Year-end review and Apple’s answer to Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, has arrived, but it’s still no match for Spotify’s personalized look back at your musical year. The Apple Experience — available via URL at replay.music.apple.com — will show you the top songs, albums, artists, genres and other information about your listening history in 2023. However, compared to Spotify’s Wrapped, what Apple’s experience lacks is creating unique, shareable experiences like Spotify’s “Audio Aura” in 2021 or the “Listening Personality” feature in 2022.
These kinds of features appeal to listeners’ sense of self and their interest in how they compare to other Spotify listeners. They’re also tailored for social media sharing — for example, last year’s “Listening Personalities” were each given their own colorful cards that could be posted to a social media app like Instagram Stories or texted to friends. They’re eye-catching, generally fun, and keep up with cultural trends.
In contrast, Apple’s year-end review is based on more standard metrics. This year, Apple Music users can find out if they’re in the top 100 listeners of their favorite artist or genre, and can review the year-end charts, where they’re in for a few surprises. (Taylor Swift is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year, for example.) The chart data highlights the year’s biggest songs on both Apple Music and Shazam, and for the first time, the songs that resonated the most on Apple Music Sing — the company’s karaoke-like song feature on Apple Music.
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Users also receive their own personal chart of the top 100 songs from each year that qualify for Replay playlists. Additionally, unlike Wrapped, which is meant to be a more timely throwback to a moment in time designed to jump on social media for a period, Apple Music listeners can access Replay year-round.
To access Replay, users log in to replay.music.apple.com with their Apple Music ID. While Apple’s content is also optimized for sharing on its social channels or via messaging, it’s not as dynamic, artistic or original as the features that Spotify presents each year — which also vary from year to year, leaving users wondering what their next Wrapped has in store for them.
However, it’s worth noting that Apple Music’s feature arrived just ahead of Spotify’s — apparently hoping to make the jump in music-related social sharing in 2023.
