Why Was Spotify Wrapped 2024 So Disappointing?

Spotify Wrapped has arrived yet again, however, 2024’s rollout has felt underwhelming. Why has this year felt starved of the quirky features that we have come to expect and love?

Like many people across the globe, one of my major annual milestones is Spotify’s annual statistical celebration, and I cannot help but engage in the hype. There’s something really thrilling about seeing my year summarised in musical statistics and the creative ways Spotify presents that information. I am not ashamed to say that my year does orbit around Spotify Wrapped and it is something that is consistently on my mind throughout the year. However, this year’s Wrapped rollout has been somewhat of a disappointment.

For a whole week before the eventual release of this year’s Wrapped, I excitedly opened the Spotify app and hopefully looked around for any sign of accessing my yearly statistics. Even on Wednesday morning, hours before we got our hands on the stats, the familiar feeling of disappointment washed over me when it wasn’t sat waiting for me at the crack of dawn. Apple Music released their conceptually similar ‘Replay’ on Tuesday morning and the jealousy was eating me alive.

Eventually it arrived - I was at work and my friend excitedly ran over to me, exclaiming that it was “Spotify Wrapped Day”. I dropped everything I was doing and scrambled to my phone with heavy anticipation and exceedingly high expectations. There had been a lot of build up this year and unfortunately, it was quite a significant let down.

The main format of Spotify Wrapped is a story-like layout, similar to Instagram Stories. You tap through and get statistics, alongside slides offering unique ways to deliver listening information, that never fail to excite and engage Spotify users. However, this year I finished my Wrapped “story” feeling unsatisfied. In previous years, we have been given our listening Auras, a town that had the most similar music taste to us and, my personal favourite, your music personalities, which gave you a profile based on your listening habits.

This year did not offer any of this: the only feature reminiscent of these really memorable features was a section showing how our listening has evolved throughout the year.

Spotify gave us our year divided into three months of distinct listening, each with an appropriate yet playful descriptive title, very similar to the titles of their personalised ‘Daylist’ feature that they released in September of last year. For example, my September was dubbed “Theatrical West End Broadway Season”, whereas October was my “Pink Pilates Princess Roller Skating Pop moment”.

While I did not dislike this feature - it even made me laugh at the exaggerated descriptions - it felt like a quick promotion of Daylist and a thinly-veiled attempt a viral moment (Wrapped is a marketing strategy after all) rather than a fun delivery of unique statistics. I did expect more varied statistics alongside this and I felt that I was somewhat cheated out of having a deeper, more meaningful look at my year in music at the expense of promoting Spotify’s other features and offering a fleeting laugh.

Seemingly, Spotify shifted their energy this year from developing the more traditional ‘story’ format, to experiment with AI integration. Not only did the AI DJ get a Wrapped Makeover, but Spotify also introduced a short AI-produced podcast, sponsored by Google. Honestly, I was rather excited by the notion of this podcast and I made the wrongful assumption that this would hold the more detailed statistics that I was craving. However, to my disappointment, the podcast simply regurgitated the information that the Wrapped story had already told me - just in a more conversational tone. While I was intrigued by the idea of the AI podcast, I was hoping for more than an AI chat about statistics I had already been given.

Perhaps I am being harsh. After all, the core components were there: the key statistics, video messages from the artists I listened to the most, and, most importantly, the playlist of my 100 most played songs of the year. However, there really was just something missing from this year’s Wrapped. I just felt truly underwhelmed.

Many across across social media seemed to share my sentiment. On Threads, many have called this year’s Wrapped “disappointing”and “underwhelming”, with one user questioning: “Where is the silliness?”. On TikTok, there has been a lot of discourse around the validity of the statistics, with some Spotify users feeling as though it was not an accurate representation of their listening. Personally I do not share that experience, but it has certainly been a contributing factor to the negativity surrounding Wrapped 2024.

I hope that moving forward into 2025, Spotify deliver a Wrapped that is filled with the quirky features and advanced statistics that has really been missed out this year.