[…] 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.
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
Technically you could use apple music on Android though?
But then we have the double payment problem again.deleted by creator
It definitely sucked this year. The stats were just boring and not as extensive. One thing I found weird was that after watching my wrapped, I got an alert to check out my stats. But the alert gave me a stat that was interesting, but it wasn’t included in my wrapped. It’s almost like Spotify forgot to include all the stats in the wrapped that it meant to.
i listened to the new eminem album once and it said he was my #2 artist. i had a day where i listened to nothing but aphex twin and he wasn’t on the list. busted for sure.
Switched to Qobuz earlier this year. It has a few issues, but at least it doesn’t have all this absolutely dumb shit that Spotify has. What an improvement.
It just frustrates me how nobody is even close to Spotify Connect nor do they seem to be trying to compete with it. Tidal only half does what I need but I have had a number of major issues with it that are making me go back to Spotify.
That’s your problem? What does it provide that nothing else does?
Seamlessly switching between music players. I can have a song playing on my computer, then switch to my phone when I get in the car.
I tried Tidal earlier this year and that was one of the main complaints I had. Their version only works on specific devices that Tidal is partnered with.
You’re talking about your PIT (place in time) of a file, and not the speakers following you around which I’m positive Spotify doesn’t do.
This is a simple feature that every platform offers, even the FOSS options. It’s not a “feature” of Spotify, it’s just something that every streaming platform does anymore.
Correct, I have to manually select which device to play from, but Spotify also remembers the current playlist when switching. Tidal doesn’t, device sessions are separate.
Spotify doesn’t remember the queue though, so shuffled playlists get reshuffled when switching devices. It causes repeats and it’s really annoying. Deezer has the best session management I’ve used. It remembers the whole queue.
Primarily, remote control from one PC to another. I’ve got a desktop connected to my speakers but when working from home I want to use my work laptop to control the speakers. Tidal has a version of it that can control media streamer devices, but it is unreliable.
I like Qobuz and am winding down my Spotify usage. Although it doesn’t have as many automatic playlists as Spotify, Qobuz does better at recommending music that’s unfamiliar and interesting, whereas Spotify seems to have been circling me around the same drain of 10 songs for months. Qobuz sounds noticably better than Spotify too, on my good headphones. And it has so much information about each album, including CD booklets for many of them. In particular for classical music Qobuz gives you the composer, the players, the conductor, the piece and the movement, whereas Spotify doesn’t know what to do.
The format sent to clients is better. I would disagree with the recommendations point, but that’s subjective.
And they let you buy the music outright, too!
Recently quit youtube premium due to the price hike finally hitting my country. I’ve been using yt music for my listening.
Since that went away along with yt premium, I dusted off my old music file collection (mix of itunes and bandcamp purchases, cd rips, and soundcloud downloads).
Discovered Qobus looking for places to buy my favorite music to update my collection.
I used to keep my entire collection on my phone, but I opted to start using ytm since I had it and my collection got too big…
But now, I have to say I am blown away with how nice Symfonium+Jellyfin (or another music server) is to use!
Last time I looked into it, nothing handled dynamically keeping a portion of your music on-device for offline play this well!
Features can’t be beat for sure. They skip all the extra BS and just have a quality streaming service. Whodathunk that’s all people want? 🤣
They seem to be what Tidal pretends to be.
Apparently Tidal finally ditched MQA and went back to flac. How they ever went in for it with how shit it it turned out to be with some basic investigation, I have no idea.
I just want unlimited audiobook listening this 15 hours thing is bullshit. I nearly dropped spotify the second I got that notification out of spite.
But you didn’t drop them and therefore told them via your spending/usage that you’re ok with this 15 hour thing (i don’t use spotify so i don’t know what that is)
After 15 listening hours they let you finish the chapter then block listening until the next month and its a stupid amount of money to top up. Unfortunately I have all my music and podcasts tied to the base service and thats the only thing keeping me there. If I’m paying a monthly fee I feel entitled to unlimited anything.
If you’re that mad at them you should take differeng action. That’s how they learn. What they are learning from your current action is that you are okay with what they’re doing.
Which means you’re on Spotify Premium (as am I). Pro tip: Go to your subscription settings and choose the cheaper tier. They’re charging you for that 15 hours, because the cheaper tier only removes the 15 hours of audiobooks.
Spotify can also pay lower royalty rates on music in subscriptions that bundle audiobooks, so definitely drop audiobooks if you don’t need them.
I’m still using the audiobooks so I’ll keep it unless there is a better app for audiobooks specifically.
There’s no way they could pay to give you unlimited audiobooks with any kind of library at all.
You can get a library included with an Audible subscription, but it’s pretty limited, mostly to their own stuff, or Everand has a limited library included with a subscription (but you only get the stuff you use their limited credit system on while you have an active subsctiption, so I cancelled once they switched models).
The only reasonable alternative to what Spotify has is not doing audiobooks.
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.
Dropped Spotify after the CEO said artists music weren’t worth anything and raised their annual fee at the same time. Trash company
While I have always seen songs on my wrapped that I definitely enjoyed, I was sceptical of some of the most listened to ones. Didn’t seem right.
Honestly this is so annoying to me. It’s akin to posting 4th of July videos of fireworks.
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 use YouTube Music and I noted the exact same problem this year.
That explains a lot. I looked at the wrap and the “podcast” and they reported different top songs. The podcast was actually closer to what I expected than my actual list.
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
I use a self hosted playback tracker.
The top 3 were matching for self hosted and Spotify, but the last two in the top 5 were completely different. No matter which way I sorted it (time vs plays), the self hosted tracker was correct.
Wasnt aware of this issue. Mine was accurate.
