Spotify’s anticipated year-end review, Spotify wrapped, arrived today with several new features in store — including an analysis of your listening habits called “Me in 2023,” which describes not what you’re broadcasting, but how. “Sound Town”, which matches you with a city based on listening history and shared artist relevance. and a hamburger-style layout of your favorite items, designed for social media sharing. Other popular Spotify features like Blend and the app’s newest AI DJ will also be integrated into Spotify’s final year preview, with the latter offering a personalized experience based on your listening in 2023 along with AI-voiced commentary around from top artists, your genres. and songs.
Now in its ninth year, the theme for Spotify Wrapped 2023 is to celebrate what’s “real,” the company told an audience Tuesday at a live preview event.
This is a particularly topical issue as the rise of artificial intelligence has made it difficult to know “what content is being created and what isn’t,” explained Marie Roenn, Spotify’s Global Group Creative Director, speaking at the event where Wrapped was unveiled alongside the year of Spotify. ultimate lists of top artists, albums, songs and podcasts.
Despite this focus, this year’s Wrapped will, in fact, include AI elements. The app’s well-received DJ AI, whose voice and personality are based on Spotify’s Head of Cultural Partnerships, Xavier “X” Jernigan, will guide Spotify users through their Wrapped experience, offering music and commentary throughout the first week after the release of Wrapped.
Image Credits: Spotify: AI DJ Wrapped
Another new addition will bring Blend’s collaborative playlists to Wrapped. With Blend, friends can combine the songs they both like into a single playlist. Now, users will be able to create a kind of wrapped mix by tapping on the “Top Songs 2023” filter and then inviting their friends to create a mix with them, based on the year of listening.
Image Credits: Spotify Wrapped Blend
As in previous years, Spotify has also come up with other fun, social elements that turn its data and insights into shareable features.
This year’s highlights include “Me in 2023,” a personalized experience that will recognize users as matching one of 12 listening characters that best describe the way you listen to music. For example, a “Shapeshifter” is quickly moved from one artist to another. “Luminary” plays lighter, upbeat music. “Alchemist” creates playlists more than others. and so on. Jernigan told the audience he was the latter, noting that he made and listened to playlists more than the average person.
Image Credits: Spotify: Me in 2023
“Sound Town” also offers a new spin on Spotify’s data by matching users to a city where they share listening habits and the same artists stream frequently — a feature that can make users feel more connected to the global streaming community.
Image Credits: Spotify: Sound Town
Meanwhile, Spotify has revamped the way it shows users their Top 5, with your Top 5 items stacked in a sandwich-style design — which was also reflected by the feed options in Spotify’s live event preview.
Users’ top 5 artists will now allow you to see the month that listening peaked for each artist. This could be linked to when you saw the artist live on tour. For example, with Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, fans may have prepared by streaming more of Swift’s songs in advance. Swift was also surprisingly Spotify’s most streamed artist worldwide with 26.1 billion streams worldwide as of January 1 and broke her own record with “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” becoming the most streamed album in one day.
In addition to top artists and genres, users will once again be able to see top songs, podcasts and listening minutes in 2023.
Image Credits: Spotify Wrapped: Sounds minutes
Spotify is also bringing back Artist Messages, a feature where fans will receive video messages from their favorite artists based on their listening history. This year, Your Artist Messages feature will feature over 40,000 artists, including big names like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, NewJeans, SZA, KAROL G, Dolly Parton and more. Spotify estimates that the “vast majority” of users will receive a message from an artist this year.
Keeping with the app’s TikTok-inspired redesign earlier in 2023, users will access their Wrapped feed from the app’s Home screen. Here, they’ll also find Spotify’s “best of” editorial playlists, merch from their top artists, concerts nearby, and more.
Image Credits: Spotify Wrapped Home Feed
Wrapped is also making its way to the metaverse, with a Roblox tie-in. Spotify’s Roblox app, “Spotify Island,” will feature a version of Wrapped called “WonderWrapped,” where users will be able to receive limited-edition merchandise, actually climb the charts, and participate in other features.
Other integrations and engagements include a deal with FC Barcelona, which will see players try to out-guess each other wrapped in video, and will see Spotify appear on LED screens at upcoming matches. Wrapped will also integrate with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri (you can ask for “Top Songs 2023”). Meanwhile, audio-only Wrapped “Listening Parties” will be streamed live on the web with featured artists including Ava Max, JVKE, Chelsea Cutler, Lauren Daigle and more.
Spotify artists and podcasters they will also once again have access to their own personalized Wrapped microsites where they can check how their fans have connected with their work over the course of the year.
Image Credits: Spotify: Artists wrapped
Image Credits: Spotify Podcasters wrapped up
Alongside the release of Wrapped, Spotify also revealed its top artists, songs, albums and podcasts of the year. Globally, the top artists were (in order) Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Drake, Peso Pluma, Feid, Travis Scott, SZA, Karol G and Lana Del Rey.
To commemorate Swift’s win, Spotify included an in-app Easter egg that will change the progress bar when playing a Swift song to match the color of the song’s season, while the progress button turns into a glow.
Top podcasts were The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Her Daddy, Huberman Lab, anything going with Emma Chamberlain, On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Crime Junkie, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, Serial Killers, The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett, and TED Talks Daily. Other top lists can be viewed on Spotify’s blog.
While Wrapped is still an experience that competing streamers try to replicate with less success, this year’s Wrapped feels a bit routine. In a year where artificial intelligence is celebrated – and even Spotify is benefiting from its AI DJ – we expected to see even more AI-inspired features, such as a chatbot that could ask about your Wrapped data or the inclusion of AI art at the same stage barely. Instead, Spotify has moved in the opposite direction, now dubbing the cultural moment to celebrate what’s “real,” not what’s being created. It’s a nod to the AI movement, but certainly not an embrace — and perhaps a hesitancy over how AI will affect music. After all, when AI can resurrect John Lennon, who knows what’s still real?
However, Wrapped remains a successful product, having grown from 30 million users engaging with the experience in 2017 to more than 120 million by 2021. Last year, Wrapped became even bigger, seeing engagement reach 156 million users by December 31.
