Spotify Wrapped 2025 adds its first multiplayer feature with ‘Wrapped Party’

Spotify Wrapped is again. After last year’s widely criticized flop that included an AI podcast as its spotlight, the streamer’s extremely anticipated annual evaluate characteristic has returned to its roots. This 12 months, Spotify is doubling down on what it is aware of works greatest: deep dives into your streaming knowledge, artistic experiences, messages from favourite artists, and different social options.

The corporate claims that Wrapped 2025 is its largest, because it’s introducing practically a dozen new options along with its previous standbys, like high songs and artists. Plus, it’s providing extra visibility into customers’ knowledge than in years previous. For the primary time, Spotify Wrapped is including a dwell multiplayer characteristic to match your listening knowledge with buddies.

Wrapped Celebration, Wrapped’s first dwell interactive expertise, means that you can invite as much as 9 buddies to match listening stats.

Additionally new this 12 months, your Prime Songs Playlist will embrace the play counts for every of the highest songs, so you may truly see how a lot time you spent together with your favourite tracks.

Different standout options this 12 months embrace an interactive Prime Music Quiz, a Listening Age characteristic, and Wrapped Golf equipment, which match you to one among six distinctive listening kinds.

The corporate believes these additions is not going to solely deliver again the customized, partaking expertise that customers have lengthy anticipated from Wrapped, however will take it a step additional by making it extra interactive than earlier than.

Within the Prime Music Quiz, as an illustration, you may attempt to guess which high tune soundtracked your 12 months earlier than seeing the outcomes.

The brand new interactive Wrapped Celebration characteristic isn’t nearly evaluating the private streaming knowledge you’ve already acquired to your pals’ knowledge, as that’s one thing individuals already do on social media. As a substitute, the characteristic presents distinctive knowledge tales on your group, like who’s the “most obsessed fan,” the “early fowl,” probably the most “choosy listener,” and even one thing as good because the “dinner desk explainer,” that means the one that listens to probably the most information podcasts.

Spotify says these awards replace dynamically each time you be a part of a Wrapped Celebration, so no two classes are ever the identical — even for those who run by them once more with the identical group of buddies.

The brand new Wrapped Golf equipment, in the meantime, will group you into one among half a dozen listening kinds, just like the “Comfortable Hearts Membership,” the “Membership Serotonin,” the “Full Cost Crew,” the “Cosmic Stereo Membership,” and others. You’ll additionally obtain a task within the membership based mostly in your listening knowledge. You may be a membership chief in case your listening decisions strongly matches the membership’s values, a scout for those who’re at all times in search of out new releases, or an archivist for those who take heed to music from previous eras.

One other characteristic, Listening Age, compares your 2025 music listening to others in your age group. To calculate your age, the characteristic considers the discharge years of the tracks you take heed to most. From there, it identifies the five-year span of music that you just engaged with greater than different listeners your age.

As in prior years, you’ll see your high songs, high artists, high genres, and, for the primary time, high albums. Should you engaged with audiobooks and podcasts, you’ll see metrics for these as nicely. Artists, writers, and podcasters can have their very own model of Wrapped as earlier than. And high followers will once more obtain video messages from their favourite artists, podcasters, and, now, authors.

You’ll additionally obtain a playlist of your high songs of the 12 months, as earlier than.

What you received’t discover on this 12 months’s Wrapped is any characteristic that advertises it was made with AI.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, Spotify’s Senior Director of International Advertising, Matt Luhks, admitted the corporate acquired a “lot of suggestions” about its 2024 AI-focused Wrapped expertise, saying it was a “mixture of constructive and ‘extra constructive suggestions,’” regardless of the characteristic driving extra engagement than prior years.

“We take all of that in. We use that as info, insights, [and] inspiration for the way we approached Wrapped this 12 months,” he stated in a press occasion forward of right this moment’s launch.

“What our customers inform us about Wrapped means so much to us, so it was actually informative in how we approached Wrapped this 12 months. And what we tried to construct was probably the most artistic, most modern, most partaking Wrapped ever,” he added, setting a excessive bar for the 2025 version of the now 11-year-old annual year-in-review characteristic.

“We’re the unique and, we consider, nonetheless the very best,” Luhks stated.

Nonetheless, AI was part of the Wrapped expertise. Although the corporate claims the general expertise was not made with AI, it does leverage a LLM (giant language mannequin) so as to add a storytelling layer to Wrapped’s details and figures, and pure language summaries in different elements of its expertise, wanting again in your knowledge.

Spotify’s try to repair Wrapped after a notable stumble comes because the streamer faces elevated competitors from Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and others, which have all launched their very own annual evaluate options, impressed by Wrapped.

“Everybody appears to have their very own model of Wrapped. Now, there’s numerous opinions and replays and rewinds on the market, however we consider that Wrapped nonetheless units the bar for these year-end recaps,” Luhks stated.

Together with the patron expertise, Spotify shared its high artists, songs, albums, podcasts, and audiobooks for the 12 months, with high winners that included, respectively, Dangerous Bunny (high tune and album), Joe Rogan (“The Joe Rogan Expertise” podcast), and Rebeca Yarros (creator of “Fourth Wing”).