This year, a big change from the last, Spotify took advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create the much anticipated Spotify Wrapped. On Dec 4, 2024, the official Spotify Newsroom site explained that, combining Spotify’s personalization technology as well as generative AI, they created this year’s Wrapped to connect their listeners with the music they love. 

   Meryam Ghobrial (’27), however, wasn’t very pleased with how Spotify labeled her music taste. 

   “I think this year’s Spotify Wrapped was bad. First of all, it took super long to come out, it was super simplistic like there was no effort put into it, and I feel like it was just too basic. I think my summary was pretty accurate but some of my top songs surprised me. [Spotify] shouldn’t use AI to tell you what your listening habits are, because no one wants to wait that long just for AI to do it,” Ghobrial said. 

   Ghobrial especially thought that the genres were “very AI-generated” due to the names “sounding like a Pinterest search”, according to her.

   Caroline Bell (’26) contrastingly enjoyed viewing her annual summary but also had some adverse opinions on the controversial genre names.

   “I liked most of [the Spotify Wrapped], but I did like last year’s better because it gave you more specific genres, while this year’s was all over the place. My summary was pretty accurate, and I don’t have too much of an opinion on [Spotify using AI]. It doesn’t seem like an invasion of privacy because someone else would be analyzing my music anyway,” Bell said. 

   Bell found that, compared to her past year’s summaries, this year’s Wrapped seemed more personalized and accurate to her listening habits regarding her top songs and artists.

   Liam Norman (’25) and Isaiah Heron (’25) both expressed mixed views about the Wrapped as well.

   “I was kind of surprised because I haven’t listened to Drake in years and for some reason he was my number one artist, so I didn’t find my top artists accurate, but I think my top songs were. I think [AI] misconstrued the summary because it seemed to take your whole taste profile and mix it up with your entire listening history,” Norman said.

   While Norman found the graphic design aspects of the summary interesting, he personally didn’t like the idea that AI was being used.

   “This year’s Spotify Wrapped was worse than the other years, but it still got the point across with my top songs and artists, so a win is a win. I think it was pretty accurate because Tyler, the Creator is my favorite artist and I had him ranked for my number one. There were also some other artists that I listen to a lot, like I’m just a chill guy for having Lana Del Rey and Frank Ocean on my summary,” Heron said.

Heron, like many, expressed his distaste for Spotify using AI to analyze his music profile due to the genres he was presented with, such as the one for his month of April, which reflected “super villain, malevolent vibes.”

   “I don’t know what kind of beta version of ChatGPT they used but fire it instantaneously because that does not need to be on my phone and I don’t pay for Spotify Premium for that. Everything AI touched just happened to be bad,” Heron said.

   Whether Spotify Wrapped was widely viewed as something personal or just a fun overview of a year of listening on the app, the use of AI has reached many industries far and wide, even if Spotify listeners favor the big change or not.