The highly anticipated year-end review of Spotify, known as Spotify Wrapped, has arrived today with several new features. These include an analysis of your listening habits called “Me in 2023,” which describes not what you stream but how you stream it; “Sound Town,” which matches you with a city based on your listening history and shares artists affinity; and a hamburger-style layout of your favorite genres, designed especially for social sharing.
Other popular features of Spotify, such as Blend and the app’s more recent AI DJ, will now be incorporated into the year-end review of Spotify. The latter tool will provide a tailored experience based on your listening habits in 2023 and AI-voiced commentary over your favorite artists, genres, and songs.
At a live-streamed preview event on Tuesday, the business informed an audience that the topic for Spotify Wrapped 2023, now in its ninth year, is about appreciating what is “real.”
Marie Roenn, the Global Group Creative Director of Spotify, explained that the rise of artificial intelligence has made it difficult to know “what content is generated and what is not.” Roenn made this statement while speaking at the event where Wrapped was introduced alongside Spotify’s year-end lists of the best artists, albums, songs, and podcasts. This is an especially timely theme and a particularly relevant one.
Despite this focus, Wrapped will incorporate aspects of artificial intelligence this year. During the first week after Wrapped’s introduction, the app’s well-received artificial intelligence DJ, whose voice and personality are based on Spotify’s Head of Cultural Partnerships, Xavier “X” Jernigan, will guide Spotify users through their Wrapped experience by providing them with music and commentary.
Wrapped will soon be able to use Blend’s collaborative playlists, yet another exciting option. Using Blend, friends can create a single playlist containing music they like listening to. Now, users can construct a Wrapped Blend by pressing on their “2023 Top Songs” filter and then asking their friends to build a Blend with them based on the year they listened to the songs.
In the same way that it did in past years, Spotify has also developed additional entertaining and social components that transform its data and insights into features that can be shared.
This year’s highlights include “Me in 2023,” a personalized experience that will identify users as matching up with one of 12 listening personalities that best define how you listen to music. This experience will be one of the highlights throughout the year. For instance, a “Shapeshifter” would rapidly transition from one artist to the next; a “Luminary” would play the music that is bright and upbeat the most; an “Alchemist” would build playlists more frequently than other people would; and so on… Jernigan informed the audience that he was the latter and mentioned that he created and listened to playlists more frequently than the typical individual.
“Sound Town” also provides a fresh perspective on Spotify’s data by matching users to a place where listening habits are similar and the same artists are frequently streamed. This feature has the potential to help users feel more connected with the global streaming community.
Meanwhile, Spotify has updated how it displays its users’ Top 5’s, which now has your Top 5 genres stacked together in a sandwich-style design. This design was also reflected by the catering choices available at Spotify’s live preview event.
The Top 5 Artists for Users will now allow you to view the month your listening to each artist reached its highest point. This may be due to the time you saw the musician perform live on tour. For instance, in the case of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, fans may have adequately prepared themselves by streaming additional Swift songs in advance. Additionally, it should be no surprise that Taylor Swift is the most-played worldwide artist on Spotify, with 26.1 billion global listens since January 1st. Furthermore, she shattered her record with the album “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” which became the album with the most streams in a single day.
During 2023, users can view their most famous songs, podcasts, and minutes listened to, in addition to the most popular artists and genres.
The Artist greetings function, which allows users to get video greetings from their favorite artists based on their listening history, is also being brought back by Spotify. The Your Artist Messages feature will include over 40,000 artists this year, including some of the most well-known names in the music industry, such as Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, NewJeans, SZA, KAROL G, and Dolly Parton, amongst others. According to information provided by Spotify, the “vast majority” of subscribers will get a message from an artist in the current year.
Following the revamp of the app inspired by TikTok and implemented earlier in 2023, users can view their wrapped feed from the home screen of the smartphone application. Here, users will also find editorial playlists from Spotify’s “best of” collection, merchandise from the company’s most famous artists, events in the area, and more.
Another game finding its way into the metaverse is Wrapped, which connects to Roblox. This version of Wrapped, dubbed “WonderWrapped,” will be introduced in the Roblox program known as “Spotify Island,” which is owned by Spotify. Users can acquire limited editions of the top charts and engage in other features and activities.
Other integrations and tie-ups include a contract with FC Barcelona, which will have players attempting to identify one another’s Wrapped videos and involve Spotify being shown on the LED displays at forthcoming matches. Wrapped will also be connected with Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri (you can ask for your “Top Songs 2023 through these platforms). Meanwhile, other artists, including Ava Max, JVKE, Chelsea Cutler, Lauren Daigle, and others, will participate in the audio-only wrapped “Listening parties” broadcast live online.
Additionally, musicians and podcasters on Spotify will once again have access to their personalized Wrapped microsites, allowing them to evaluate how their audience interacted with their work during the year.
In addition to the introduction of Wrapped, Spotify disclosed the artists, songs, albums, and podcasts it considers its most famous for the year. Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Drake, Peso Pluma, Feid, Travis Scott, SZA, Karol G, and Lana Del Rey were the top artists in the world, in the order that they were ranked.
A special Easter Egg has been added to the Spotify app to celebrate Taylor Swift’s victory. This Easter Egg will cause the progress bar to shift to a color that corresponds to the song’s Era, and the button that represents progress will transform into glitter.
In terms of podcasts, the most popular ones were The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Her Daddy, Huberman Lab, anything goes with Emma Chamberlain, On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Crime Junkie, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, Serial Killers, The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, and TED Talks Daily. You may check other top rankings on the blog that Spotify maintains.
Although Wrapped continues to be an experience that competitors in the streaming industry attempt to replicate with less success, this year’s Wrapped feels a bit regular. A year in which artificial intelligence is being recognized — and even Spotify is benefiting with its AI DJ — we anticipated seeing even more features that AI influences, such as a chatbot that gives you the ability to ask questions about your Wrapped data or, at the absolute least, the incorporation of AI art.
On the other hand, Spotify took a different approach and established the current cultural moment to appreciate what is “real” rather than what is created. It is a gesture to the artificial intelligence movement but not an acceptance of the movement. Perhaps it is a hesitancy motivated by the influence that AI will have on music.
In the end, when artificial intelligence is capable of resurrecting John Lennon, who knows can resurrectapped, on the other hand, continues to be a popular product, as seen by the fact that its user base has increased from thirty million in 2017 to more than one hundred twenty million by the year 2021. Over the previous year, Wrapped grew even more, with interaction reaching 156 million users by December 28th.
