Did Spotify just pull one over on us?

Unwrapping your Wrapped

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

If Spotify is going to manipulate our listening data, they could at least make mine less embarrassing. —Kate

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In terms of public opinion, Spotify Wrapped peaked last year. 2024’s “AI podcast” stunt fell predictably flat against 2023’s viral listening cities, and the entire thing just felt phoned in following significant company layoffs. Of course, the whole point of Spotify Wrapped is just to reflect data that you yourself generated. But a lot of our behavior, like listening to the same song over and over again, can be unconscious, so Wrapped allows us to learn things about ourselves we don’t see—which is why it feels particularly personal if you, like so many this year, think Spotify got it wrong.

This isn’t the first time people have taken issue with their Wrapped results. Last year, listeners (myself included) noticed that the algorithm basically forced certain songs and artists into our top five lists:

What I mean by this is not that Spotify is lying in your Wrapped, but that they spent the entire year positioning certain artists in ways that make it much more likely you’ll listen to them, intentionally or not. For instance, is it any coincidence Taylor Swift was the number one artist this year, when her songs appear on the popular Spotify-curated playlists “just hits,” “Soft Pop Hits,” “Chill Hits,” “Mood Booster,” “Songs To Sing In The Car,” “scarf season,” “Songs To Sing In The Shower,” “teen beats,” “Happy Hits!” “Confidence Boost,” “Villain Mode,” and finally “Christmas Hits,” “Christmas Pop,” and “Country Christmas”?

Algorithms are ruining Spotify Wrapped

This year, however, people aren’t mincing words. Many vehemently dispute their results and are doing amateur data analysis to back up their claims.