to us because we don’t matter as much to Spotify, rendering a once popular present a now dully irrelevant stocking stuffer or gag gift. And at this point, who’s really waiting for the holiday magic of Wrapped to come this one time of year, when we effectively get all the workings of it spoon-fed to us across ten different playlists every day, already telling us who it knows, thinks, or is paid to tell us, who our favorite artists and songs are.

As AI becomes more integrated into nearly every current and aspiring VC-backed tech company, we will continue to be sold a trade-off: ease and efficiency in exchange for personal autonomy (and our data to further train their models and make billions of dollars off products that they’ll continue to charge us to use, of course). In the case of Spotify, this looks like never having to think about what you’re listening to ever again.

The first playlist I’ve ever made on Spotify was to play while making pancakes with a friend over ten years ago. Since then (and even before Spotify, burning CDs), I’ve made playlists to make new friends, tell someone I love them, bond with family, soundtrack gatherings and give language to how I’m feeling. And when I’m on the other end of receiving a playlist someone made for me? There’s nothing like knowing someone sat down and heard you in the lyrics, saw you in the melodies, found you in a chorus, and put it all together to played in perfect succession with the 5 second crossfade on. And the feeling you get when listening to a mix another person made and you realize you have the same taste in music and are vigorously nodding your head to every song selection? That’s connection. That’s synchronicity. That’s priceless.

I know time moves the way it does. Records became vintage. CDs are obsolete. But I hope I don’t have to explain to my future kid when they come home and tell me their crush typed “romantic crush vibes” into Spotify and sent them their first mixtape that we used to pick the songs out ourselves. What a tragedy that would be. In the meantime, I will continue to support independent radio like NTS, dublab and Worldwide FM and play mixes made by human hands. Maybe I’ll even make my own 2024 playlist of all my favorite songs I remember being obsessed with this year, without relying on Wrapped to “remind” me. I’ll show my love to my favorite indie artists at the end of the year by buying merch, whether it be merch, a physical copy of their music and/or tickets to a show. I’ll play some records from my collection over dinner with my fiancee. And just remember that listening to music is one of the most active, intentional, human things that we can do.

Still, despite it all, Spotify Wrapped has become part of my holiday season tradition and a sign that one year is ending, and soon, another will be begin. In the same way Santa stops being real, but we still enjoy putting him up in our homes every year to feel the seasonal cheer, I guess I had fun tapping through my 2024 Wrapped. I just didn’t entirely believe it.