Spotify Wrapped: Everyone’s Favorite Holiday

By: Paige Apps, Contributor

Everyone’s favorite holiday has graced us with its presence once again – Spotify Wrapped is back and arguably better than what we had to deal with last year. If you’re anything like me, the annual Wrapped is not just a day, it’s a whole personality, so I think I’m perfectly qualified to speak on this.

Spotify Wrapped began in 2015 as a simple “Year in Music” website that gave listeners a snapshot of their top songs and artists. In 2016 it expanded with richer stats, gaining attention across social media. The feature truly took shape in 2017 when Spotify rebranded it as “Wrapped,” integrated it into the app, and introduced brightly designed shareable cards that quickly helped it go viral. From 2018 to 2020, Wrapped grew into a yearly cultural moment, adding deeper insights and increasingly creative visuals. By 2021, it adopted an Instagram-style story format with new elements like audio auras and listening personalities, making the experience more playful and personalized. In recent years, Wrapped has continued to evolve with fresh metrics and interactive features, solidifying its status as an anticipated year-end tradition for Spotify users around the world.

Many people, myself included, criticized 2024’s Spotify Wrapped as “underwhelming,” “boring,” or even a “flop,” largely because it lacked many of the fun extras people had come to expect. Others felt the design and visuals were lazy or uninspired compared to previous years The shift toward AI-driven features, like an automated podcast summarizing users’ listening, further frustrated listeners who missed the interactive elements of earlier versions. Similarly, the podcast creeped me out altogether, particularly when they started saying my name. No thanks! Altogether, the disappointment was strong enough that some people even considered switching to other streaming platforms they felt provided better year-end summaries.

Now looking at the 2025 Wrapped, there is a significant upgrade from last year. It features a refreshed, modern “visual mixtape” design and brings back the classic stats – top songs, artists, genres, podcasts and total minutes listened – while introducing several new elements. For the first time, Wrapped includes top albums, along with a new “Listening Age” metric that estimates your music-age based on the eras you play most. I was surprised to see my age was 79 (shoutout Dr. Cochrane’s Bob Dylan class last semester), but as Wrapped says, “age is just a number.” Spotify also added themed “Clubs” that assign you a listening identity and enhanced the Top Songs playlist with actual play counts. Social interactivity is a major focus this year: Wrapped now includes a multiplayer “Wrapped Party,” allowing up to nine friends to compare stats live, as well as a “Top Song Quiz” and a deeper Listening Archive that highlights notable moments from your year of listening. If you’re an avid podcast and audiobook listener on the app, they appeared more prominently in this year’s recap than in the past, even including genres.

One particular feature that I loved was the addition of the top albums, something I only see in my obsessive streaming feature app “stats.fm”, because as I said earlier, Spotify Wrapped is a personality trait of mine. I also particularly liked the “Top Artist Sprint” that shows listeners when artists had been at the top of their leaderboard. Personally, Gregory Alan Isakov was miles ahead the entire year, but I can’t complain. I do feel sorry for the runner-ups – they didn’t stand a chance. Speaking of top artists, I LOVED seeing the top listener leaderboard this year!!! I was very impressed with myself to see that I managed to sneak into the top 200 Gregory Alan Isakov listeners out of 8.4 million – that’s the top 0.001% you know!

I like to have a little friendly competition for myself every year on this fine day and see if I can beat the listening minutes of the previous year. Unfortunately, I have yet to pass the whopping 278,240 minutes of 2024, but I think I did pretty well with 254,169 this year. That’s 176 days. Nice.

As another sacred holiday comes and goes, I can only look forward to seeing if “Freak Folk” makes another appearance as my top genre – what even is that? Till next year, keep on listening!