Spotify Wrapped is here! It’s the day the music streaming service provides personalized year-end statistics for each user of their most-played artists and songs of the year. Many people have come to view it — embarrassingly or not — as a sort of holiday tradition they can share on social media.
Perhaps that’s why the audio streaming service’s 2024 Wrapped, which relied heavily on artificial intelligence, was a letdown for many. Some took to social media to express their disappointment with the apparent lack of statistics, like a personalized list of top genres or albums.
Spotify teased this year’s edition in a social media post on Tuesday. “Wrapped is on the way soon!” the company said, recommending that users update the app before the annual feature is released.
On Wednesday, users opening the app were greeted with a Wrapped tab at the top of their home screens, leading to the feature that displays many of the stats that weren’t included in 2024, including total minutes listened, top songs, albums and genres, and “your listening age,” an approximation based on the release dates of music you listened to this year.
Spotify also revealed the top global artist, song, album, podcast and audiobook of 2025.
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Artist: Bad Bunny (19.8 billion streams)
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Song: “Die With a Smile,” Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars (1.7 billion streams)
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Album: Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
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Podcast: “The Joe Rogan Experience”
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Audiobook: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarro
How Spotify Wrapped started
In 2016, Spotify introduced its first version of Wrapped, offering users a playlist of their top-played songs of the year. Since then, it has evolved, even turning into a marketing tool for the company. In 2019, Spotify began providing graphics that users could share on their Instagram stories.
“Suddenly we started to realize that this was an incredible way to get our passionate users to shout from the rooftops around the brand,” Alex Bodman, former Spotify vice president and creative director, told Variety in 2021.
“I’m sure we’d all love to sit down and say it was a marketing stroke of genius, but when it was first built it was a loyalty play,” Bodman said. “I don’t think we had any idea that people would want to share it so much.”
What happened last year?
Spotify relied heavily on AI for its 2024 Wrapped, to the dismay of many Spotify users, when it used two AI podcast hosts to provide an overview of a person’s top songs and artists.
Last year’s Wrapped also provided a new feature called “music evolution” over various months. The music evolution feature was especially criticized on social media, as it described a user’s music preference with silly language, such as “Pink Pilates Princess Strut Pop” and “Surf Crush Beach Reggae.”
Users flocked to the comments section of Spotify’s social media posts that teased the Wrapped release for 2025.
“Spotify Wrapped better give us actual album stats instead of this AI slop,” one user wrote Monday on X, adding a picture of a music evolution example.
“I’m still not over the horrible consequences of Spotify Wrapped 2024,” another user commented on TikTok.
“Are you guys actually gonna give me a proper wrapped this year cuz last year was completely not my listening stats🫠🫠” another commented on X.
