Spotify Wrapped is something that many music fans hype themselves up for every year. It’s a track record of everything you’ve listened to over the course of a year. (or more like 10 and a half months). Every year people stress about this data and will listen to certain music and, more importantly, NOT listen to certain music just to curate their wrap. It’s probably good to mention that your wrapped isn’t shared with anybody else unless you decide to post it. And even if you do, it’s one post. It’s a single-story post.

Curating your Spotify Wrapped so that it’s “not embarrassing” is something I’ve seen a lot of people do. I’ve heard of people who play Spotify all night so that they look like they listen to more music than they do, playing specific artists over and over to get them in their top 5 for that year or cutting out music they listen to that could be seen by others as embarrassing. This, to me, entirely defeats the purpose of your wrapped. It’s supposed to be an accurate reflection of the music you listened to throughout the course of a year. Even if it’s embarrassing, even if you don’t have as many minutes as your friends.

But some people take their music taste very seriously, especially how it is presented to others. I feel like this is important for a lot of reasons. Your music taste is a good reflection of who you are, especially for people like me who listen to music a lot. It’s something for me personally I don’t even consider until I step back and reflect on what songs I listened to most at certain times of the year. I can remember repeating sad songs over and over for weeks when I was upset, playing loud, intense music when I wanted to block out thoughts, and listening to upbeat pop on days when I was excited or hyped up for something. It’s a reflection of who I am, so it’s cool to see in a Spotify Wrapped.

Something I’ve noticed is other apps trying to make their version of the sensation that is Spotify Wrapped to capture that same magic and excitement. Stuff like Apple Music and YouTube Music do a yearly recap very similar. It’s just a standard for music apps to include at this point. And this year Spotify Wrapped has shown us that Spotify isn’t even trying to stand out anymore. All the other years of Wrapped have had fun things and features to make it stand out from all the other music services. This year, however, the unique thing they had was an AI podcast about your wrapped. Which, in my opinion, is very boring. Also, I’m just not a fan of AI, and the overreliance on AI takes away the fun of it. I liked all the fun features and things they would show about your music listening data in past years, but this year there was none of that. And that to me is very disappointing.