• by Danielle Oster , December 8, 2024

It’s rare for audiences to care enough about a marketing campaign to anticipate it annually. But every year, listeners eagerly take to social media to share and discuss the “Spotify Wrapped” retrospective that reviews users’ listening habits.

For its tenth iteration, Spotify included some new features and refreshed branding. In-app features include a “Your Music Evolution” experience and playlist, documenting users’ evolving listening trends over the course of the year. Spotify also revamped “Your Top Artist” to include “longest listening streak,” as well as the return of a feature informing users what percentage of listeners they are in for their top artist. They also introduced a new “Your AI Podcast” feature “delivered by two dynamic hosts using generative AI” to provides a deeper dive into users’ listening habits.

For the second consecutive year, the top global artist spot went to Taylor Swift There's' also an “easter egg experience” designed for Swifties, with  custom mini-animation clips tailored to different “ears” of her career, and an AR “Friendship Bracelet” experience via Snapchat.

The platform also continued its annual practice of promoting the “Wrapped” feature with a series of OOH ads in major cities sharing the year’s top picks, and other intriguing listener stats. This year’s OOH campaign gets the “Taylor’s Version” treatment – with billboards across major globally celebrating how Swifties in each country consumed Swift’s music. Billboards will run in New York City, Toronto, Jakarta, São Paolo, Manila, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Miami.

This year, Spotify also partnered with soccer teams FC Barcelona and FC Barcelona Femení on videos posted to brand channels on platforms including YouTube and Twitter,  showing players including  Lamine Yamal, Robert Lewandowski, and Alexia Putellas, receiving their “Wrapped” results on custom jerseys.

The brand’s social media posts also opened the conversation up to some unhappy fans, however. In addition to the perennial complaints that “Wrapped” didn’t accurately reflect their listening habits, commenters complained about some of this year’s changes – including the main “Wrapped” feed describing users’ listening habits with newly invented, often nonsensical, subgenre names, like “chill skateboard emo rap” or “pumpkin spice permanent grunge wave.”

Commenters also criticized Spotify for its use of AI. One said, “”AI sucks. Maybe rehire the 1,500 employees you laid off.”

It didn’t help that Spotify released “Wrapped” later than in previous years, and other commenters weighed in that it was not worth the wait or failed to live up to past iterations.