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NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The end of 2025 is almost upon us. And it\u2019s time to unpack\u00a0Spotify Wrapped<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the\u00a0music streaming giant<\/a>\u00a0delivered its annual recap \u2014 giving its hundreds of millions of users worldwide a look at the top songs, artists, podcasts and other audio that filled their ears over the past year (give or take a month and some change).<\/p>\n Spotify isn\u2019t the only platform \u2014 or\u00a0music streamer<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 to roll out a yearly glimpse of data collected from consumers\u2019\u00a0online lives<\/a>. But since its launch about a decade ago, Wrapped has become one of the most anticipated. And Spotify is billing the 2025 edition to be its biggest yet, with a host of new features it hopes may address some disappointments\u00a0users had last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, what goes into pulling together Wrapped, and what\u2019s new this year? Here\u2019s what to know.<\/p>\n To compile Wrapped, Spotify collects listening data from Jan. 1 through around mid-November.<\/p>\n That gives the company time to solidify finishing touches and deliver its recap to users by early December. But it also means your late November and December streaming habits won\u2019t be included, which may be why your favorite holiday songs aren\u2019t on the list, or other year-end hits.<\/p>\n For top songs, artists and \u2014 for the first time this year \u2014 albums to show up on Spotify Wrapped, the platform looks at a mix of what you stream and how long you listen for.<\/p>\n According to Spotify, users must listen to at least 30 tracks for over 30 seconds each to get top songs. For artists, users need to listen to at least five unique artists for over 30 seconds. And for top album, users need to have listened to at least 70% of the tracks on one album.<\/p>\n The company confirmed that data is collected evenly across all platforms \u2014 and that streaming in \u201coffline\u201d mode will also be counted, as long as the device connects back to the internet a few weeks before Wrapped\u2019s launch. Listening using Spotify\u2019s \u201cprivate mode\u201d features, meanwhile, won\u2019t contribute to any rankings, but will still count toward total time spent on the platform. And Spotify says \u201cbackground sounds,\u201d like white noise, are filtered out.<\/p>\n Marc Hazan, senior vice president of marketing and partnerships at Spotify, said his team started thinking about 2025 Wrapped the day last year\u2019s recap was launched.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a full year production that touches, without question, every function within Spotify,\u201d Hazan told The Associated Press. On day one, he noted, that includes looking at what users think of the Wrapped that just dropped.<\/p>\n Many Spotify subscribers were quick to share disappointments about 2024\u2019s recap \u2014 with some complaining that\u00a0Wrapped was too minimalist<\/a>\u00a0last year. Others took to social media with memes mocking features that didn\u2019t seem to hit the mark.<\/p>\n The look and feel of Wrapped evolves each year, and Hazan notes the development of the 2025 edition was largely driven by last year\u2019s feedback.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve really taken the feedback to heart \u2014 and fueled what we think is the freshest, most action-packed Wrapped experience we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n That includes returning music genres, which were missing in 2024\u2019s Wrapped. The platform is also introducing top albums and audiobooks, as well as playcounts for each song that makes your annual playlist. And the experience is more gamified this year. There\u2019s a prompt for users to guess their top song before it\u2019s revealed and a \u201clistening age\u201d \u2014 which takes a stab at guessing how old your music taste is, based on when your favorite tunes were released.<\/p>\n Spotify has also unveiled \u201cWrapped Party,\u201d a feature that allows users to compare their listening habits with friends who also use the app \u2014 and win their own award-like titles within the group.<\/p>\n Among other backlashes Spotify received last year was speculation over how much artificial intelligence played a role in compiling Wrapped.<\/p>\n The most visible use of AI in Spotify\u2019s 2024 Wrapped was an accompanying podcast powered by generative AI. Spotify didn\u2019t repeat the podcast this year but is introducing another feature, Archive, which uses a large language model to break down your listening on specific days.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the most AI-focused part of 2025\u2019s Wrapped, Hazan said. But the technology is still more broadly supplemented across Spotify\u2019s technical operations today, including in scaling the reach of its annual recap.<\/p>\n \u201cRooted into Wrapped is human creativity,\u201d Hazan said, stressing that hundreds of people work on pulling together the recap each year. Technology like AI, he noted, helps \u201cfast track\u201d and \u201cenhance\u201d the product so it can reach the platform\u2019s more than 700 million users.<\/p>\n Spotify is far from the only company to track what users do on its platform \u2014 and feed back some of that data, with a nostalgic twist, at the end of the year.<\/p>\n Streaming rival Apple Music\u00a0rolled out its annual \u201cReplay\u201d<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday. And YouTube this week unveiled its new \u201cRecap,\u201d which similarly breaks down its listeners\u2019 music habits. Social media platforms, Google search and\u00a0even dictionaries<\/a>\u00a0also offer their own year-end reflections.<\/p>\n These recaps may signal more transparency for users, because they can see some data in their hands. And products like Wrapped have become particularly popular because they\u2019re personalized and now designed to share online \u2014 leaving many to look forward to it as an \u201cannual ritual\u201d of sorts, notes Yakov Bart, a marketing professor at Northeastern University.<\/p>\n Still, one concern is the normalization of now-constant \u201ctracking of digital footprints that consumers leave online,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Spotify Wrapped is able to do is essentially package this tracked data into the form of entertainment,\u201d Bart said. \u201cIt reframes all this digital tracking that\u2019s constantly happening behind the scenes into something that\u2019s fun \u2026 And so, instead of kind of feeling under surveillance, users (are) basically feeling seen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ksltv.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The end of 2025 is almost upon us. And it\u2019s time to unpack\u00a0Spotify Wrapped. On Wednesday, the\u00a0music streaming giant\u00a0delivered its annual recap \u2014 giving its hundreds of millions of users worldwide a look at the top songs, artists, podcasts and other audio that filled their ears over the past year (give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2185454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[24215,346678,346676,21848,346677,24892,22765],"class_list":["post-2185453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-home","tag-ksltv-com","tag-ksltv-com-utah-news","tag-sports","tag-talk-and-community","tag-traffic","tag-weather"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Its-time-to-unpack-Spotify-Wrapped-Heres-how-the-music.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185455,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185453\/revisions\/2185455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How much of the year does Spotify Wrapped cover?<\/h4>\n
What goes into getting top songs, artists and more?<\/h4>\n
When does Spotify start building Wrapped each year? What\u2019s new in 2025?<\/h4>\n
How is AI used?<\/h4>\n
What does Wrapped say about data tracking more broadly?<\/h4>\n