Spotify ends year on bad note

By Nadia Paschal

This week marked the most exciting point of the year for all music lovers —- the release of Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay. For the past few weeks, people have been anxiously waiting to see who their top artists and most listened to songs were throughout the year. 

Being a loyal Spotify user, I can’t speak too much on the statistics that Apple provided, but what I do know is that it’s gotten a better reception than what Spotify put out.

As November came to a close, and Wrapped still hadn’t come out, Spotify users grew anxious and questioned when it was going to drop.

It finally came out Dec. 4 and I was incredibly underwhelmed by what it was. I enjoyed seeing who my top five artists were as well as my top songs, but that was the extent of my excitement. Compared to previous years, this time around was lacking in many areas and did not provide any new features.

Last year, Spotify spoiled its users and included many interesting and visually appealing features in the 2023 Wrapped. It included a map that showed which city matched your taste in music, cards that revealed what kind of listener you were, your top five genres and what month you listened to your top five artists the most. It also introduced video messages users received from their most listened to artist, which I loved and thought was so fun.

The only thing that was kept this year was the video message, which was exciting to see again, yet it did not make up for the overall lackluster experience. 

Aside from the video and the standard statistics — top five artists, top five songs, amount of time spent listening and number of songs played that year — there was really only one feature included, which wasn’t anything new.

This year’s main — and only — feature showed how your music taste evolved throughout the year, and it looked really familiar. In September, Spotify released a new feature called daylist, which generated playlists throughout the day based on what you usually listen to at that time of the day. It was clear that this year’s Wrapped took inspiration from that. 

While it is fun to check the daylist every time it changes, I wasn’t particularly happy to see it in Wrapped for a few reasons.

For one, the novelty of it has worn off. Sure, it’s a fun way to find new music, but the way they present it makes no sense. Each playlist is titled in the most bizarre and nonsensical way, using words that sound completely made up. To have this as the only feature is stale and disappointing.

Many Spotify users speculate that this year’s Wrapped isn’t as good as it once was because of the use of AI. 

Last December, the company laid off more than 1,500 employees after failing to meet profit and user growth goals. Prior to that 600 employees were let go in January and another 200 in June.

Some have attributed these layoffs to the increased use of AI throughout the app, believing that this is how the company is dealing with the lack of staff while trying to cut costs.

While it’s unclear if that’s true or not, Spotify really missed the mark this year and upset many customers, especially after hyping up the release of Wrapped. From now until next December, I’ll still be using Spotify, but will be slightly annoyed every time I open the app.