photo credit: Mia Harrington
Spotify Wrapped 2024 felt like a step back for many eager listeners waiting for its release this year. Features that once added a personalized and creative flair—like the listening aura, sound city, and top genres sandwich slide—were left out of the profile, leaving fans underwhelmed.
Last year’s Wrapped stood out for its creative approach, offering slides that visualized listening habits in unique ways. The top genres slide, styled as a layered sandwich, gave listeners a colorful breakdown of their music tastes, with each layer reflecting the depth and diversity of their preferences. Meanwhile, adding tarot card-inspired characters, such as the vampire, time traveler, and shapeshifter, assigned to users based on their top genres, added intrigue and personality to their Spotify Wrapped profile.
Also, the absence of beloved features from last year like listening aura and sound city left a dent in the profile this year. Last year, the listening aura slide translated users’ musical moods into vibrant colors, uniquely reflecting their personalities. The sound city slide, meanwhile, lets users imagine themselves in a cityscape inspired by their favorite genres. Both were missing, leaving listeners wondering why the experience felt stripped down.
This year, however, Wrapped leaned heavily on basics: top artists, top songs, and minutes listened. While those metrics are staples, they lacked the spark that made previous years’ Wrapped profiles special. The minimalist abstract designs felt less like a creative decision and more like a last-minute project to engage an enormous audience.
Many listeners felt that Wrapped lacked the creative aspect and design compared to previous years. Instead of introducing new elements or building on listeners’ suggestions, it seemed to focus more on the statistics, leaving listeners longing for the interactive and imaginative features that made past Wrapped experiences so exciting. Spotify listeners have taken to social media to express their disappointment, with many hoping corporate listens to their feedback for next year’s Wrapped.
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