[…] Many users are complaining of hallucinated artists’ stats, songs they’ve never heard appearing in most listened lists, and more. Some users aren’t happy with the way that Spotify Wrapped looked this year, complaining that it was boring, and not as creative as previous years. […]
One of the most common complaints seems to be that Spotify Wrapped has misreported on the stats in claims to represent. Now, while this has happened in previous years, this year it seems to be a whole lot more prevalent — as you can see in this Spotify support thread. It’s filled with users complaining about top artists they’ve never listened to, songs appearing in at the top of their lists that they didn’t even know existed, or a mixture of the two.
Just anecdotally talking with people outside the internet-o-sphere and you’ll quickly find people with iffy Spotify Wrapped statistics. I have friends who listen exclusively to bizarre, underground punk acts, and their Wrappeds were topped by the likes of The Weeknd and Taylor Swift. Even on the Tom’s Guide team, we’ve seen strangeness — our own Millie Fender discovered Swift among her top artists, yet her songs didn’t appear in her top 100.
Just read people’s reactions online, especially in the trending topic on X or even the announcement thread on Reddit. Many are blaming Spotify’s pivot to AI this year for the lack of personality, and some even hold it responsible for their weird Spotify statistics. I have reached out to Spotify for comment, but I am yet to hear a response.
What can we do?
First off, there are other streaming platforms with year-end roundups. Deezer, for example, has unleashed My Deezer Year, and like everything the French streamer does, it’s filled with creativity and personality. That’s a streaming service with better sound quality too. Apple Music has its Replay feature, which similarly takes you through your year. There are options.
If you’re duty-bound to Spotify, then there is a way to really check your most-listened-to artists, songs, and genres — Track your listening with Last.FM, for example, which gives you breakdowns over the course of the year. Whatever happens, I (and many others) are hoping that Spotify Wrapped is a whole lot better next year.
Why this even calls for generative AI is beyond me. Just post my top 5 artists and top 5 songs. It’s data already available.
Mine said my top artist is Hozier, driving my Goblincore Fantasy Forest phase. I couldn’t name a Hozier song since Take Me To Church, a song that falls into Nickelback territory for me, as in sellouts that get way too much playtime. And no idea how that turned into goblins and fantasy forests.
If you’re a corpo, not integrating generative AI somewhere is seen as a misstep. Shareholders want to know that their money is being used on the cutting edge.
Of course, both groups are clueless as to where generative AI may actually be useful. But ultimately it doesn’t matter.
Listen here, dummy, “AI”. Do you understand?
/s
I think that “take my whiskey meat” song is Hozier. It was popular this year. Maybe you listened to it?
Maybe, it doesn’t ring a bell but I might recognize it if I heard it.
I’ve come to the conclusion my top 5 lists are bunk. I know there is a particular song I listened to at least a half dozen times; neither it nor the artist were on my top lists. Yet somehow Hozier is my top artist? No, it’s broken.
Also had goblincore in my genre. Whatever that is…
Not seeing that Hozier criticism tbh but agree spotify sucks
They seem overrepresented in my algorithms. I don’t particularly like them, I don’t click on them, I’ll even spend limited free skips to rush past them sometimes, yet they seem to be everywhere. I can only assume their label is spending an ungodly amount of money to push them in the algorithm, making me shift from neutral about them to negative. Like how Nickelback was on every radio station despite not really being anything special. Hozier seems to sneak through despite my efforts to curate and train my algorithm intentionally.
So Hozier represents what is wrong with enshittifying music streaming apps to me. Probably not entirely fair of me, but that is my explanation for why I am confused and mildly irritated Spotify would call them my top artist.
Only the podcast style overview is ai generated. Since the two voice are not from real human
One of my top artists is “Ape Escape”, which is apparently the artist for the first Ape Escape game’s soundtrack. You wanna know what the AI podcast said it’s genre was? Italian Synth pop.
Goblincore Fantasy Forest, definitely a real human genre.
I heard that Spotify fired the guy who invented the original Spotify algorithm for everything from wrapped to the discover playlists. I’ll look to see if I can find link and update.
Edit: not sure if is what I read originally https://blog.tunemymusic.com/spotify-wrapped-2024-bad-users-complain/
But I remember the quote
“Everyone noticing that Spotify wrapped is weak this year should remember that Spotify fired the main dude who created the algorithm for them about a year ago (for no reason) and he was also the mastermind between all the genre related data that essentially keeps the place running.
“Enshitification at its finest folks.
They fired the whole wrapped team and replaced them with some AI nonsense.
I hope Spotify gets all they deserve from that decision.
Even if they fire him, his code still exists and is still legally theirs.
Ya but who’s gonna maintain it? You’d be surprised sometimes how one person’s vision is not so easily grasped by another.
What’s so hard about tracking which song has been played how often or even for how long? I can’t imagine how you can fuck this up so badly
Unless Spotify drastically changed their backend it doesn’t make sense why firing one person will make algorithms stop working
They didn’t fire one. They fired 1500. Including most of the Wapped team.
mine was on point
congratulations on being in the 0.001% of all listeners worldw
Hurtin’ hearts need some healin’, Take my hand with your glove of love.
hallucinated
It is just fucking wrong. AI isn’t a living thing that is comparable to a person or animal, or even a plant. It is wrong a lot and that is because it has no motivation or reality or anything like that. It is pattern matching that is not reliable for factual results, and sometimes the results are just wrong.
Good callout. We shouldn’t attribute intent, experience, or any other human characteristics, to software.
Can’t report the same problem. Mine looked very sane for my listening habits.
Same. Last.fm also agreed with what Spotify told me.
Same with listenbrainz though it couldnt capture earlier parts of the year for me.
My favorite song of the year was something I apparently listened to twice. My favorite artist is some duo that I spent seven minutes listening to. I definitely listened to something else more than that.
But it did know I listened to a lot of Behind the Bastards. It got the podcasts right.
Switched to Napster this year. Best artist payout.
How old is this? Why is play music here?
Easily 5+ years old. This exact image was posted on Reddit three years ago. GPM shutdown in 2020. I can’t find the original page on Digital Music News for this image (source text)
If artist payout is your primary concern, take a look at qobuz. They pay even more than napster and tidal.
Or actually buy albums lol
Dropped Spotify after the CEO said artists music weren’t worth anything and raised their annual fee at the same time. Trash company
It looked wrong when I first clicked it, but then sort of restarted and corrected itself, almost like it started with the wrong data cached.
I only stick with spotify because it has the best support on linux
Can any linux users can share their experience with other platforms?
Bandcamp? works good in a browser and supports artists the most
I think Bandcamp is the only platform where I have actually purchased music in the past decade. It seems like a decent model, and I like getting FLAC versions of a physical album I get.
Recently got the newest Godspeed You! Black Emperor album off Bandcamp. Great shit as always.
Seconded on Bandcamp, though I don’t stream through it. I just buy albums and play them on whatever music player I have installed. Usually VLC or Amarok!
Tidal has no official Linux app, which is shocking considering their demographic. But a hero has made an app that gets pretty close. Under the hood it’s the web client with some add-ons to support full quality streaming. The user experience is generally fairly close to an official app.
I used soundiiz to convert all my content over, and of probably over 10,000 songs there were less than 100 unavailable, so library isn’t a concern. The increased quality is nice, but the big reason I choose tidal is that instead of doing unnecessary stuff like podcasts they pay artists better. As much as 3X according to some things I’ve read. I have not verified those numbers.
You mean the corporation you gave boatloads of personal data to is manipulating it to use against you in the pursuit of profit?! [surprised pikachu.jpg]
I switched to Spotube because none of the music apps even have most of the weird songs I listen too, but I still have spotify only for podcasts because there aren’t any platforms that have all the ones I listen too and I’m not looking into finding new ones.
I also don’t want to have 10 apps for 1 podcast each, the closest replacement would be YT music but in their infinite wisdom they combined accounts across videos and music, I don’t want to see followed music artists in my subscriptions on the video app and I’m not paying for 2 premium accounts to keep them separate.
Also apple podcast & music sounds like it might be enough, but I’m now switching to iOS only for podcasts, I like my sideloaded apps thank you.
Sorry I had to vent as this as been pissing me off for a long while.
If you’re on Android, I use AntennaPod for all my podcasts. It’s FOSS that pulls from all the various podcast sources; I have yet to run across a podcast I couldn’t add to my rotation
If you’re ever looking to cut out Spotify completely, maybe see if that fits what you need.
Its been a few days of using the app and honestly I’m loving it a lot more than Spotifys UI, only downside is no good way discover new podcasts similar to what I like but honestly that’s an easy internet search, so I guess there are no downsides that I can’t easily fix.
Glad you like it! Yeah, I wish there was some way to easily discover new ones, but that would take some kind of per-user assessment and a category system for the various podcasts, so I understand why they don’t have it! Probably beyond the scope of what is essentially a volunteer project.
Thanks for the suggestion, will check it out
Is there a good way to sync listening history between platforms? That seems to be a big reason why people have a hard time jumping around between platforms
It doesn’t sync between services, but last.fm can be your tracking source and connects to both Spotify (when I had it… assuming still true) and Tidal (ways to track Bandcamp and other streaming too).
I have to wait for the full calendar year to pass in last.fm, but I get more interesting stats than what I remember from wrapped.
Unfortunately they walled garden themselves pretty universally. I’ve been on Tidal since Spotify fired all those people and have been really enjoying it.
Maybe I’m crazy but I feel like their recommended music is also way better.
Mine says my most played artist is Necroticgorebeast. I’ve never even heard of them. And that name is just so Repugnant!
My wife got Taylor Swift and she never listens to her. My first thought was it must be some kind of hallucination because that doesn’t seem like actual data to me. Even an occasional listen shouldn’t make her top artist.
I’ve always just ignored these lists because I play music for my kids’ bedtime so it’s on every night, all night - therefore my data is always skewed towards kids songs.
Also - my original post is a little cheeky. They’re one of my favourite bands and their latest album is called “Repugnant.” LOL
Slow news day? Who gives a literal fuck
This is happening because Spotify laid off half it’s staff and thought it could get away with it.
