Apple Music did a greater Spotify Wrapped than Spotify for 2 causes

The narrative for years has been that Spotify Wrapped, a glance again at your music listening habits for the 12 months, has left Apple Music members eager for an identical expertise. Apple Music, in fact, has been growing its Replay characteristic for practically as lengthy. Nonetheless, Spotify Wrapped has made vocal Apple Music subscribers jealous every December.

This 12 months, nevertheless, a tide shift appears to have occurred for 2 causes.

Finest Replay but

First, Apple Music Replay for 2024 is the most effective model but.

Apple lastly addressed the most important grievance about its model of Wrapped: it takes you out of the Music app and onto the net the place signing in is required. That’s nonetheless true in some cases (the Mac and Imaginative and prescient Professional for instance), however the Music app on iPhone and iPad presents the total Replay expertise with out leaving the app.

Replay can also be simply actually good this 12 months. Insights like being within the prime 100 or 1000 listeners for an artist or whole listening minutes per artist and tune make it a data-driven and interesting take a look at your listening habits. Apple has additionally designed Replay to be particularly shareable with an Instagram Tales-like presentation and sharable photos and a brief video for posting on social.

Apple additionally has Replay playlists that replace because the 12 months progresses, however the full Replay recap is the place the magic exists.

AI Wrapped slop?

In the meantime, over in Spotify world, the originators of the concept are taking lots of damaging suggestions from disillusioned customers this 12 months. Sarah Perez at TechCrunch has dutifully collected a pattern of the underwhelmed and disillusioned.

Chief among the many complaints are that Spotify prioritized the inclusion of an AI podcast for Wrapped over the opposite, intelligent and inventive information tales that it sometimes presents — like those who determine your music persona, match you to a city that shares your musical tastes, describe your “audio aura,” or flip your listening historical past right into a sport you may share with buddies, amongst different issues. Others are upset over the shortage of extra detailed stats and the exclusion of knowledge they’ve come to anticipate, like prime music genres and prime podcasts. Spotify declined to make clear how they determined which options to incorporate.

On X, various individuals are sharing their suggestions alongside the #SpotifyWrapped2024 hashtag, the place they’re describing this 12 months’s annual evaluate of their listening historical past as “boring,” a “flop,” “underwhelming,” a “disappointment,” and extra. Though this hasn’t stopped individuals from sharing screenshots of their Wrapped, a scroll by way of the hashtag at present surfaces extra complaints than accolades.

The AI podcast, powered by Google’s Pocket book LM software, is a intelligent strategy to introduce the software to Spotify customers. I’ve personally loved experimenting with Pocket book LM and located the AI-powered podcast it creates to be spectacular. Nonetheless, it appears to have struck a chord amongst Spotify listeners in a nasty manner.

What do you assume? Have you ever observed Apple Music Replay getting higher or Spotify Wrapped getting worse? For me, I’ve been an Apple Music member because it was known as Beats Music. Spotify’s UX has simply by no means been interesting to me. However we’re curious in your ideas. Has Apple exceeded the place Spotify has backtracked?

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