Spotify Wrapped has returned. Following criticism of last year’s version, which prominently featured an AI podcast, the streaming service’s yearly review feature is refocusing on its core strengths. This year, Spotify is concentrating on delivering in-depth analyses of your listening habits, imaginative presentations, messages from artists you enjoy, and enhanced social sharing options.

The company states that Wrapped 2025 is its most comprehensive yet, introducing approximately twelve new features alongside its established elements, such as your most-played songs and artists. Furthermore, it’s providing greater transparency into user data than in previous years. For the first time, Spotify Wrapped includes a live multiplayer function allowing you to compare your listening statistics with friends.

Wrapped Party, the first live, interactive component of Wrapped, enables you to invite up to nine friends to compare their listening data.

A new addition this year is the inclusion of play counts for each song within your Top Songs Playlist, allowing you to see precisely how much time you dedicated to your favorite tracks.

Other notable features this year encompass an interactive Top Song Quiz, a Listening Age assessment, and Wrapped Clubs, which categorize you into one of six distinct listening profiles.

The company anticipates that these enhancements will not only restore the personalized and captivating experience users have come to expect from Wrapped but will also elevate it by making it more interactive than ever before.

For example, the Top Song Quiz challenges you to identify the song that defined your year before revealing the answer.

The newly introduced Wrapped Party feature goes beyond simply comparing pre-existing listening data with friends, a practice already common on social media. Instead, it presents unique data-driven narratives for your group, identifying individuals as the “most devoted fan,” the “early adopter,” the “discerning listener,” or even the “dinner table explainer” – the person who listens to the most news podcasts.

Spotify explains that these awards are updated dynamically with each Wrapped Party session, ensuring a unique experience every time – even with the same group of friends.

The new Wrapped Clubs will assign you to one of six listening styles, such as the “Soft Hearts Club,” the “Club Serotonin,” the “Full Charge Crew,” the “Cosmic Stereo Club,” and others. You will also receive a role within the club based on your listening patterns. You could be a club leader if your preferences closely align with the club’s values, a scout if you consistently explore new releases, or an archivist if you favor music from previous decades.

The Listening Age feature, another new addition, compares your 2025 music listening to that of others in your age bracket. It determines your “listening age” by considering the release dates of the songs you listen to most frequently, then identifies the five-year period of music you engaged with more than your peers.

As in previous years, you’ll see your top songs, artists, genres, and, for the first time, top albums. If you listen to audiobooks and podcasts, you’ll also find metrics for those formats. Artists, writers, and podcasters will continue to have their own versions of Wrapped. And dedicated fans will once again receive video messages from their favorite artists, podcasters, and now, authors.

You will also receive a playlist featuring your most-played songs of the year, as before.

This year’s Wrapped will not include any features explicitly advertising the use of AI in its creation.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Matt Luhks, Spotify’s senior director of Global Marketing, acknowledged that the company received “a significant amount of feedback” regarding its 2024 AI-driven Wrapped experience, describing the response as a “combination of positive and more constructive criticism,” despite the feature increasing engagement compared to prior years.

“We take all of that into account. We utilize it as information, insights, and inspiration for how we approached Wrapped this year,” he stated during a press event leading up to today’s launch.

“Our users’ opinions regarding Wrapped are very important to us, which greatly influenced our approach this year. We aimed to create the most creative, innovative, and engaging Wrapped experience to date,” he added, setting ambitious expectations for the 2025 edition of the eleven-year-old annual year-in-review feature.

“We are the original and, we believe, still the best,” Luhks affirmed.

However, AI still plays a role in the Wrapped experience. While the overall experience wasn’t built with AI, the company does employ a large language model (LLM) to enhance Wrapped’s data and statistics with storytelling elements and natural language summaries.

Spotify’s effort to refine Wrapped after a challenging experience comes as the streaming platform faces growing competition from Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and others, all of which have launched their own annual review features inspired by Wrapped.

“Many now offer their own version of Wrapped. There are numerous reviews, replays, and rewinds available, but we believe that Wrapped continues to set the standard for these year-end recaps,” Luhks said.

In addition to the user experience, Spotify revealed its top artists, songs, albums, podcasts, and audiobooks for the year, with Bad Bunny (top song and album), Joe Rogan (“The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast), and Rebecca Yarros (author of “Fourth Wing”) among the top winners.